Among Friends
Third: Shatter
by Lady Virgo
"Nothing remains
Those that
do not have strength
breaks."
///
"Why does he keep /doing/ this to me?"
Crash stayed silent, just watching him pace with a subtly hurt expression.
"Why doesn't he get it? Why does he keep pushing me away like this?"
Five paces, turn, five more, turn. Crash let out a quiet sigh, holding his hands tightly together.
Step, step, step.....
"How could he say those things, Crash?"
Crash bit his lip, lowering his head.
Step, step, turn....
"I don't want him to be like this...."
Step, step, step.....
"He knows that, but...."
Crash hunched up, heart throbbing from pain.
Step, step....
"He hurt me.... deliberately."
Stop.
He took in a shuddering breath, blue eyes glittering with tears.
"He doesn't care...."
No..... thought Crash. He just cares too much. His chin trembled. They all do.
Quick, Ring and now Elec. Never before had Crash had to play therapist to them, and now, suddenly, all three of them came to seek his shoulder. And Crash had absolutely no idea what to do. Tell them it's all right? That it's okay? He didn't know what was happening. All he understood was that his dear friends were hurting those closest to them. And no one knew why.
"Crash...." Elec was sitting on the edge of a chair, hands buried deep in his short cropped hair. "What do I do?" One of the most emotionally stable robots he knew was crying to him, on the point of breaking.
What do /I/ do? He didn't know. The only person he really had any practice in speaking seriously with was Ring, and even then the Russian- made robot left just as upset as he had come in.
I'm useless.... I can't do this, I don't know how.
Quick did. Quick knew all about handling personal problems.
/"I don't know why they're doing this to me."/
Except for his own.
/"Am I the one at fault?"/
No....
/"Did I make a mistake somewhere?"/
No....
/"Did I do something wrong?"/
No, no, no..... It's not your fault. Don't cry, please don't cry. I don't know what to do. Please, Quick, don't cry. How do I help you? What do I do? I don't know how to help. I don't know what to do. Don't cry. Please? Please? ....Help me.
"Crash?"
He jumped at the hand on his shoulder. Elec had moved to sit on the bed next to him. "Crash, are you okay?"
It was then he noticed that he was shaking, hands hiding his face and tears lining his eyes. All traces of lost frustration had vanished from Elec's face. Now Crash was his single concern.
He cursed to himself. Elec had come here for some advice and comfort, not the one to be comforting someone else. Crash hurriedly dried his threatening tears. "Yeah, I'm okay. Just...." he couldn't say anything more, just swallowed hard.
"Nightmares again?"
There was a short pause. Then Crash nodded.
Because it was easier to lie than to be weak.
With a grim looking, Elec patted his shoulder and stood up. "Get checked up, all right? No one wants you to go through that again. Especially you."
The younger bioroid gave him a weak grin. "Right." He waited until Elec left his room and he fell back on his bed, rubbing the tears that refused to cease. "Goddammit...."
///
Wily skimmed through the report in front of him. "So, is the problem being taken of?"
Magnet bowed. "Yes, sir. Both Metal and Elec are effectively subdued."
"Good, good." He muttered under his breath about troublemakers as he continued to flip through the data sheet. "And what about the other problems?"
This time, the bioroid bowed his head to hide a grin. "They're taking care of themselves."
///
Three weeks went by and everyday, it seemed, couldn't pass without Shadow and Ring getting into some sort of fight. On a few occasions it was a shouting match (on Ring's part, but Shadow's held as much, if not more, intensity) and on the rare days they'd get in as many as three fights. It had gotten to the point that the other Robot Masters realized that those two were out for blood and most tried to keep the two away from each other. Especially on the practice field where anything went.
And as time went by, and continued by, things kept changing and kept getting worse and worse. Metal and Elec went through long periods of not talking or seeing each other and every other day either ended or began in an argument that could be heard all the way down in the third wing. And through it all, Crash somehow managed to get by as the councilor, though he never did anything more than just sit there while the other would rant.
