For four years he'd been waking up, screaming, sobbing until he fell asleep again. Sobbing until someone shushed him. For the past few weeks he'd been getting worse - screaming about people they all swear he never knew, tearing at the skin on his head, hurting himself and crying and yelling and after a week of being in solitude, sobbing silently and staring at the ceiling, they finally decided to let him come out.
The poor thing was terrified of every little noise. The clanging of doors, and especially the dripping of water, the way it sounded, and he began to cry when he saw it drip, saw it run down the drain. He covered his ears all the way into the rec room, where very few people were. He could see feet, bare or soft-slippered wandering the floors - and he refused to look any further than this in fear he might start seeing his nightmares again. Might start suffering the same strange hallucinations he'd managed to run away from for now. His fingers shook, and he glanced back at the nurses as they let him go and told him very quietly to behave himself and suddenly he realised just how long it had been since he'd really seen anyone.
Perhaps it was time he looked up and faced it? Perhaps he'd been hiding for far too long? He could have sworn it wasn't like this when he first went to talk to someone, when he sat on a seat and he spoke to a face he couldn't remember, and his grey skin crawled and he ran out of-.. oh. No, no, no. No grey skin. It was pale, he was pale. Not grey. He had to remember that.
The doctor said that his memory was a prison - he had to forget or else he'd be a slave to memory, a slave to what he thought was real. To the past, to something that was anything but the future or the present - and so he often took time to go see the doctor again because he couldn't remember everything he'd said - he liked to think it was because he really wasn't a slave to his memory at all.
He took a seat in the corner and just nibbled his lip while he thought on whether or not he should look up, and was just about to completely give up on the thought when he felt the wall receive a light thump by his head, he heard the soft sound of material sliding down it and then the second tiny thump as the figure beside him landed on it's backside and slid its bare heels along the floor so that long legs were stretched out.
" Heyyy! " At first it startled him - the voice, that was. Anything other than the nurses was new and strange and.. this one was soothing. He liked it. He liked the way it lilted and how rough it sounded, he grew fond of it quickly but took no measures to respond, nor did he look up. He just stared past the length of the long legs and stretched his own out in comparison, only to wrinkle his nose when he realised they were not as long and this person beside him was much, much taller. He heard them laughing. Another sound he liked - laughing. He didn't hear much of it. Well - not real laughter, anyway. There was always a very strange tint to the laughter when he was dreaming in a strange, strange place, but this laughter was bright - like the sounds he .. was sure that he had enjoyed outside of where he was now. Outside of white hallways or pale green recreational rooms, the seventeen year old had very much enjoyed church bells - the laughter was very much like that. " ..You don't talk much! That's okay, not many people here do, no pressure man~ "
He paused for a moment before deciding to look up and meet the expectant, owlish gaze of the tall being beside him. He saw that it was indeed a boy like he'd speculated - a thin, handsome boy with strange, bright orchid eyes that were in no way the pale, strange blue-grey of the eyes of the nurse. These eyes were beautiful, and-.. famili-.. no. No- He opened his eyes wide, and stared, and the droopy eyed boy only smiled kindly, and reached out with a hand that had long, long fingers and he had been waiting for him to shake his hand before Karkat began to scream. He cried and he shook his head and he screamed and he wriggled further into the corner and yelled ' no! ' into the silence, and the poor thing on the side of him just looked awfully confused and was yanked terribly harshly away from him as if he had done somethng wrong. Which it seemed the nurses supposed he might have.
" Gamzee, what did you do?! "
" Nothin' - I swear! It wasn't me, it wasn't, it wasn't me, no one told me to, no one said anything he just got all upset- "
" Karkat, Karkat- listen! LISTEN. No one is going to hurt you- NO ONE is going to hurt you, be quiet! " Which only made the confused little thing scream louder until Gamzee wriggled through the three-person wall of nurses and scooped Karkat into his arms, and pulled him gently against his chest, and all at once there was no screaming. No crying whatsoever. Like a child presented with its favourite person in the world - a parent, or perhaps a beloved toy.
They sat in the same spot for hours while nurses scratched their heads in confusion. With Karkat telling Gamzee very quietly about everything as Gamzee ran his long fingers through Karkat's dark, toussled hair and listened very contently.
It was as though they'd known eachother all their lives.