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Baghera is back.
Back, and different. So different. Painfully different, Different in a way they all seem to be, now, and yet not… she’s quiet. Absent. But for the brief flickers of anger, of fear, of something blindingly like mania in the moments where she turns, eyes cast down and sweeping for a child that is not there–– she is dark, and dull.
Quiet. Absent.
Her feathers are clean, preened and soft and the same comforting baby yellow they have always been. Perfect and orderly, beside the patches. The bare skin in neat, surgical little spots along the inside of her elbows, her wrists. Mangled, slightly, by the bandaged patch over her knee.
The longer feathers on her head are still pink. The dye has faded, somewhat, but it’s still there. Almost as vibrant and colorful as the day Mike styled it, all those weeks ago in Ramon’s Barbershop.
God, Ramón. How long has it been since the hatchling was around? Since any of them were left? Since Mike was here, last? Since Baghera was here? Since Bad was, was normal, since Forever was awake? What had happened to all of them?
What was going to become of them, left like this?
(What kind of president was he?)
“Oh, Baghera,” Forever whispered, his voice hoarse. His friend, his sister in all but blood, laid beside him in the makeshift hospital wing. The faint light in her eyes had died when she had come. It had taken several minutes for her feet to move, even gently guided forward by Bad. Had taken even more to coax a response out of her, if only to refuse to leave. Forever–– Forever was ashamed to have been relieved. This place was… whatever had happened to her had rendered this safe space so hostile. “Sis, what are we going to do now…?”
She did not answer. Nestled against his side, her bandaged fingers twisted into the bedsheets over Forever’s legs… her pristine, white hospital gown made her almost seem to melt into the room. A piece of furniture in the hospital. Like she was just carved out of the white walls and left on Forever’s bed.
Forever was the one hooked up to what felt like a thousand machines, all beeping and chirping and growling at him, and yet Baghera looked more like she belonged in the room than even he did.
What happened to you? Where were you? Are you hurt? Were you hurt? What happened to you? Did they hurt you? Where were you? What’s happening to you?
“There’s nothing we can do, now,” Bad murmured.
Forever almost jumped. He looked up, taken aback by the cold stare pinning him down. Bad’s pure white eyes had been… startling from the very beginning. So strange, so alien. But it was Bad. The eyes of one of the kindest, genuine people alive. Now, looking into them…
Forever struggled to find a word for it. It was just–– just wrong. His eyes. His face. His clothes. His posture. His attitude, his voice, his words. Grey, empty, and dead. Unnatural. Wrong.
Everything was just… so, so wrong.
To dredge up any semblance of positivity felt like bile in Forever’s mouth. “There is always something, Badboy,” Forever rasped. Meu Deus, that hurt. He shouldn’t have tried to speak any louder. It wasn’t as if Bad wouldn’t be able to hear him even from across the room. “She is back. I am here. That is better, no? At least?”
No reply. Bad only stared at him. The buzzing white of his eyes vanished among the darkness of his face as he slowly blinked. His face was, otherwise, unchanged. Not even a frown. Granted, it was always a little hard to make out an expression amongst all the liquid darkness of Bad’s face, especially with his hood up, but Forever would have liked to think he was becoming increasingly skilled at gauging the demon despite that. Especially in the painfully bright, white walls of the hospital. But Bad offered him nothing. No smile. No frown. Not even a twitch. Just his blank face, a smooth sheet of void that gazed tiredly down at him.
With all the… grey… of his current state, Bad looked more of a statue than a living, breathing person. Like a fading painting pulled from an old shakespearian tragedy.
Just one more person I have failed, lately.
It almost hurt Forever’s eyes to look at him. It confused his brain, tricked him into blinking, rubbing at his eyes, looking away–– surely, it was his vision, causing the problem. Surely, it was a trick of the light. How could one’s color just–– just disappear?
Richas did. Baghera did. Mike did. Even Quackity did.
Without a trace. Not a tinge of familiar red left. Not even the muddy brown of Bad’s worn belt remained. He was just. Grey. Grey all over.
Forever vaguely remembered him having color, during his… episode. He could remember commenting on it, even–– only to ask him to “smile, come on, you would look so much happier if you smiled!” and laughing, laughing, laughing, not a care in his perfect world––
God. God.
Forever’s hands trembled in his lap. On Baghera’s arm. She shifted in her sleep, mumbling something inaudible.
