Gamzee Makara was seven years old. His mother was dead, having passed away in childbirth, and his father made a living as a party clown. This meant that Gamzee often got to go to the various parties that his father worked at, meeting plenty of new kids, and playing all sorts of games. However, he rarely did. Because then he'd have to be near the man with the face paint on who took him home each night. He hated going home, being alone with the monster with a smile painted on his face, who made every child happy but his own. To his very own son he gave only misery.

Every night was a blurry nightmare of pain and fear. Every morning was not a hurried cover-up, making sure that his bruises, nor those on the outside could see his frown. Though his entire body ached constantly, he never told anyone of the horrific deeds that made this so. His father had ensured that he was more terrified of the outside world than staying in his torture chamber of a home.

It was probably the abuse that triggered his biggest problem, birthing the enemy that hated him the most: the voices. Voices that came out of nowhere and told him constantly how worthless he was. That he deserved to die, or the scariest, that someone else did. Mostly his father; the voices hated the man in the clown mask. Wanted him dead more than anything else.

Until one night, Gamzee finally said no. The man was sliding his shirt off, when the voices came back, stronger than usual.

"Don't let him have you again. Kill him. He deserves it. Make him pay." They screamed, all of them coming from the same source: the beast that looked a hell of a lot like him, but larger, scarier, meaner.

"I don't wanna." He whimpered, still feeling the nearly indestructible bond of a son and his father.

"Are you telling me no, boy?" His father asked, his belt coming undone with a hiss and a crack as the buckle knocked against itself.

"No, sir. I wasn't talking to you." The boy said quickly, not wanting to feel the leather on his already scarred, small back.

"Then who the fuck were you talking to?" He growled, and Gamzee became terrified. He'd never told his father about the voices. Never wanted him to know that deep inside, he wanted him dead for what he did.

"T-the monster sir. The one that talks in my head." Gamzee said, shaking from the cold of the un-heated room in winter, but more so from fear.

"A monster in your head, huh? I suppose we'll have to get it out of you." The man said, and the small boy cried out as the demented leather met his skin, flaying it and sending streams of blood sliding down.

Usually two or three was enough, but this time, he kept going. Gamzee's knees gave out at six, and so the last two fell on his neck. Then he stood up again, turning and landing a punch on the man's stomach.

"I'm motherfuckin tired of you. I've got my understandin' on, and it tells me that you need to die now!" Gamzee said, his eyes going mad. But he was only seven years old, after all, and just like that, his rebellion was put to an end. The man bashed a lamp over his skull, and everything went black.

When he woke up, he was surrounded by black. He felt around and realized that he was in a dumpster, with his head throbbing and his back burning like it was on fire. He forced the lid off, and crawled out. He saw a road close by, and ran into it, figuring that he'd either be found and saved by some innocent bystander, or run over and killed. Either way, he'd win; he'd get away from his tormenter.

The previous outcome occurred, a young woman stopped and called the police, pulling him into a tight hug. He flinched at the pain on his back, and she looked horrified when her hands came away bloody.

"I'm sorry." He whispered, passing out once more in her arms, his paint-covered face going slack.

He was placed in foster care after he got better. Mostly he simply being there and showing his bare face, naked as he felt without it, arrested his father on his testimony in court. There were three long scars, shallow but prominent on his young pale skin, where three belt strokes had fallen.

Each new family treated him well, but passed him on in the end. The smile he kept painted on his face in grey-violet poorly concealed the fact that the flesh underneath it rarely mimicked the movement. Nine years passed, and Gamzee was in high school. He was making excellent grades, and the only thing he was failing was attendance.

The voices were getting louder, but he never told anyone. He'd simply stay home, saying that he had a fever, or a stomach bug. He would usually be left alone in his room, and he would sit there, sheets over his head, sobbing. He hated the things the voices told him to do. He hated himself, for creating the monster. More than once he had simply looked at the small pocketknife his first foster mother had given him for his birthday, and dragging it across a pale throat, giving he a smile that would finally be able to cheer someone up. But he could never gather up the courage. He had never been able to beat the beast, nor the part of him that knew every word from its mouth was wrong.

But every wave must crest, and that crest came during lunch in the spring of his sophomore year. He was wandering the campus after eating his food, when he found four boys and a girl. She had a hand over her mouth, and just about everywhere else on her curvy frame. Tears fell from her baby blue eyes to soak into her angel blonde hair. His rage built as flashbacks of two too-big hands combing his body zoomed through his head.

"Kill them. They deserve it. Just like that man did. You can do it now. I know you can." The voices said, more unified and booming than ever before.

