A/N: HOLY SHIT I JUST UPLOADED 12 CHAPTERS IN THIRTY MINUTES. Oh god I'm sorry to anyone who might have just gotten twelve notifications in a row. -TK

-Your name is Dove Strider and—no, your name is Dave Strider and everything hurts.—

It hurts to breathe. It hurts to shift your hand. It hurts to try to listen to the voices, much less the beeping. It hurts to even think about prying your eyes open. So you're just lying there, thinking as you lie in the bed. You're not dead, that's one thing you realize right away. That's a horrible thing to realize, because remembering why you tried to make yourself die hurts so much more. Everything hurts and aches and the memory makes you jolt up quickly and suck in a breath, tears flooding your face at the pain and the reminder that you're alive. Everything is so bright and cold and painful. There's a hand on your shoulder and your face is buried in their chest before you even know what you're doing. The hand runs through your hair. It's Dirk, you know because he always smells like mint and your house, mixed together.

"Dirk," you choke out, and he shushes you. You shake your head, pulling your face away to look at him, struggling to breathe. "Dirk," you repeat, struggling to make your voice sound right, sobbing. "I don't want to do this anymore."

"Don't say that." A deep voice says. Your head swivels over to where Bro is leaning against the wall. Somewhere in the back of your head you take note of the kid from the roof there, silently in a chair, knees pulled to his chest.

"I don't," you say, begging, pleading for them to understand. "I don't want to, I don't want to, I don't want to."

"Dave—,"

"Hey, bud, calm down okay?" Dirk cuts off Bro, running his fingers through your hair again. "Calm down and we'll talk. Just take some deep breaths, okay? Just breathe, little bro."

So you focus on taking deep gulping breaths for a few minutes until you're shivering slightly but breathing fine and thinking a little more clearly. You fall quiet, accepting your shades from Dirk and sliding them on.

You turn to Dirk again after a moment. "I'm never going to school again," you say simply. You watch one of his eyebrows raise.

"So it's because of school, then?"

You shake your head. "No. But now everyone at school's going to know."

"Know? Know what—Oh. How could they possibly know that, Dave?" He asks, and you tense up slightly, which Dirk seems to see because he ruffles your hair and tells you that you don't have to talk about it. Instead, he sits down on the bed next to you, making himself comfortable. "Next up on the agenda—okay, hospital food? Everyone's always like, ew, gross, hospital food but. I assumed that was just like, some strange stereotype. Nope, hospital food is hella bad."'

"Is it?

"It is," Bro chimes in, and oh look you're all successfully avoiding the subject at hand and the kid sitting in the chair right next to you. What is he even doing here, anyways? "It's worse than the food from your first elementary school. You remember that food right? When you were in third grade you tried to start a protest when they taught you about that kind of shit, like Martin Luther King Jr. and shit. You didn't make it very far, but the point is the food is bad."

You're considerably calmed down, and at this point you make eye contact with the kid, Karkat, unintentionally. You don't even know what he's doing there.

But your brothers seem to sense that you've made that awkward eye contact, because Dirk stands up.

"I'm getting coffee. Just rest, okay?" You watch him leave, face twisting slightly when the door shuts behind him.

"Is he really leaving?" You ask. Bro seems confused by the question, so you rephrase it. "Is he really going to go to college in Texas? He's just gonna leave?" Bro watches you quietly for a minute.

"Yeah, Dave, probably. He graduated, little man, that means he's gotta go off and do his own things with his life. That's how it works. It's not like he won't ever visit." You just shrug and Bro glances at the door. "I'm gonna go with him, though. To get coffee, I mean. Be back in a few."

And he disappears, too.

So now it's just you and Karkat. He's watching you quietly and you aren't sure what to say to him. So you just say the first thing you think of.

"What..?"

"You jumped in front of a goddamn car," Karkat snapped, lifting his head up. You squint at him from behind your shades.

"How would you know?"

"Because I'm the one who got your miserable ass here!"

