Posting here as well as on dA because I'm an unsatisfied attention whore.
Recommended listening: Lotus (Bloom) from Volume 8.
It was just a dream.
Dreams can sometimes be clearer than real life, right? Gamzee's life was never that clear in the first place. Pain can be clear though, if there's enough of it.
His arms burn when he pulls himself out, covered in green, and blue and brown and pink and purple and green.
He loves brown. Brown is the color of gray blazers and long horns and Fiduspawn and rap battles and four-wheel devices. Brown is the color of stuttering and downcast faces and black strips of hair and smiles and commas.
There's brown in his mouth. And the green oh god the green.
Green tastes like pies and whispers and greasepaint and sugary sodas and DON'T DROWN US OUT we want to help KILL THEM ALL.
Green is freedom.
Green is restraint.
Green is limitation.
GREEN IS HOLDIN' US BACK BRO. So clear.
It was only a dream.
His face stings like hell but he can ignore it, just like the voices just like the brownbluegreenpinkpurple IT'S A MOTHERFUCKIN' RAINBOW, BRO.
It was a nightmare, the green didn't work the green stopped working without the green YOU NEED HELP MAN let us help you.
Was it a dream?
Did he imagine a bowstring cracking, a horn honking, a club being brought down again and again and again do it again DO IT AGAIN DO IT AGAIN
Did he imagine a sickle in the shape of a claw sawing back and forth snapping tendons and grating cartilage covered in slippery fuchsia violet cobalt chartreuse rust rust rust
Painting cotton candy plums blueberries olives peanut butter and jelly sandwiches I'm sorry bro this is the PIMPEST SNEEZE I GOT ON HAND
Was it a nightmare?
Did she really take him away what did she do what have I done
Tell him it was a dream.
Hands on his face rubbing covered in indigo. Calm shooshes, the sound of the sea next to his hive, the sound of his lusus telling him that green is bad don't drown them out son I can't be here you have to be your own company.
Fingers on his cheek, papping. Gray handcuffs stare up at him. That's not a dream though, that's happening now, they're his fingers. They were anonymous gray like a 69 he can remember, but now they're covered in a familiar color and it's on his face where did these cuts come from that was only a dream.
Dreams can't put splinters in his hand from a noble weapon, dreams can't shred his face, cover him in his best friend, deposit him in an ablution trap in the middle of a lab coughing spluttering and lost.
He hopes he's still dreaming but he knows he isn't, but either way he falls back in and covers himself in the sopor slime
WHAT ARE YOU DOING
and breathes in as hard as he can.
For a moment it stings (you aren't supposed to eat it, son) but it's still kinda blurry and it's not nearly as bad as the way his face stings. He hurts on the inside too but it's starting to fade the harder he breathes in, but he can't breathe in anymore.
This isn't a dream.
All he sees behind his eyelids is brown, the brown of friends and hugs and secrets kept and "i KNOW YOU WOULD NEVER HURT ME,,, i TRUST YOU, i KNOW YOU'RE NOT REALLY A MONSTER ON THE INSIDE,,, pLEASE LET ME IN,"
The green can take away the voices. But it can't take away the past.
Now it can take away the memories.