He almost pulled away, afraid he’d wake her. But he didn’t. Baghera had been quiet, so, so quiet, flinching from every touch, staring at any hand coming near her with unseeing eyes. Yet she had crawled into his bed. Pressed up against his leg, every feather raised and ruffled. Yet she had curled up at his side, close enough for him to feel the frantic hammer of her heart, and reached for his hand as she fell asleep.
She had reached out to him. For him. What kind of friend pulled away?
The words left Forever before he could even think about them. “I wish you would trust me more, Badboy.”
Another blink. A slow tilt of his head. “I do trust you, Forever. What makes you say that?”
Forever shook his head, uncaring of the dizziness it gave him. It was slight. Getting clearer every day, every hour he spent without those fucking pills in his system. “Mmh, you don’t, though. You don’t trust us to listen to you. To know what’s going on with you.” He paused. Looked at the demon, standing across the room. So far away… If not for the fact he was talking to him, actively responding, Forever wouldn’t be sure he was breathing. He carefully freed on of his hands from his lap and held it out. “Come here?”
Bad stared at him. Unfeeling. Unmoved.
Forever willed his hand to stop shaking. Just for one moment. He could tremble all he wanted later. Crumble into dust, if his body wanted to. But it needed to be patient, first. “Please, Badboy.”
Finally, finally, the demon pushed away from the doorway.
He stepped towards Forever. The movement was slow. Uneven. As if Bad was dragging himself through molasses. As he got closer, Forever could make out a slight sway to him, making him pause before he shifted his weight into each foot as if second-guessing whether they would hold him. Now, Forever could tell he was wrong. Bad wasn’t all grey. Not completely. Tiny bits of blue speckled his attire. It shimmered on him like oil. A thin, barely noticeable sheen caught on the rips in his clothes.
Did he always have those…?
Stiff as a corpse, Bad fell into place at Forever’s side, opposite Baghera’s place on the cot.
Forever reached out and took Bad’s hand where it hung at his side. As much an assurance to himself (It was Bad, it was Bad’s hand, just Bad, his friend, his––) as it was for Bad (Not well, definitely not well, you’re not escaping this time). It was cold in his. Limp. Even as Forever struggled to curl his shaking fingers around Bad’s hand, one by agonizing one, Bad did not grip him back. He merely held still. Swayed in place, held lifelessly in Forever’s grasp.
“How…” Forever’s voice broke. He held on with all of his might to Baghera. She barely twitched, now, fallen deeply into sleep. Her exhaustion was concerning. What had made her so tired, gone for so long? What did they do to–– He held on just as tightly to Bad. If he hadn’t been in the state he was now, Forever knew he would likely have crushed it. But Bad would also have held him back. Bad would have had color. Bad wouldn’t have a dead stare and shredded clothes, open wounds, Meu Deus, what is happening to you, what are you doing to yourself, “how can I help you, Badboy?”
For a long time, there was no response. All Forever could hear was beeping. The whirring of the machines, and his own stuttered breathing. Baghera’s tiny, whistling snores.
Bad’s hand was cold in his. It didn’t slip away, even as Forever knew it would take next to nothing for him to do so. He was too weak. Too sick. Too everything and yet not enough at all.
Bad’s hand stayed in his, still and cold as a dead thing.
“Help?” Bad asked. For the first time, the darkness under the hood changed. Twisted up, manipulated into something like a smile. Tired and bitter. A shadow of the one Forever remembered, once, the fond, exasperated, gentle thing his friend so often had for his loved ones, his friends, his family–– “I don’t need any help, Forever, you silly goose. I’m just fine.”
Meu Dues, se vocė está aí, se você é real, por favor–– please, please, help us. Anything. Fui salvo e ainda assim para quê? This is not worth it. Anything else. Anything else.
Bad’s smile faded away. He simply didn’t seem to have the strength to maintain it. He did not even try to pull away. He did not try to speak. Not even as Forever choked out an attempt of his name, of a useless please. Not even as he hung his head and began to cry. Not even as Forever’s forehead gently, accidentally thumped against his chest, almost sending one of the most capable people Forever had ever known to the floor.
No. Bad’s hand stayed in his left, Baghera’s in his right, and for all that Forever tried desperately to hold on neither gripped back.
Anything at all would be better than this.