He was seeing less and less of Quick as time went by.
He was becoming afraid.
Quick broke down, about a week into the fighting. Crash had seen his brother cry before, he was a compassionate bioroid. But he had never before seen him cry so helplessly, so hopelessly before, and never in a public area. Crash had managed to drag Quick out to eat at the chow hall, chattering ceaselessly to him, trying to keep the topic light and shying away from anything that might upset him.
However, just when Crash had gotten him to the point of smiling again, someone (he couldn't recall who, and if he did, he would've beaten them into greasy mark) came up and told Quick:
"Hey, Speedy, put a leash on your boys. They're annoying the hell outta everyone with their bitchin'."
Immediately Quick's smile vanished and his shoulders slumped, eyes that cracked down to his very essence. Crash could've sworn he saw his heart stop.
"Quick....," he reached over to grab his brother's hand before it slipped out of view. "Hey, c'mon now, Quick...!" Crash pleaded, trying to keep him from slipping back. "Quick, /please/!" He growled, looked around, trying to find the instigator and tear him apart. He felt the hand in his shudder.
Quick's head bowed, his frame shaking and soft choking noises coming out of him. It took Crash a moment to realize that he was crying. Quietly, silently bearing the guilt that wasn't his and sorrow that was of no fault of his own.
"Oh Quick, don't...." Crash said in a hushed voice. He held Quick's shuddering shoulders, trying to comfort him. "Don't cry. Don't, please?" He wrapped one hand around the back of the other's head, leaning their foreheads together, his own eyes lining with tears as he desperately wanted to take away his dear brother's pain. "Quick.... please...."
At that moment, he truly hated Ring. He held no love for Shadow for hurting- intentionally or unintentionally -Quick, Ring knew how the speedster felt, knew how much he cared for the kagemusha. And, though Crash knew how much Ring hated to see Quick hurt, how much he loved him, he still decided to go against the one most important to Quick. Intentionally. Deliberately. Because he believed the end justified the means. Because Ring couldn't bare the pain anymore.
And that selfishness was hurting his brother more than he could stand. Within a month's time, Crash felt too overburdened, being the emotional unload point. He, himself, was a very emotionally weak robot, his own fears and trepidation conquered him in the loneliness of night.
It was a chemical imbalance that couldn't be fixed; or rather, one that Wily hadn't bothered to fix. Once only had that imbalance overcome him. He couldn't sleep, he wouldn't allow himself to be turned off because then the memories barraged him, twisting and mutating into some paranoid life that was all too real. And, the worse it got, the more real it became until it started twisting the world as he lived in into that fearsome, grotesque that he dreamed. Burner still wouldn't go near the drill bomber after that.
It was starting up again, he could feel it. The crawling in his mind, clamoring and scratching across his brain that set his teeth on edge and nerves on fire. The shivers of brutal cold and pain wracking heat, the exhaustion that crept into his body at every waking moment, the jumpiness when there was nothing around him but silence. It was paranoia, it was fear in its highest degree. And it tore at him.
Crash's hands shook as it reached for his pills, the medication that slowed down the chemicals inside of him. His power to create explosives came from the mixture that ran in his system, ran with his blood. The pills were specially made to negate that ingredient that sent his mind out of whack, it effected him like a narcotic and he was only authorized to use it when he would be suspended for an extended period of time.
He could feel the nightmares coming at him already, the chemical picking out the worst from the day that would leave him huddling in the corner, crying and prying that he'd wake up.
"Find myself awake counting sad days," it was an old song, from a time well before his, a year he couldn't remember. But he found comfort in it, a morbid, depressing sort of comfort. "1, 2, 3, that's too many for me." Every night he resorted to the pill, he sang it in the quiet silence of his room, too keep it from feeling too oppressive, to keep from feeling the world was pressuring and cracking him.
To keep from feeling that his best friend had just shattered all the years between them.
"Dropped another pill just to find me,"
He could remember the fight they had, all the things he had buried deep since the beginning exploding, the words he meant with all his heart, the pain he wanted Ring to go through...
