Chapter Text
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Scratch doesn’t know how this happened, but he’s scared. He feels all-encompassed by an unexplainable thing, crawling out of the ghost world’s portal as the Ghost Council yells of shock behind him.
(He doesn’t want to go away from his family, not now, not ever.)
The thing is more of a feeling, physical and restraining as it is; if he were to describe it, he would spend hours trying to do so. There is something deep and guttural pulling at his very being, the aching feeling of a desperation to find something.
It’s a flurry of everything, ripping him apart and pulling at his soul, and he cannot tell what he’s trying to do anymore; a suffocating feeling of hysteria and desperation pulls at him as he locks eyes with Molly.
Molly.
He towers over her now, back scraping the ceiling as blackened claws and spikes scratch at the wooden walls, and Molly flings herself off of her bed with a stuttering gasp, falling to the floor and pushing herself backwards without taking her gaze away from him.
He reaches a hand with sharp pointed edges out slowly, desperately, calling out to her, but Molly only lets out a yell and runs down from the attic, calling for her mom.
Letting out a broken wail that echoes around the room like static, Scratch moves after her, phasing through the floor as he pulls himself along, bits of darkened ectoplasm dripping off him with the consistency of honey.
There is no one there waiting for him at the bottom of the stairs, and with a garbled noise, he crawls through the wall beside him, the sight of his family huddled together within the living room greeting him.
They shriek and back away from him, grasping onto one another, and Molly is staring at him with wide eyes and grit teeth. He cannot understand their words, but he does understand his name, and Molly speaks it hoarsely.
“Where’s Scratch?” She whines, desperate for something Scratch cannot decipher. “Are- are you- if this is- it’s not a funny prank!”
Molly sounds sad- she sounds scared, and the sight of it makes the feeling worsen, tightening its grip on him. He tilts his head, opens his mouth filled with rows of fangs and neon blue, and tries to reply to his sister as his face is torn up and as ectoplasm drips to the floor.
“Molly,” He cries, glowing eyes wide in distress. “What’s happening?”
His voice comes out painfully loud and unintelligible, only serving to startle his family and knock them against the wall behind them. Even his Mom and Dad are staring in fear, and his brother is beginning to choke up, hiding his face in their coats.
“I don’t like this kind of scary,” Darryl mumbles hoarsely as he turns his eyes away.
“You’re not-” his sister inhales with a shuddering breath, eyes shut as she starts to yell. “What’d you do? Where’s Scratch at?!”
“Molly- Molly don’t yell at it-” Mom cries weakly, holding her closer.
What’s going on? Why is she so afraid?
“I’ll- I can-” Molly gasps, then clenches her fists as she opens her mouth to yell. “SCRATCH! SC-SCRATCH, COME- come over here, please-”
The faint magenta glow that gathers around him pulls him closer by a mere inch, and he drops to the floor slowly, heaving and snarling at his sister that he was right here.
His family gapes as tears begin to flow down his sister’s face, and she stutters forward a step, dropping down with an angry sob.
“This- isn’t- funny-” She sniffles, gasping in between each word. “What’s- What happened- It’s like with- with Harriet, he’s-”
His mom pulls back his sister, if only barely, hugging her tight as they both stare up at him. His soul nearly absorbs light as it hits his frame, a large and empty void of color crackling and shining out a bleary blue.
They don’t get it. They don’t understand.
He’s right here, he’s fine, wonderful even- he’s escaped the Ghost Council, why aren’t they celebrating?
He backs away one step, then two. His sister wavers back as well, then leans a hand forward, shaky and scared- but it’s enough.
Molly is worried for him, clearly- she is shaking and scared, and the fearful gazes of his family burn into him as a reminiscent memory of a swirling mass of nauseating green flashes before his eyes, and he shrieks with fear as he feels the council’s presence that is surely there.
The council will get them, without a doubt; they will surely find his family and tear them away from him just as they promised.
With an echoing wail, Scratch reaches out to his sister, and holding her tight, he runs and runs as far away as he can from where they could get him; the window shatters as he barrels through it, and the shriek of alarm from his sister is a fair price to pay to protect her from such a horrible fate.
I will protect my sister, is the last coherent thought he is able to make as his body flickers and thrashes forward, arms wrapped protectively around Molly as he makes his way into the night, away from anyone who can hurt her.
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Molly is scared. She doesn't know what happened, but she doesn’t think she’s ever been more afraid in her life.
Her best friend is now a mangled mass of shadowy goo and ear-piercing shrieking, and said best friend has her wrapped much too tightly in his thin, clawed limbs, passing branches scratching at her face as he flies past it all.
She calls out again, throat hoarse and voice pitched high, tears falling from her face as she struggles again. With a gasp, she turns her head up, wondering what is happening? And…
Scratch is crying.
Her best friend, grumpy ol’ cynical Scratch, is crying.
Heaving sobs, more like; he’s letting out broken sounds that hurt her head, but thin lines of blue ectoplasm are dripping from his widened, glowing eyes, and if she pays attention, she can feel his hectic gasps.
“Scratch,” She cries out, voice tight as she works her way around the lump in her throat. “What happened?”
“Have to…!” Scratch yells out, reply hidden behind layers of screaming and wailing. “Have to… Need to protect…! Keep… safe…”
She cries with him, quietly this time, turning her head to lean into Scratch as she processes his unclear words. It wasn’t long ago he had been called to the ghost world, and at the moment, it had been funny how he had been cut off so abruptly.
It wasn’t funny looking back, now.
She listens to Scratch’s nonsensical and desperate babbles a bit longer, trying to think of what she could possibly do to save him. She listens, and she cries, and she wonders…
“What happened?” She asks again, whispered and rhetorical. Scratch gives nothing but a wail in response.
As a minute of monotonous echoes and not-quite-silence passes by, