"Troubled Clown"

Chapter One

He sits alone, hugging his knees to his chest. His Capricorn t-shirt is almost in tatters by this time, and his gray-polka-dotted black pants are in no better condition. Occasionally he lets out a quiet sob, other times a slight laugh or a chuckle... But mainly he just sits in silence. The voices are his only companion, and they are never good company. They confuse him, they tell him to do things that he does not want to do, they yell at him, they tell him how much he fucked up and how much of a worthless piece of shit he is. At times he cries, but usually he only sits. There are rare times where he stands, walks about and eats or drinks, occasionally vital necessities are fulfilled... But he does not care any more. In all, he only wants it all to end...

So used to being alone... Tonight he is in the same place he usually is. Gamzee Makara is there, in his darkness, with his tormenting voices and the memory of the friends that he killed. Given, he hardly has the heart or the mindset to care about them any more. It has been countless sweeps since it all happened; either that or it just seems that it has. The others cross his thoughts only for a moment before the voices push his memories away, replacing them with darker thoughts of self-destruction.

With a frown, he trades these thoughts for memories of Karkat. His moirail. Well... at one point he was. Gamzee reached up with one hand and rubbed his eyes. He could not remember the last time he slept... The feeling of his face devoid of any face paint was foreign to him. He could not seem to recall why he is not wearing any of the paint, but he figures he rubbed it off over the course of however long he had been in hiding and never bothered to reapply it. Not that it matters any more.

Whether the troll is used to being by himself or not, tonight he feels more alone than ever. This is something he cannot explain. However, he feels the intense need to get out, to emerge from his hiding place and face the outside world again. He silently rises to his feet. He stumbles a bit, as his feet had both lost circulation and gone numb at some point without him noticing. He breaks the silence with a soft growl, and the sound startles him since there was nothing but perfect silence prior to the quiet sound, and it almost seems to echo for that reason alone.

Once he recovers from the initial shock of his own voice, Gamzee looks around for the exit. It takes him a while to find it, since he has been sitting in solitude for he has no idea how long. Eventually he does find it, however, and slowly makes his way out into the open. About halfway out, he pauses. He is beginning to dread this decision. With a shrug, he presses onward. Each step seems to take more and more effort. Soon the exit is within a few yards, and he freezes again. His indigo eyes lock on the exit just beyond his reach, and he takes a few steps back, shaking his head. He reaches both hands up and tugs at his tangled mess of black hair, still shaking his head and slowly backing toward where he had come from. Almost a hundred yards from his freedom, Gamzee turns and runs back into his self-imprisonment in the darkness.

The troll drops to his knees when he gets back to his original location. He holds his head in his hands and lets out a scream that is a mixture of pain, rage, and hopelessness. He screams until his voice is hoarse, after which he continues to try to scream until he is interrupted by weak coughs and he falls onto his side, curling into a ball and trembling. He could almost hear his screams, still echoing off the walls of wherever it was he had crawled into when he chose to disappear. Gamzee remains like that for a while, hoping that his plan had worked and everyone who was still alive believed that he was dead.

He presses a hand to his throat, trying to massage out the soreness that he himself caused by screaming. This does not work, so he soon abandons the effort and wraps his arms around himself the best he can, closing his eyes. He remains like that, trying to hold himself together in quite a literal sense and making an attempt to keep his pending tears at bay for as long as he possibly can. It does not take long for the indigo tears to flow unbidden from his lidded eyes. When he went into hiding, he never realized how lonely it would be. Then again, he always thought he could do without anyone else. He now realizes that he was wrong, and he needs someone there more than anything. Gamzee tightens his arms around himself and sobs, the pain in his throat becoming much worse with each sound he makes.

Eventually the sobbing stops and he lays there crying silently. He pulls his arms out from around himself and covers his face with both hands. When he cannot cry any more, he keeps his hands over his face anyway to complete the already-dense blackness. So alone... In the darkness, he can picture himself wherever he wants.

He creates his own illusion, in which he is not alone. There is Karkat. The other troll is there in the darkness with Gamzee, in this alternate world within his own mind. Karkat brings light with him into the dark, and anywhere Karkat is there is calm and sanity. Gamzee approaches the light around the other troll, his best friend, and he moves farther away. Frowning, Gamzee tries to get to Karkat, but each time the other moves farther away, until there is nothing but a tiny speck of illumination in the distance. Furrowing his brow, Gamzee takes a few steps toward the light and it disappears. He stops walking and sits on the floor of his prison, hugging his knees to his chest, mimicking a position that was so very familiar to him. He rests his forehead against his knees, in his illusion, and closes his eyes. A moment later he feels a hand on his shoulder. He turns his head, not bothering to lift it, and realizes that it is Karkat's hand. He smiles ever so slightly up at the other troll. His illusory best friend shakes his head at him and kneels next to him, hugging him from the side. Gamzee turns toward Karkat, hiding his face against his former moirail's chest and sobbing quietly. The other hugs him tighter and rubs his back soothingly. Gamzee calms down after a few minutes and hugs back. He falls asleep, in this illusion, a concept that is almost lost to him in his reality. Karkat allows Gamzee to sleep against him. The real version of Gamzee smiles slightly at the imagined scenario before it fades, and he is left once again on his own in the empty darkness.