"I hope you don't expect me to thank you," you snap back, voice tightening. "I didn't jump in front of that car on accident!"

"Why the hell would you do that? Why the actual fucking hell would you do that? What is the point in doing that?"

"Because I don't want to do this anymore!" You snap again. "I hate it! I hate it I hate it I hate it I hate it!" You repeat the mantra in a shaky voice that raises and he's glaring at you fiercely now.

"That doesn't mean you go and off yourself, asshole! God, why would you do that? You've got people who care for you, you sniveling prick! How can you not fucking see that? Is your pedestal fun, sitting up there and thinking that you don't have a single goddamn reason to stay on this miserable planet when you've got people who obviously care about you? Is that it? Because let me tell you something, sir, you do. So tell me, seriously, I'm so fucking intrigued as to why the hell you would jump in front of a car you miserable asshole."

That is indeed the question, now isn't it? You're wondering that right now yourself, you're wondering indeed what's so awful about any of this. You know a lot of people would kill to be in the situation you're in, with two accepting brothers who obviously care about you and accept you and let you be the person that you so terribly want to be. You don't have a reason to be sad… so why are you?"

"I don't know." You tell him flatly, which seems to make him explode with more insults like 'sniveling prick' so you cut him off quickly and continue. "I don't know, I don't have a reason, if anything I should probably be a pretty happy person so I don't know why I'm not. There's just something wrong with me and I don't know what. I don't know why I want to go fall off a bridge instead of walking the rest of the way home to people who care about me and a nice place to live and a good life and everything like that. I don't know why I'm always so fucking sad all the time."

He doesn't seem to know what to say to this either, so you both continue to sit in somewhat awkward silence for a moment before the door swings back open and your brothers show up again. Dirk sets something down on the table next to you, probably not coffee, but you don't bother looking over to see what it is. You take a breath and look down at your arm and see an IV in it for the first time. The soft beeps are still there and although you're anything but happy to still be able to hear that beeping in your ears, but for now you think you're willing to at least try and find a moment when you will be happy with it.

Karkat stands up and looks at you, giving you a long look so that you know that the conversation isn't over. You notice for what isn't the first time how pale and thin he is, how dark the bags under his eyes are. "I go to your school," he tells you in a tired voice. "Just thought I would point that out. I was gone for the first part of the semester, but I hang out with John and the rest of those losers. I don't know when to expect you at school again, but I'll tell you two things and you damn well better listen to them. You better show back up at school sometime and you better show up at John's piano recital. So I'll see you there, then."

You watch the door swing shut behind him and sink further down in the bed. Now that he's gone you're really going to get grilled and you know it.

"Dave." No, you think for now you'll just pretend not to hear them.

"Dave." Is that a window to your left? Woah, what the fuck it is indeed a window! Would you look at the fine work they put into that brick wall that you see? And seriously, wow, look at the wing-work on that bird flying by right now!

"Dave Elizabeth Strider."

"My middle name isn't—," Dammit, you're fraternizing with the enemy. You begrudgingly look over at them and see that they're serious now and you want to shrink down into the bed and into the ground and straight down into the Earth. "I'm sorry," you whisper in a small voice. You're not sorry for trying, but you're sorry for hurting them like that.

Dirk leans against the wall and lets Bro take over, since he's probably the one who knows what he's talking about.

"You can't do that again," he starts, then pauses. "Seriously. Don't you dare even try. I just want to ask you one question, and we'll leave you alone for now about it. But you have to answer me and I want you to answer it with the truth, don't give me bullshit about this, alright? I just want to know why, Dave."

"I don't know," you practically whimper because damn you sound like a girl right now and you think you might cry in a second but for now you just look him in the eye and he sighs really heavily and nods.

"Well… this is going to end, alright? This depression thing. We'll figure this out, alright? We'll figure this all out somehow."

You don't know exactly how he expects you to do that, but you assume that he means therapy and other forms of help, as well as people constantly watching you like a hawk. If that's what it takes, though, then maybe you're okay with that until you're okay with living.