"I want to go back," she whispered, making you pull out of your daze and look up at her.
You and her were both set on bright red covers that hurt your eyes to look at. You hated the color so much. You didn't even know why you hated it so much, but you just felt like that you needed to hate that color with an intensity that no one in their right mind could ever hope to match, especially against just a color. He treated the color like it was an embodiment of Hitler and it made his friends worry. He never told his parents, though. They already thought he was strange and they pitied him too much as it was. It's why they adopted him, after all.
"There is no 'back'," you reply, sending a sharp mental stab through your heart as the words left your lips, and it felt like you were spitting out razor blades of sharp lies and would bust your lip up more than it already was.
There was something about this girl. When you met her, you already knew everything about her. That upset you. You begun to actually think your friends and parents were right to think you were insane. But when she met you, she called you a foreign name that wasn't actually that foreign to you because it was your name, but it also wasn't. You had to tell her that that wasn't who he was. She looked devastated and you felt horrible for lying like that, even though you were technically lying.
That's all in the past, though. You were now close friends, the both of you. Maybe even more than friends, you didn't know. You never bothered asking and just did whatever you felt like doing around her. Being around her seemed to have that effect on you. To make you be yourself. To make you be who you wished you were. To make you be Karkat Vantas, who had gray skin and candy corn horns and mutated blood and sharp, yellow fingernails with yellow eyes to match, along with the black pupils that would soon transform into the candy red you despised so much.
But you weren't.
"Karkat," she mumbled, making you wince. Every time she said that name, your heart felt like it was suffocating. Like someone was ripping open your chest and squeezing your heart with their bare hands.
You let a shaky sigh as a response.
"I want to go back," she repeated, and this time you just looked at her with your normal brown eyes that were complimented by your red hair. "My dreams…are getting more and more vivid."
You wrapped you arm around her and pulled her closer. You wished you both were still watching that dumb movie you suggested. You and she were too preoccupied with the movie to have these thoughts, but once it ended and you both just lied down next to each other in the silence that gave the dreaded thoughts the chance to take hold and drown you both.
Dreams were becoming a hassle for the both of you, though they felt more like memories. Dreams became daydreams and daydreams became illusions.
"It's hard to tell what's real anymore," she said, finishing your thoughts for you.
You stared at her. And you didn't see dull hazel eyes, the ones she actually bore. You saw bright, green, vivid eyes that burned brightly with excitement. A color and passion that you wished you could bottle up and stare at forever.
"Let's go back," she finally murmured out, giving you a nervous smile.
You squeezed her tighter and your eyes widened in shock. "Jade," you choked out. You knew what she meant now.
"See, you're calling me her name," she pointed out. "Please, Karkat. Please…I don't want to be here anymore. I don't want to be me anymore. I want to be her."
"You are her!" you cry out suddenly, holding her protectively against you, closing your eyes as transparent water devils peeked out behind your eyelashes.
Her hand against your cheek make you open your eyes again to stare at her.
"My dreams…our dreams are real, Karkat. And we can go back. Both of us can go back. And we can see John and Dave and Terezi and-…"
"No, no, no, no," you sobbed.
"Please…" she begged, and you could tell she was starting to cry too. "I don't want to go back alone. I want to go back with you."
"I can't lose you," you snapped. "You're the only thing that I know is real anymore. You're the only thing that keeps me from losing my fucking mind. And now you're telling me you want to go back? Jade, we can't."
"We can-…"
"How do you know, that, though? Jade, how do you know? What if we don't? What if we don't go back and we just wasted precious time because we were uncertain that something would or wouldn't happen? What if that happens, Jade? What fucking if I'm scared to fucking death that I'm going to lose you and everyone else again?" You were crying hard at this point. Everything was blurry. You didn't seem to care about that, though.
"I'm scared too," she admitted. "I'm scared, but I still want to do this. You're not going to lose me, Karkat. You know why? Because together, me and you, we're going to do this. Together. We're going to be scared together. We're going to hurt together. We're going to go back…together. I'm never going to leave you alone like this. I'm going to be by your side until we go back, Karkat."
You sniffed and wiped your eyes. You felt like you were going to be sick at the thought, but something kept your stomach calm enough not to do so. You knew Jade was probably that reason.
"What if I want you by my side even after that?" you asked in a low voice and you almost smiled as you saw her blush. Almost.
She took the liberty of smiling for you and leaned forward to give you a quick kiss, which you promptly returned.
"Okay," you finally agreed once she pulled away. "Let's go back together…"
She nodded and pulled you into one last hug in this conscious body. But you prayed altogether that it wasn't truly your last hug. You wanted to be able to hold Jade in your arms again, but not like this. You, instead, wanted gray hands to hold around her, and for white, soft dog ears to brush the side of your face, and, most of all, you wanted those bright, vivid, and excited green eyes that you wanted to badly to bottle up to stare at you and be accompanied by a big smile that would speak softly to you: "We made it back, Karkat."