/"You don't even care what you're doing to him!"/
"Reached for my hand, but it was already there."
/"Of course I do! I can't just let Shadow hurt him anymore!"/
"Then I started believing, that I fell out of a tiny raindrop,"
/"You don't care! You don't care at all! You just want Shadow out of the way because he's the only one that's been between you and Quick! You're just as much a fucking selfish bastard as everyone else!"/
"That lost its way when it decided to roam"
He could still remember the feel of Ring's hand on his throat, the pressure of the wall on his back. /"No ones talks to me like that. Not you, not anyone."/
"Chasing me was hungry dweller."
/"Then beat me. Hurting your friends seems like the only thing you know how to do anymore."/
With a deep sigh, Crash dropped the pills in a glass of water and downed it in one gulp. Lying back, he waited for the darkness to claim him. "But I had escaped it by pretending to die."
///
"What the hell happened?!"
"No one knows! He just doubled over in the halls and started vomiting!"
Lights flashed in his eyes. 'From the ceiling,' he assured himself.
"Shit, where's all this blood coming from?"
"Clear the way!"
"Change the fucking gauze, already!"
"We've run out!"
He closed his eyes and winced. His insides burned, it felt like he was being eaten alive from the inside. He couldn't make a sound, he couldn't move, the pain was just too much. Several power grids were gone, chips and circuits were burning out, short circuiting and he could feel the sparks crackling inside his body. He was going mad from the pain.
"Hold him down, Jesus!"
'That's me', a detached part of himself realized. 'I'm the one making that strange noise, I'm the one screaming....'
"Let me go!"
'Elec?'
He wished he could see, just for an odd sense of comfort. He wanted to see Elec struggling against the other bioroids, trying to hold him back. "Goddammit! Lemme go! I need to see him!"
"Stop it, you can't do anything!"
Elec's heart clenched as he saw the stretcher enter the secondary lab, often times used as the emergency room. He strained against the robots that stood against him, crying, yelling, screaming.
"METAL!"
by Lady Virgo
"Nothing remains
Those that
do not have strength
breaks."
///
"Why does he keep /doing/ this to me?"
Crash stayed silent, just watching him pace with a subtly hurt expression.
"Why doesn't he get it? Why does he keep pushing me away like this?"
Five paces, turn, five more, turn. Crash let out a quiet sigh, holding his hands tightly together.
Step, step, step.....
"How could he say those things, Crash?"
Crash bit his lip, lowering his head.
Step, step, turn....
"I don't want him to be like this...."
Step, step, step.....
"He knows that, but...."
Crash hunched up, heart throbbing from pain.
Step, step....
"He hurt me.... deliberately."
Stop.
He took in a shuddering breath, blue eyes glittering with tears.
"He doesn't care...."
No..... thought Crash. He just cares too much. His chin trembled. They all do.
Quick, Ring and now Elec. Never before had Crash had to play therapist to them, and now, suddenly, all three of them came to seek his shoulder. And Crash had absolutely no idea what to do. Tell them it's all right? That it's okay? He didn't know what was happening. All he understood was that his dear friends were hurting those closest to them. And no one knew why.
"Crash...." Elec was sitting on the edge of a chair, hands buried deep in his short cropped hair. "What do I do?" One of the most emotionally stable robots he knew was crying to him, on the point of breaking.
What do /I/ do? He didn't know. The only person he really had any practice in speaking seriously with was Ring, and even then the Russian- made robot left just as upset as he had come in.
I'm useless.... I can't do this, I don't know how.
Quick did. Quick knew all about handling personal problems.
/"I don't know why they're doing this to me."/
Except for his own.
/"Am I the one at fault?"/
No....
/"Did I make a mistake somewhere?"/
No....
/"Did I do something wrong?"/
No, no, no..... It's not your fault. Don't cry, please don't cry. I don't know what to do. Please, Quick, don't cry. How do I help you? What do I do? I don't know how to help. I don't know what to do. Don't cry. Please? Please? ....Help me.
