You keep clinging to Karkat. You're a kid hiding from a thunderstorm with his security blanket, only the thunderstorm is a blizzard and you're the one trying to comfort your scrap of cloth and heated skin instead of the other way around. Or, well, you're trying to keep him from dying, rather.

Despite the determined look on his face a little while ago, his breathing is still really light. Raspy as all hell, too, like his lungs took on a day job as a weed whacker. You hum a bit anxiously to yourself as you try to keep rubbing him for extra warmth, even though the heater's got the room up to being at least lukewarm by now. Your thoughts constantly circle around Karkat, jumping between various memories, and how the mother fuck you're gonna apologize to him for all this if he wakes up, and every now and then you briefly dwell on how fucked you are if he doesn't.

You're on this particular thought train when John quietly sneaks back in, carrying a lamp he must've found somewhere. He just barely opens the door and closes it up again as fast as he can. You hardly notice him as your thoughts keep tormenting you.

His friends will never forgive you for this. It's your fault, they all know he was trying to get you sober, and what else could get him to run out into a snowstorm but you being the worst friend in existence? Hell, you're not sure you'll ever forgive yourself, even if he does pull through, which looks a little less likely every second, even though he is definitely fighting. You'll...probably move out of this house. Too many memories. It'll be too painful.

And you want to believe that you'll honor his memory by staying away from the drugs, but...the whole reason you started them in the first place was to deal with your emotions, like how much you sometimes despise the world around you for how it thinks it's okay to leave a ten year old abandoned and thinking that his loneliness is the norm. Shit like that. Lots of little things that you didn't know weren't okay until...well, until Karkat came along and set the record straight for you. He made you belong somewhere, and if you lose him, all that rage is going to swing right back around to you, and you really don't know that you'll be able to resist doing something really mother fucking stupid.

You hate this train of thought, you don't want to keep thinking about this, Karkat's not going to die, he can't die, he just can't...

"Gamzee?"

You jerk, way more startled by John's hesitant voice than you should have been. You blink at him for a second, vaguely remembering that he's still here. "Yeah?" you answer.

"Are you alright? You've been staring at nothing for a few minutes now."

You close your eyes and give an emotionless chuckle. "I don't rightly know the answer to that, brother. Thinking about some pretty dark shit, you know?"

John sits against the wall, slumped by the heater. "No, honestly, I don't. Yeah, the situation looks pretty bleak right now, I'll admit, but that's no reason to think the worst."

"I've been trying not to dwell on it. Thoughts keep coming back of their own motherfucking accord," you say. That's the truth of it, really.

"Probably because you're not giving your brain anything else to think about," John shoots back. You open your eyes up a crack and glance sideways at him. He's looking at you seriously, over the top of his glasses. He's not just worried about Karkat now, apparently, he's worried about you too.

"Not much else to motherfucking think about right now."

John huffs and rolls his eyes. "Well, try this then. Instead of thinking of the worst, try reminding yourself that this is Karkat I-Broke-My-Arm-But-I-Still-Climbed-Higher-Than-You Vantas we're talking about." You crack a smile at that. "When the guy makes up his mind about doing something, there's no stopping him. And somewhere in there, I know he's fighting. He won't d..." He swallows, and looks down, afraid to say the word just as much as you are. "He'll pull through."

An uncomfortable silence looms for what feels like an age. Karkat's lips move slightly, and you think he might need water, but he's just mumbling in his sleep. You hold the glass to his lips anyway. He only takes a small sip before turning his head toward your chest, a small movement that seems to drain way too much energy from him. You narrow your eyes and put the glass back on the table.

John sighs. You figure he's probably grasping for something to think about that isn't...well...the obvious. Practice what you preach, and all that. "I just..." he starts. He's drawing as many blanks as you are, from the looks of it. "He's too stubborn to...to let this beat him, you know?"

You do know, or at least, you understand where John's coming from. You were always the bigger, tougher one out of the two of you, but somehow Karkat was stronger in his own way. No matter how many times Karkat caught a cold or flu that you didn't, or got hurt doing something dumb, or even when he got his heart broken because the girl he liked was seeing someone else and he wound up crying on your shoulder for three hours, he always seemed like a fortress. Invulnerable, invincible, and always too motherfucking stubborn to let the world bring him down.

A short laugh catches you by surprise, especially when it comes from your own mouth. John looks up as you, just as caught off guard as you are.

"Kinda like that time he out-bitched Thompson in the tenth grade?"

John blinks, and then clamps a hand over his mouth his mouth to stifle a burst of laughter. "Pfffft! Oh god, I totally forgot about that."

"Thought I had too, but it just motherfucking popped into my head," you say back with another chuckle. You register in the back of your mind that the room's getting warmer, and that Karkat doesn't seem to be getting any more comfortable, so you stop rocking back and forth and loosen your grip on him a bit, hoping that will help.

"Hahaha, ah man," John says, "I was on the other side of the school and I heard him screaming. What was he screeching about, anyway? I never found out."

Your shoulders shake when you remember the way that teacher's face change from indifference to indignation to sheer horror as Karkat just kept going.

"Art project," you manage to get out between snickers.

"What?" John's face is gonna split in motherfucking half if his grin gets any bigger.

"He spent all the damn night on an art project, and she gave him a B minus, and he insisted he deserved a motherfucking A, only she wasn't hearing it."

John starts shaking with laughter. "An art project? People must've heard him from the city hall, and it was all because he got a B minus on an art project?"

"Yep," you say with as straight a face as you can muster. "The principal had to come down and see what was going on, and he told Thompson to change the grade before Karkat's screaming brought the whole school down."

John bursts out cackling at that. You won't lie, as bad as things are right now, it feels really nice to laugh for a while.

"She wasn't even a motherfucking art teacher, man," you add, "we were in history class." You laugh about that for a few more seconds, and go quiet, John following soon after. A sort of comfortable silence follows after. And then, like a motherfucking train wreck, skips uncomfortable and goes straight into the most dangerous kind of motherfucking silence there is.

Dead silence.

The wind is still blowing, but there's one sound missing here: rasping.

You can't hear Karkat's breathing.