There's blood on your shoe. You almost miss it, but you look closer and distinguish the darker, thicker almost maroon color of the stain from the bright red color of your converse. Candy red, you think.
You must have accidentally stepped in the puddle growing near your feet. You blink a few times, wondering why it hasn't stopped yet. Why everything hasn't stopped yet.
The puddle keeps growing, spreading the blood. He's bleeding out, it occurs to you.
You feel a drop of sweat slide down your neck. It's so hot here. Blisteringly hot. You can hear the gears and clockwork shifting and grinding and ticking. Incessantly. On and on and on. Doesn't it ever stop? Doesn't anything ever stop?
He's dead.
You lift your shades for a moment and rub your eyes. You know Terezi isn't watching. Well you, hope.
You had already told her to leave you alone for a moment. It's what you're supposed to do, right? When things like this happen. You guess. You've seen it in movies and TV shows and stories and all of those just mirror real life so it has to be true, doesn't it? Something has to stop. Someone has to wait. There has to be a moment, somewhere out there, a moment of emptiness passing through space like a bubble just for this. Something has to happen to prove that this matters. That this death isn't unimportant. That no death is.
You suppose that she could be spying on you. Which would be totally creepy, but somehow, you're kind of okay with it. In fact, you might even enjoy it. The attention. There's something about it that appeals to you, you guess. Maybe it's the feeling of someone out there caring about you.
Or approving of you.
Whatever. You've got more important shit to worry about at the moment, you guess.
You blink a few more times and stare at the body once more.
Suddenly, without warning, without feeling, without any instigator, you find yourself dropping to your knees.
Shit.
He's fucking dead, isn't he.
Like. Really, really, fucking dead.
You lean over and observe the killing wound more closely, the blade of the sword cutting deep into the flesh of his chest. From the amount visible, you can tell that the tip was probably driven straight into the ground.
Jesus fucking christ. A man seriously cannot get deader than this.
The clockwork is still ticking and grinding, the air is still rustling hot, the blood is still pooling, why has none of it stopped? How can everything keep going, on and on, as if nothing's happened? Nothing ever fucking changes. The universe never acknowledges anything, does it? Or maybe it does. Maybe it just doesn't give a fuck.
You ponder this for a moment and guess that that would make sense.
So he's dead. Huh. What now, genius?
Well? What are you going to do, break down like a waterworks factory in an earthquake? Shed a single tear whilst keeping a stoic expression, before vowing vengeance on the fiend who committed such a dastardly act? How do you feel? Angry? Bitter? Resentful? Self-pitying? Grief-stricken? Shocked? An entire multitude of possible emotions could be running through right now, mixtures and melodies of complex feelings, so can you find the words to describe them or the heart to understand them?
No.
You just feel. Really...sad. You think. You're not...you're not entirely sure. You just feel...different. Strange. You can't explain it, but it's not like anything you've ever felt before.
Not necessarily in a good way. Actually, not in a good way at all.
You feel kind of sick, actually, is what you feel. Kind of nauseous. But it passes, like all things.
You look at the sword and suppose that usually in this situation it would be hella romantic to pull it out. But instead you feel like it is really wrong.
The blood looked almost pretty, the way it was staining Bro's white shirt. The colors looked nice. Nice but stark. Alarming, you guess, would be a good word. It kinda hurt to look at it. It hurt to look at any part of him. His lips were parted, and you could see there was blood bubbling out if it. It was mixed with saliva and lung fluid.
Fucking christ. Fuck. There's absolutely nothing romantic about this, you suddenly realize. You know he that he would bleed even more once you pull the sword out.
If. If you pull it out.
You can sort of see his eyes from the angle you're standing. Just barely a glimpse, though. They're open. You almost trick yourself into believing that they moved, that they blinked, that they had life, and you find yourself feeling again, just for a second, all the familiar emotions associated with this man who had always called himself your bro, who, no matter what, would always be your bro, yours and no one else's.
But the moment passes. His eyes are like glass marbles, cold and dead and heavy. There is nothing there.
There is nothing to say here. You reach over and brush a few of Davesprite's feathers off of the body. There is nothing to do. They twirl and float in the air for a second before landing on the ground. There is nothing. One of the feathers land in the blood, sticking and drooping in the liquid. There is nothing left here for you, nothing and no reason, absolutely no reason, to make something out of nothing.
He's fucking dead. Whatever. Whatever. Yeah, you're sad and full of tears and shock and the truest motherfucking grief that ever shit the liar's pants.
Fucking whatever. It's over. He had a nice life. You knew him well. You guess. You don't know if you loved him. Maybe you did. You sure as hell didn't like him that much. But you guess that really doesn't matter, does it? There was a lot of things he never told you about himself, and you guess you'll never know, but maybe that doesn't matter so much as you might have once thought, either. A lot of things that used to mean everything stopped mattering after playing this game. So this shouldn't be a big deal.
In fact, it isn't. See? Cool. Cool. Cool.
Nothing stops. The clockwork's still turning. You're still sweating like a fucking horse in this heat. The blood has stopped pooling.
But everything else? Nope. So you won't either. Time to move on, loser.
See? You're cool. Everything is cool. A guy can be sad and not be broken up. Right? Of course. Damn, hell if you aren't living proof of that.
You don't really know, to tell the truth. You just made that up. But it sounds legit. And it's a lot better than the truth, so...
Fuck.
He's dead. He's really...never coming back.
Fuck.
Shit, this is confusing. You have no idea what to feel. You're not in control. You're trying so hard to be. Fuck, you always tried so hard to be, always tried so goddamn hard, but now you just…can't. It's like someone shut you off or hit you too hard...dropped you like a brand new iPod and now your shock absorbers are busted and you don't know what the fuck to do because everything feels so fucking raw when there's nothing there between you and your emotions, nothing to filter out the fucking painful sincerity of them, nothing at all.
Why are you so afraid of being sincere?
You had never, ever let your guard down, not even for a second. But in the end, they were broken down. And of course it was Bro who did it. And he'll never even know that he did, the bastard.
It wasn't even his fault. How could he lose? How could he have let this happen to him? How?
He never lost. Ever.
Or maybe he had just never lost to you. And so you went along, like the child that you were, thinking that he's invincible.
Why does your chest feel so heavy all of a sudden?
Fuck. It wasn't your fault either. You don't have to remind yourself. You know already. It wouldn't matter now even if it was.
Whatever. You close your eyes and take a deep breath, crouching on one knee, and stare at the sword implanted in Bro's chest, thinking.
Thinking, thinking, thinking. Trying so hard, so goddamn hard, not to think. For fear of what might happen if you do.
You're still thinking when Terezi pesters you. And by then your feelings have passed already, like all things, pushed back past your armor, your walls, your guard, your stoic face and dark shades always protecting you from the harshness of reality, pushed back deep where it'll be forgotten, deep where it won't surface for a long, long time, deep where it won't be able to hurt you.
Nothing stops, and neither have you.