"Crash?"
He jumped at the hand on his shoulder. Elec had moved to sit on the bed next to him. "Crash, are you okay?"
It was then he noticed that he was shaking, hands hiding his face and tears lining his eyes. All traces of lost frustration had vanished from Elec's face. Now Crash was his single concern.
He cursed to himself. Elec had come here for some advice and comfort, not the one to be comforting someone else. Crash hurriedly dried his threatening tears. "Yeah, I'm okay. Just...." he couldn't say anything more, just swallowed hard.
"Nightmares again?"
There was a short pause. Then Crash nodded.
Because it was easier to lie than to be weak.
With a grim looking, Elec patted his shoulder and stood up. "Get checked up, all right? No one wants you to go through that again. Especially you."
The younger bioroid gave him a weak grin. "Right." He waited until Elec left his room and he fell back on his bed, rubbing the tears that refused to cease. "Goddammit...."
///
Wily skimmed through the report in front of him. "So, is the problem being taken of?"
Magnet bowed. "Yes, sir. Both Metal and Elec are effectively subdued."
"Good, good." He muttered under his breath about troublemakers as he continued to flip through the data sheet. "And what about the other problems?"
This time, the bioroid bowed his head to hide a grin. "They're taking care of themselves."
///
Three weeks went by and everyday, it seemed, couldn't pass without Shadow and Ring getting into some sort of fight. On a few occasions it was a shouting match (on Ring's part, but Shadow's held as much, if not more, intensity) and on the rare days they'd get in as many as three fights. It had gotten to the point that the other Robot Masters realized that those two were out for blood and most tried to keep the two away from each other. Especially on the practice field where anything went.
And as time went by, and continued by, things kept changing and kept getting worse and worse. Metal and Elec went through long periods of not talking or seeing each other and every other day either ended or began in an argument that could be heard all the way down in the third wing. And through it all, Crash somehow managed to get by as the councilor, though he never did anything more than just sit there while the other would rant.
He was seeing less and less of Quick as time went by.
He was becoming afraid.
Quick broke down, about a week into the fighting. Crash had seen his brother cry before, he was a compassionate bioroid. But he had never before seen him cry so helplessly, so hopelessly before, and never in a public area. Crash had managed to drag Quick out to eat at the chow hall, chattering ceaselessly to him, trying to keep the topic light and shying away from anything that might upset him.
However, just when Crash had gotten him to the point of smiling again, someone (he couldn't recall who, and if he did, he would've beaten them into greasy mark) came up and told Quick:
"Hey, Speedy, put a leash on your boys. They're annoying the hell outta everyone with their bitchin'."
Immediately Quick's smile vanished and his shoulders slumped, eyes that cracked down to his very essence. Crash could've sworn he saw his heart stop.
"Quick....," he reached over to grab his brother's hand before it slipped out of view. "Hey, c'mon now, Quick...!" Crash pleaded, trying to keep him from slipping back. "Quick, /please/!" He growled, looked around, trying to find the instigator and tear him apart. He felt the hand in his shudder.
Quick's head bowed, his frame shaking and soft choking noises coming out of him. It took Crash a moment to realize that he was crying. Quietly, silently bearing the guilt that wasn't his and sorrow that was of no fault of his own.
"Oh Quick, don't...." Crash said in a hushed voice. He held Quick's shuddering shoulders, trying to comfort him. "Don't cry. Don't, please?" He wrapped one hand around the back of the other's head, leaning their foreheads together, his own eyes lining with tears as he desperately wanted to take away his dear brother's pain. "Quick.... please...."
At that moment, he truly hated Ring. He held no love for Shadow for hurting- intentionally or unintentionally -Quick, Ring knew how the speedster felt, knew how much he cared for the kagemusha. And, though Crash knew how much Ring hated to see Quick hurt, how much he loved him, he still decided to go against the one most important to Quick. Intentionally. Deliberately. Because he believed the end justified the means. Because Ring couldn't bare the pain anymore.