His little expedition into his fantasy made the dark a bit more manageable, at least. Though his small smile fades, he still manages to stay somewhat calm, or at least as calm as an insane clown can be. He keeps his eyes closed for a few moments as a test to find out if he would finally be able to sleep. The outcome is negative. Instead he opens his eyes and lays on his back, one hand on his chest and the other remaining on his face to trace the scars that start at his temple and continue at an angle most of the way across his face. His memory flashes to the moment that those scars were acquired, and the recollection causes him to shiver slightly. Not because of his own pain; in fact, he did not care about the pain, nor did he give a shit about what had immediately followed the claws dragging across his face back then. The fact that he still remembers is what draws the shiver from him.

For some reason unknown to the troll, his thoughts shift to Equius. The motherfucker had died with a smile. That is as far as that memory went, however, and Gamzee once again snaps back into the present. The hand that had been tracing his scars joins the other hand on his chest, and he sighs, closing his eyes.

"It's too motherfucking quiet," he mutters to himself, startled once again by the sound. This time it really is his own voice, not a growl, and that fact alone is even more shocking to him. The pain in his throat takes precedence over his surprise though, so the feeling is short-lived. Although, his voice seems sufficient to eliminate the eerie feeling the silence holds in the air around him, so he chooses to continue talking and do his best to ignore the consequences of doing so.

"I guess the motherfucking quiet isn't all bad. My thoughts can be, but if I just get my thinking on shit that don't matter all that much, then I can all get some peace on up in this dark place." He blinks a few times, still not all that used to his voice like he used to be, considering he used to talk all the time, but lately he hardly talks at all.

"It ain't all that much of a motherfucking change from my old life, if I think about it," he continues. "'Cept back then I wasn't always all by my motherfucking self and in so much dark. And the voices would shut the motherfuck up sometimes. And the Messiahs were still..." He stops, sighing, then continues talking to himself once more. "With me. I ain't totally sure they left, but I motherfucking think they all did. I haven't seen or heard anything to up and say they still care for this motherfucker... Maybe they just decided to get their sleep on and get back to me when they motherfucking wake up? Well, that don't sound very likely. But wishful motherfucking thinking can get a motherfucker in some high spirits." He sighs again. "I need a motherfucking miracle..." With this, Gamzee covers his eyes with his forearm and turns his head slightly to the side. "Fuck."

"There ain't anything to up and do in this shit hole." He uncovers his eyes again and looks around in the dark. "Why the motherfuck would I go and seclude myself in a motherfucking place like this... It ain't even something I would do! FUCK!" He jumps at his own yell, as he has been speaking at a low volume the entire time. "Whoa... Shit... Well. Uh..." Absently, he runs a hand though his hair, avoiding his horns. "I can't all take this shit any more... I gotta get out of here. I gotta motherfucking get up, get my courage on, and leave this motherfucking dark prison of a hole. Ain't nothing in here for me, ain't no motherfucking thing but echoes and voices and darkness and I can't motherfucking take it any more." The clown sits up, leaning back on his hands. "I gotta find Karbro..." He shakes his head. "Or not. But I need to motherfucking get out of here, find somewhere else to up and be. Maybe a new place to hide. I can all pretend to be motherfucking dead somewhere that ain't underground in a motherfucking hole with a fuckton of darkness and humidity and boredom, and somewhere that don't smell like wet dirt and death. Wait, maybe the death smell is me. But I don't motherfucking care. I gotta get out of here is the only motherfucking thing I need to all worry about right now."

Switching positions so he is crouched on the dirt, Gamzee fidgets with the laces of his left shoe. "I wish I had some motherfucking sense of how long I've been down here... Oh well. I could up and walk toward the exit again. Last time I all tried that I got a motherfucking bit of doubt and ran back in here. Who would get that idea in their motherfucking think pan to keep themselves trapped in a motherfucking dark musty hole in the ground, with no sense of the sun cycle or motherfucking time at all. Who would let some motherfucker keep himself trapped against his own will BY his own motherfucking will? That probably don't make any sense at all. I don't motherfucking care though. Makes sense to me." He drops the shoelace and rises slowly to his feet. "I'll try this a motherfucking gain and see how well I can manage. Maybe this motherfucker will finally get out of this stupid motherfucking hole. It ain't likely but it's all worth up and trying, I guess."

The troll takes a few purposeful steps toward the exit, a lot more determined than he had been before. After those few steps, however, he slows his pace. "You motherfucking cluckbeast! Walk." He continues his forward progress, muttering insults and encouragement to himself with every step to keep moving. After what feels like way too long, he is in the same spot he was in the last time he bolted away from his only way out. He stops, taking a few deep breaths before pressing onward. "I can motherfucking do this, I can leave this place..."

Reaching out, his hand brushes the edge of the exit, and a small smile of accomplishment appears on his face. He takes one last moment to glance back over his shoulder before taking the last few steps required to leave his cell behind and acquaint himself with the outside air once more.

(((so, i made a Gamzee fanfiction... I hope it is liked by some people. this is only the first chapter...)))