what tragedies befall us

after your heart can no longer stomach the torture

AN: wrote this in half an hour after reading some spicy angst, haha im fucking tired and sad alright? sorry for the lack of updates btw. school is being a bitch and like, how tf is it already sunday??

title is from the song 'carl sagan's smoking chair' by levi the poet

tw: yelling, angst, mention of blood

"No!" He screams, voice raw and full of emotion and vulnerable. "No, you don't fucking understand!" He curses the way his voice cracks halfway through, the way a sob rips its way from his throat to thread through his words.

"Then tell me! Tell us!" He shouts back, arms splayed wide, unpurposefully hiding the third cowering behind him. "Why can't you just talk?!"

"Because!" Quackity yells, clutching the fabric of his shirt tight enough to scratch at his skin. At that moment, staring at the two men he'd once known, looking back at him with anger, confusion, hurt, fear, something in him snaps.

They are afraid.

"Because," the ravenette repeats, lowering his head, not even trying to hide the defeat imbedding itself in his words, not even trying to hide the warmth running down his face.

"Because what?!" Sapnap exclaims, ignoring the way tears (of frustration? Pain? Anger, regret?) slip out his eyes. "Because what?!"

Silence.

He lowers his arms, breathing heavily, calming down as the other stays silent, head bowed.

"Because I don't trust you!"

The sudden outburst takes Sapnap back, and that's when he notices the way Quackity's frame is folded in on himself, the way his shoulders shudder with emotion, the way his hands clench onto his chest like it's the only thing keeping him together.

"Because I don't trust you," He repeats, finally lifting his head. Tears pour down his cheeks, and his voice feels too weak, too pain-filled, too exposed. "Because I can't trust you."

"W-what..?" Karl finally speaks up, words wobbling and weak in a way that one could simply flick them and they'd collapse.

Quackity grabs at his head, pulling at his hair and squeezing his eyes shut. His shoulders rise, conveying a defensive pose, and his entire frame is tense, pulled taunt. One wrong move and he'd go flying.

"I. Can't. Fucking. Trust you!" He screams again, exploding with all those hours upon hours of holding back, of stifling his anger and hurt, of ignoring the longing and loneliness tugging at his heart.

"I can't... trust... you..." He hunches over once more, gritting his teeth painfully as a fresh round of tears fall.

"What do you mean..?" Sapnap says quietly, and Quackity doesn't look up, he can't look up, he can already picture the confusion, the hurt.

"Why..?" The ravenette's voice cracks at the end of the word, and it's so full of grief and sorrow and pain that he can't, he can't, he can't do it.

"Please," Quackity whispers, hardly more than a breath, "please just go."

A long silence meets his request, and by the time he can dimly register two pairs of defeated footsteps fading off, he's already lost.

Falling to the ground heavily, ignoring the way the few loose stones dig into his knees, he clutches the collar of his shirt and screams.

He screams and screams and screams until all the hate, all the rage, all the hope and the loss and the regret and the betrayal escapes into the cold night air, screams until he tastes blood at the back of his throat, screams until the sound is just a ringing in his ear, screams until his heart is finally bled dry.

And then he cries.

Ugly, terrible, ruined sounds, mixed with shuddering gasps and sobs and sniffles. He cries and cries, cries until his head pounds from dehydration, cries until his eyes ache, cries until there's nothing left but him and the ground and the night sky, stretching out above him.

Stretching out above and below and ahead and behind and everywhere and it's all so big, all so large, all so encompassing, all so freeing and confining and refreshing and stifling and too much, too much.

Fuck you, he thinks weakly, fuck you.

Fuck the way the moon shines on, so bright and pure and taunting. Fuck the way the stars look down at him, cruelly laughing at his pitiful state with the same cold eyes. Fuck the way the world keeps going, keeps moving, the wind whistling and the sands shifting, as if this was just a normal day.

As if he hadn't just lost everything he had held dear. As if the foolish hopes, the wisps of the past, hadn't just been ripped roughly from his hands. As if he hadn't just been pulled away from any semblance of his past life.

As if he was still fine.

Fuck you, Quackity thinks, but the moon shines on and the stars look on and the wind continues on its merry way.

And he has never, ever, felt more alone than he ever did.