Gamzee didn't speak. Warning was a luxury undeserved by scum like this. He just cracked his knuckles, and his fist met the head of the first one, the one holding the majority of her waist. The men turned away from the terrified girl to her unlikely savior. Their friend was lying on the concrete, blood pooling from his head. They didn't have time to tend to him, however, or even see if he was alive or dead. Gamzee was soon swinging on them, and not even seeming to notice the blows he received in return. It wasn't long before the lanky teen was standing with six bodies around him, drenched in blood. He looked back at the girl, who hadn't dared go through the fray in front of her, in spite of the fact that it was her only exit.

"honk" Gamzee said softly, looking at her with shining eyes. The eyes of someone who had just enjoyed himself or herself quite thoroughly.

"P-please doesn't hurt me." She stuttered, pushing her back against the wall of the cranny in the school building.

"HONK!" he shouted, moving a little closer. She was sobbing, and he took tiny steps closer. And then he simply stopped, before falling to the ground, body contorting in shocking spasms. She looked up to find a young blonde in aviator shades and a police uniform. His nametag said "Strider" and he pulled out handcuffs, restraining the boy, even as electricity coursed through his body.

While the boys didn't die, Gamzee was deemed to be too psychologically scarred to be in normal society, the reasons he was a danger being obvious. And yet, this was the one time where he was happy to have given in to the voices. He had saved that girl from the same pain he went through, and that was worth it.

At least that's what he told himself in brief moments of clarity. Most of the time, he lay, strapped to the hospital bed, leather digging into his wrists. He would be sedated for feeding and bathing, and left the rest of the time to shout to a heaven that had forgotten him. There was only one thing that made his time in the institution bearable, and that saving grace's name was Karkat Vantas. Karkat was a nurse in the severe unit of the mental hospital, and was known for being quite crabby, often lashing out at people for no apparent reason.

This is why he had been put in the unit where his patients would want to kill him no matter what. The people that were never expected to get better. The ones that were sent to asylum, solely so that the rest of the world wouldn't have to deal with him. But being Karkat, and never accepting failure, or inevitability, he still tried. And the patient he tried the hardest to make well was Gamzee. Every day, before he would be sedated, Karkat would talk to him. Even if Gamzee only yelled or threatened him back, it was what the Asian nurse had always done to everyone else. So he'd keep his relatively small frame straight, and look his grey eyes right into violet, and have a one sided conversation, just like he'd had to endure as a child from his brother, Kankri.

It was two years, however, and Gamzee showed no signs of improvement. At least to science. But Karkat could see subtle differences, and planned to exploit them. He knew that Gamzee had become less violent. He could hear it in the fact that he didn't threaten him, anymore, simply stood staring, and frowning until the drug hit him, and he was out like a light. So the nurse came up with an idea.

"You're crazy. We are not allowing a dangerous young man like this to leave the facility so that he can harm more people." The doctor said, and Karkat frowned.

"You've never even medicated him to see if it would make him normal! But I'm willing to prove that he can be made passive. That I can make him okay again, even without the meds." Karkat claimed, and the doctor was quite interested. They soon struck a deal. If Karkat would lock himself in a room with Gamzee for an hour, without any restraints or medication, and the boy showed no signs of aggression, he would be medicated, and let out of the hell they called a hospital.

And so it came to be, that Gamzee was alone in a room with the tiny nurse. He tackled him as soon as he was un-strapped, but was shocked to find that instead of running away, the nurse simply wrapped him in an uncharacteristic hug, making soft, reassuring sounds as he patted his head softly. The voices, which had been drowning out all else for the past two years, finally just stopped, dying off like an old battery.

"What happened?" Gamzee asked, finally regaining himself. He was able to react the way he wanted again, and it felt great.

"You just got a little out of your head, Gamzee. You'll be fine." Karkat said, still encircling the boy in a hug.

"W-who is you? How long has it been?" He asked, looking at himself and realizing he was even skinnier than before, and taller. Not to mention his hair had grown from well kept and barely touching his ears, to halfway down his back.

"I'm Karkat. I've been taking care of you. As well as can be expected when you tried to kill me every time I let you go." Karkat said, letting him go.

"I'm motherfuckin sorry. It's not me it's-"

"The monster, the beast, the voices. I know. And it's okay, because you'll be coming home with me tonight." Karkat said, grinning triumphantly at the glass wall, where a number of people from the hospital had gathered.

"So, you're my new foster parent?" Gamzee asked. Another home full of falsified love.

"No, you dumb fuck, I'm adopting you. Permanently. Or at least until you turn eighteen in two weeks."

"Really?"

"Why the fuck would I lie, fuckass?" Karkat yelled, and Gamzee smiled, a genuine smile.

"Motherfuckin miracles." Gamzee said, wrapping Karkat in a hug of his own, the smaller man's eastern complexion turning red at the emotional display.

A/N- this isn't the only flashback necessary, but the other can wait, I suppose, lest this be outrageously un-proportional in length to the other chapters. I hope you enjoyed, and will continue to do so!