And that selfishness was hurting his brother more than he could stand. Within a month's time, Crash felt too overburdened, being the emotional unload point. He, himself, was a very emotionally weak robot, his own fears and trepidation conquered him in the loneliness of night.
It was a chemical imbalance that couldn't be fixed; or rather, one that Wily hadn't bothered to fix. Once only had that imbalance overcome him. He couldn't sleep, he wouldn't allow himself to be turned off because then the memories barraged him, twisting and mutating into some paranoid life that was all too real. And, the worse it got, the more real it became until it started twisting the world as he lived in into that fearsome, grotesque that he dreamed. Burner still wouldn't go near the drill bomber after that.
It was starting up again, he could feel it. The crawling in his mind, clamoring and scratching across his brain that set his teeth on edge and nerves on fire. The shivers of brutal cold and pain wracking heat, the exhaustion that crept into his body at every waking moment, the jumpiness when there was nothing around him but silence. It was paranoia, it was fear in its highest degree. And it tore at him.
Crash's hands shook as it reached for his pills, the medication that slowed down the chemicals inside of him. His power to create explosives came from the mixture that ran in his system, ran with his blood. The pills were specially made to negate that ingredient that sent his mind out of whack, it effected him like a narcotic and he was only authorized to use it when he would be suspended for an extended period of time.
He could feel the nightmares coming at him already, the chemical picking out the worst from the day that would leave him huddling in the corner, crying and prying that he'd wake up.
"Find myself awake counting sad days," it was an old song, from a time well before his, a year he couldn't remember. But he found comfort in it, a morbid, depressing sort of comfort. "1, 2, 3, that's too many for me." Every night he resorted to the pill, he sang it in the quiet silence of his room, too keep it from feeling too oppressive, to keep from feeling the world was pressuring and cracking him.
To keep from feeling that his best friend had just shattered all the years between them.
"Dropped another pill just to find me,"
He could remember the fight they had, all the things he had buried deep since the beginning exploding, the words he meant with all his heart, the pain he wanted Ring to go through...
/"You don't even care what you're doing to him!"/
"Reached for my hand, but it was already there."
/"Of course I do! I can't just let Shadow hurt him anymore!"/
"Then I started believing, that I fell out of a tiny raindrop,"
/"You don't care! You don't care at all! You just want Shadow out of the way because he's the only one that's been between you and Quick! You're just as much a fucking selfish bastard as everyone else!"/
"That lost its way when it decided to roam"
He could still remember the feel of Ring's hand on his throat, the pressure of the wall on his back. /"No ones talks to me like that. Not you, not anyone."/
"Chasing me was hungry dweller."
/"Then beat me. Hurting your friends seems like the only thing you know how to do anymore."/
With a deep sigh, Crash dropped the pills in a glass of water and downed it in one gulp. Lying back, he waited for the darkness to claim him. "But I had escaped it by pretending to die."
///
"What the hell happened?!"
"No one knows! He just doubled over in the halls and started vomiting!"
Lights flashed in his eyes. 'From the ceiling,' he assured himself.
"Shit, where's all this blood coming from?"
"Clear the way!"
"Change the fucking gauze, already!"
"We've run out!"
He closed his eyes and winced. His insides burned, it felt like he was being eaten alive from the inside. He couldn't make a sound, he couldn't move, the pain was just too much. Several power grids were gone, chips and circuits were burning out, short circuiting and he could feel the sparks crackling inside his body. He was going mad from the pain.
"Hold him down, Jesus!"
'That's me', a detached part of himself realized. 'I'm the one making that strange noise, I'm the one screaming....'
"Let me go!"
'Elec?'
He wished he could see, just for an odd sense of comfort. He wanted to see Elec struggling against the other bioroids, trying to hold him back. "Goddammit! Lemme go! I need to see him!"
"Stop it, you can't do anything!"
Elec's heart clenched as he saw the stretcher enter the secondary lab, often times used as the emergency room. He strained against the robots that stood against him, crying, yelling, screaming.
"METAL!"