You Didn't Listen - Angst

TW FOR BIOOD AND GENERAL DEPRESSION

Out of the corner of his eye, Red spotted something. A figure, wearing a dark grey jacket and a mask that covered their lower face, emerging out of a gap in two of the shelves. Immediately, he took off towards the person.

“Please…” Red panted, trying to catch his breath. “I don’t have much time… it’s going to be here in a few minutes… I need help… I need to get out of here…”

Strangely, the figure didn’t seem bothered. In fact, it was the opposite. Red watched in shock as they removed their mask and flung it onto a shelf nearby. They smiled, nostalgia flickering in their eyes, and Red recognised that smile. Short, curly bleach-white hair… blue-grey eyes… gap between their front teeth… oh my god, it’s…

“Grey?!” Red exclaimed in shock. “But… how?! Didn’t it… I saw it get you! I saw it take you! How are you alive?!”

Grey looked directly at Red. “Sheer. Bloody. Luck.” They chuckled. “Funny. Seems our situations are reversed now.”

“Oh, thank god it’s you. Do you have any way we can get out of here? Have you got the… the key, or something? We’re kinda locked in here, and it’ll be coming soon, and we don’t have much time, and…” Red babbled while he fiddled with his pockets, not noticing the expression on Grey’s face.

Grey stopped him with a finger to his lips. Cut off, Red’s face filled with confusion, and he watched as Grey turned away. It was a few moments before they spoke, and their tone was unlike anything Red had heard out of their mouth before.

“Do you remember,” they started, their back still to Red, “how when we didn’t know this thing existed, and everyone else was still here – Blue, Green, Orange, all our friends – you and Pink were goofing off like usual? Worse than usual?”

Red stared. “I don’t… see how that has to do with anything—”

“And do you remember,” they continued, “how I asked you to stop? Politely, as always? How I asked you, very kindly, to stop, and you ignored me?”

“Well, yeah, but I don’t think I ignored you—” stammered Red.

“Funny, because it sure felt that way. Remember me telling you how I wasn’t fully comfortable with everything you were doing, and I was nervous that something bad was going to come of it? And Pink replied, ‘Well, it’s not affecting you, is it?’, and you followed along, because that’s what you always do?”

“But Pink was right, it didn’t affect you—”

“Yes, it did. It ended up affecting all of us. But you didn’t listen. Maybe you didn’t hear the pure desperation in my voice, or maybe you brushed it off the first fifty times I asked you, but you simply wouldn’t take me seriously. I told you I wasn’t comfortable, I told you it was going to hurt all of us, but you chose not to hear a word I said,” Grey repeated, their voice growing cold.

“I tried to listen to you, I did?” Red objected. “Look, we really need to leave, it’ll be here in a few minutes, it’ll come back and it’ll— it’ll take us, like what it did to those people I saw— it’ll hurt us—”

“AND YOU DON’T THINK I’M ALREADY HURT?!” Grey screamed suddenly, their voice breaking. “You don’t realise the damage that it did to me?! That you did to me?” With an outraged sob, they ripped off their jacket, to reveal a tank top, along with their bare arms. But that wasn’t all. That wasn’t what made Red clap a hand to his mouth in horror, or what caused tears to well at the corners of his eyes.

It was the scars. Hundreds and hundreds of bright red twisting scars, curling from the very tips of their wrist all the way up their forearms and biceps to pool at their shoulders, mottling their arms beyond recognition. And that wasn’t the worst part. Grey pulled up their tank top at the back, to reveal the scars didn’t stop there. The wounds continued up and along their shoulder blades, some reaching out from the waistline of their jeans, with all of them leading to the area in the middle of Grey’s tortured back. What a sight that was.

A huge, gruesome, bIoody wound, stared out at Red from their back. The cut looked deeper than anything Red had seen before, but it also looked purposeful, deliberate somehow, as if the same rusty blade had been forced through their skin into the same place over and over and over and… Red clutched his stomach, forcing himself not to throw up. Oh my god oh my god what have I done?

“I’m… I’m so sorry…” Red whispered, his voice barely audible. “I had no idea what…what it did…”

Grey pulled their tank top back over their head and finally turned to face Red, a sadistic smile on their face. “Trust me, it looks much better than it feels. The same thing happened to Blue, and Orange, and Green…” the smile dropped off their face slightly, tears beginning to run down their cheeks, “Sadly, they didn’t survive their wounds. They’re not as… strong, as I am.”

Hearing this, Red dropped to his knees on the cold floor. His heart felt like it had punched through his chest. All of his friends. Dead. Gone.

Everyone… no… they can’t be… they can’t…

Red tried to speak, but it came out as a heaving sob. Grey smiled and crouched down, lifting Red’s chin with one finger, tears pouring off their chin alongside a look of pure mania on their face. “Isn’t that what you used to call me? Strong? Strong little Grey, who tried so hard and got so far despite everything that happened to them? It’s hilarious, actually, because you were the everything that happened to me. Everything that caused this.”
Red hiccoughed, tears continuing to stream down his face. Grey's gone insane. Blue’s dead. Orange’s dead. Pink's dead. They're all dead. And it's all my fault. What the (frick.) What the actual (frick)—

“Because you should have listened when you had the chance. Every. Single. Time—” they slammed their fist on the ground at each word— “I asked you to stop, I practically begged—” their voice hitched, and suddenly Red was back with all of their friends, half-listening to Grey’s requests and half-not, completely oblivious to the pain he was about to cause, and he felt sick, he felt so very sick—
“and you just brushed me off like I was nothing. Like I didn't matter. You know who doesn't matter now? Our friends. They're gone, Red. And it's all because of you.”

