Lancer felt his insides gnashing at him, gnashing the same way they did the gears. Oh, God. He couldn't be taking them away. He couldn't take them to prison. He gripped Steed's handlebars, grimacing, wincing, grinding his teeth. He swore… he swore as soon as his father dropped dead on the floor of the throne room, spilling all of his wine with him, he would free all of them just as he freed that wineglass from his father's grasp…
The air tasted choked and heavy, as if all of the exhaust had a fire marshal directing every trace at Lancer's throat. There were families on the side, street cleaners here and there, kids that looked about Lancer's age straddling the line between the sidewalk and the curb, between normality and death. The only difference between them and Lancer is that Lancer had a destination at the end of the flight, selected light at the end of the train- tunnel.
God, God...
What was he doing? He shouldn't be doing this. He shouldn't be careening towards friends, dear friends of his whose hands he would fit with chains, hands that never rose to fists or dove to lengths they never should. He could try another move. He could try finding Sans, wherever he was, and do what princes were known to do best and what stabbed Lancer's core… beg, cry, scream for what he wanted. What he needed. He could find Sans and do everything his wrung- out soul could do to ask for Sans to take him back to wherever he had came from. He hadn't come from here, hadn't he? That was enough. That was all Lancer needed.
It wasn't what anyone else needed.
If he went in hiding, his father would pounce on the entire Dark World, a raptor in flight, and he would create his own demons. They would fly from his fingertips, spawn all across the frigid ground, and consume all that the Dark World had built. All that the Dark world praised his father's for. Every institution, every child smiling with a full row of teeth instead of a partial one, every teenager who snagged herself a job out of a tenement with none to offer, every person inside that tenement who went to bed with food in their bellies and smiles in their hearts. All of that would disappear because of a delinquent who tried to perfect his world. Perfection was overrated then.
Nobody in the Dark World deserved that.
A toddler walked past with a hoodie two sizes too big for her, humming the royal theme, voice piping out at the high notes.
Nobody in the Dark World deserved that.
An axe blade bolted towards the ground on the right, a strange, striking girl stifling the axehandle with her spike-studded hand…
Susie.
Lancer pulled his bike over to the right, eased it, a soldier in orbit. He jumped out, the helmet thudding on the nearby sycamore, his mind straddling the border between death and hell,
legs still trembling…
…
He only needed it one last time.
He only needed to be with those who had held onto him and he had held onto since the first day, before his father put his stomach over a gridiron, one last time.
He only needed to laugh about stupid jokes with them, scream to "Whole Lotta Love" with them, show them tricks with Steed he'd practiced before he learned how to to walk…
...one
...last
...time.
He whipped out his MP3 player, hands darting to the Led Zeppelin folder, not knowing someone was there until a hand landed on his shoulder. For a moment, he thought it was his father, and all of the chemicals, all of the emotions running through Lancer stopped; he stiffened, arched, a cat in flight. Only when a voice with just- beginning candy traces on the edges, edges his father wouldn't ever dream of having, convinced Lancer to return to what he thought was normal.
Susie was standing over him. Her hair loomed in front of her face in a nuisance- web, her axe by her side always, always. "Hey, Lance. Long time no see."
Lancer tried to mirror her smile, his stomach wrinkling it at the edges, drying it out like the raisins Rouxls loved to eat.
Her grimace- smile came out to play, and he followed her to Ralsei and Kris, followed her to tomorrow, oh, God, to tomorrow and forever...
There was no room for words. There was no need for words. With the state of Lancer's throat, there was no want for words. Lancer inhaled, soaked in everything around him, a constant and chilling soaking. He took Ralsei's scarf one time and ran about one of the streetlamps with it, wrestled in a humble sort of dogfight with Kris, and, of course, stayed with Susie. They were beyond the point of drifting in and out; their footsteps synchronized in a perfect, if not harmonic, drumbeat. And yes, Lancer thought it was a little sappy. But a little sap perhaps eased how much it would hurt when they would finally reach the Card Castle.
Only once did he speak, and it was only after Susie spoke first. That was only after Lancer made a humorous little sign of the cross, le signe de la croix. And that was only after Ralsei recited one of his poems, only to accidentally pronounce "crepe" like "crape".
"Hey, Lance." Her smile pulled to tautness. "What's the difference between a priest and a zit?"
Lancer would have shouted at Susie, maybe kicked her a little, only a little, out of spite, and sprinted the other direction if he wasn't so focused on the shadows around him, the spectacle in front of him, the stars looming in the sky.
Since there was nothing, Susie shifted her weight from left to right, cradled her axe as if the trees were giants. "A zit will wait 'till he's twelve before he comes on ya. Ah, but you probably won't get it-"
The laughter poured out of Lancer's throat, laughter that turned into a growling groan. Susie stopped talking, and her axehead was overcome with depression, dropping slowly to the just- rained on ground.
"How… how did y-"
Oh, not now. Not now. Please, not now. His legs started to tremble again, his muscles unable to take it. He pushed his legs together in a tortuous snap, and pain erupted in the exact spot Lancer never wanted to even bring to his thought. He didn't quite slump- he hadn't had enough theatre lessons with Rouxls for that- but he leaned on a nearby tree, eyes crushing shut. Kris and Ralsei responded with a church's chorus of "are you alright"s and "are you hurt"s, but one stood out, the loudest.
"Lance, you alright? Talk to me, talk to me. Where does it hurt? Lance, you've gotta say some-"
She stopped. She stopped. Oh, God in Heaven, she stopped.
She set him down, and then she looked at him. Pried his mouth open to look at his throat. Looking down once at his legs, once only.
She knew. The shame took ahold of his vocal cords, stuffed them down a ditch. The shame he'd had since that night inundated him, soaking into the ground, soaking into Susie. Looking into his eyes. No, impaling them. Fixing them in place There was no escape, not even if Lancer could turn his head and run. Then, those eyes could still follow him, chase him to the ends of the Dark World, chase him to the ends of wherever in the world the Upper World was. Even if he were to become blind, he wouldn't see nothingness. He would still see those eyes wherever he went, their gaze still would follow him.
She only looked down when she noticed the tears, those damn tears, escaping. She hadn't even had time to process them.
Her eyes then pierced the tree in front of her, and Lancer could still do nothing but stare at the ground, feeling the wind wipe his own tears off of his chest and his cheeks, not saying anything in response to Susie's embrace. Yes, Susie was embracing him, but she was somewhere else, in a different world, neither Darker nor Upper. She was nowhere. She was everywhere. Her breaths were leaving her in plaited, inaudible gasps.
"Oh my God, Lance."
That was all that Lancer needed. All that Lancer wanted. All that Susie could say.
"Oh my God, Lance."