wipe the blood off your face (it may stain)

Had I Known How To Save A Life

"It's time," Quackity announced through the comms, "start the escape plan."

If he was being honest, he was extremely nervous about this plan. At least Vulpes didn't wound up in Pandora's Box which made this heist easier, but that's only because his powers had been ripped from him which wasn't ideal.

Quackity always had a complicated relationship with Vulpes. Hell, now that he thought about it, he had never had a normal relationship with anyone. Besides Slime, and that guy was barely functional. So that's a little depressing.

It's not that he hadn't ever loved anybody – in fact, he loved two people. Karl and Sapnap.

A Vigilante and a Hero.

Yeah. It's complicated.

It was worth it. Quackity never thought otherwise. But nothing could ever be easy for him, could it?

It was a little ironic, they found each other in their civilian identities at a library, of all things, and hit it off. Naturally, they struggled to balance their relationships as their civilian identity along with their alias, which had an affect on them.

Well, Sapnap didn't struggle with hiding his identity. It wasn't like he had to keep his identity a secret, and it was already public. But Quackity never really researched all of the Heroes' faces, that just sounded exhausting. And the only information Sapnap gave about his job was that he 'worked at the Hero Tower'. Both Karl and Quackity assumed that meant a staff member or something, not a fucking Hero.

Eventually, they couldn't keep up all the secrets and came clean to each other. It got hard to accept each other since they're on such different playing fields. But they managed.

And Quackity needed to heal after Schlatt.

It was a messy relationship. One that Quackity pretended to ignore, to act as if it never happened, because it hurt.

Schlatt was a horrible drunk and an abusive piece of shit. But the love sometimes felt just as abusive. Love was the reason Quackity stuck around, despite the pain and suffering that happened only minutes before.

Because of love, he began to make excuses. It was an accident. He was mad. He was drunk. It's my fault. I deserved it.

Love was simultaneously the most gorgeous and horrifying thing out there. It could trap you or it could help you bloom. And in that case, it trapped him like he was a fly in a spider web.

But Schlatt was an idiot. And he inevitably got caught by the Heroes. Quackity was upset, of course. He cried for days over the loss. But a sense of freedom washed over him as well. He was free from the torment of love and abuse.

And then there was Tommy.

At one point, Tommy was his best friend. He was the one who saved him when he wanted to give up on the streets. He looked out for Tommy and Tommy looked out for him. But Quackity managed to throw that away.

He didn't regret prioritizing his work to get where he needed to be, he told the blonde as much. But he never once intended them to grow apart.

Quackity remembered when they thought they would be always and forever. They swore they would be best friends forever, a childish thing, yes, but they believed in it whole-heartedly. And it only lasted for a few years.

He just got busy. He got really busy, he wanted to become a Villain, he wanted to make Las Nevadas, and most of all, prove the damn world that he was worth more than what everyone thought. He needed to prove the universe wrong.

He achieved a lot of what he needed to, but he lost Tommy in the process. He knew they were drifting apart, he wasn't stupid. But he thought it was something he could mend, he just needed... time. He didn't have that time yet, but he would get it and then he would fix everything.