At this, Red had to fight to stop himself heaving up the contents of his stomach onto the concrete floor.

Grey stood back for a second, watching Red sob and wail with… not relish, exactly, but thought. Letting the moment sink in. Letting him feel the grief that they, and all their friends, had to endure for a solid… well, Grey didn’t even know how long it’d been. How many nights they’d cried themself to sleep, coughing and wailing and eventually just staring blankly at the wall, singular tears drifting down their cheeks.

They expected to feel guilt, or some sort of sadness, at least, but no. It was as if the results of Red’s unknowing betrayal had ripped out a part of their insides, leaving them hollow and gaunt. It took a few minutes, but something opened in Grey, and they were reminded of the task at hand. Not theirs, but Red’s. He was being stalked, hunted by the thing that Blue and Orange and Green and almost Grey fell victim to. If they didn’t get out of here in the next five minutes, they’d both be dead. Thank goodness Grey had the key in their pocket—

—and, oh, how Grey struggled, how it was so incredibly tempting to just up and leave, to leave Red crying broken on the floor, driven to madness by his own guilt, and let the monster reduce him to a broken husk. Let him pay. Let him finally reunite with his friends. Wouldn’t it be the sweetest of endings? Wouldn’t it?


But then again… it was Red.

Red, who, in the beginning, cared about Grey when nobody else did.

Red, who introduced them to the group, who founded their friendship with everybody else.

Red, who helped Grey through the dark times, and lifted them up in the bright ones.

Red, who despite not being able to listen, ever, wanted the best for his friends.

Red, stupidly charismatic Red, who everybody loved no matter what. No. Matter. What.

And the others didn’t even blame him! They'd take their final breaths with nothing but forgiveness for him, when he was the cause of all this. All this destruction. All this pain. Yet…

…Grey took a deep, steady breath, and made their decision.

“Get up.”

Red, weeping on the floor, slowly turned his head to look at them. “Wha- what?” he choked out.

“I said, get up.” Grey repeated harshly, glaring at him. “Do you need me to spell it out for you?”

Red slowly made his way onto his feet, wiping his eyes currently as red as his namesake. “I… n-no, Grey.”

“Good.” They turned away, beginning to walk towards the door. “Come on.”

Red hesitated, confusion flitting across his tear-streaked face, and he took a minute to comprehend this. “Wait… you- you mean c-come with you, o-or…”

“What else would I mean, (frick)wit?” Grey snapped, not looking around. Red flinched– Grey didn’t swear. Ever. And especially not at him. Though he probably deserved it.

They took a deep breath, and when they spoke again, their voice was a little softer.
“Look. I may be manic, insane, callous, whatever you want to call it, but I’m not a monster. I’m not cruel, Red. And though you don’t deserve it, and a sizeable part of me wants to see you rot in here for the rest of your predictably short life like the vile thing you are—” Red stiffened— “the other part of me is kind, as kind as you can get when you’ve been chained up for lord knows how long and beaten to a pulp by something that killed all your friends, made you watch, and literally feeds on your pain…” they sighed. “The point is, I’m not going to leave you here.”

Red stared at them, hardly believing his ears. “You… wh- what?”

“You heard me. Now are you going to follow me? Or are you going to continue being pathetic?” Grey spoke sharply, continuing onwards down the hallway.

Red stumbled after them, almost tripping over his own feet. As he followed awkwardly down the long hallway, he felt the need to say something, rather than just silently trail along the corridor. “Than-thank you,” he blurted.

“Don’t thank me. Thank the gods that the thing hasn’t reached us yet.” retorted Grey brusquely, striding down the corridor.

In truth, they did feel a little bad about calling Red pathetic, weak, etcetera… but only a little. They wanted Red to feel bad about himself. He couldn’t just get off scot-free, after all. And when it came to figuring out what to say to hit someone hard? It hurt them to say so, but nobody was better at it than Grey: well, except for one person.
They knew the right way to get under somebody’s skin, how to make them feel lesser— and that talent? That talent they learned from Red himself. From all of his ignorance and snappy retaliations over the years, both directed and not directed at Grey. Speak of the godddamn devil. Grey wondered absentmindedly if Red knew they were turning the tactics he knew so well against him. In fact, Grey hoped so.

They didn’t want to be malicious, but it was hard. Relentless, agonizing torture and the death of all your friends caused by your surviving friend’s idiocy will do that to a person. It wasn’t against their best interest to cause Red just a teensy bit of emotional pain. Just a little. It wasn’t going to splinter his soul beyond comparison, just… crack it a tiny bit more. Considering Grey’s own soul had shattered and fallen into the ether, they thought it was a fair punishment.

But you had to admit, watching Grey stroll along that hallway like they owned the world, with Red trailing along after them like a kicked puppy… it was a very satisfying picture indeed.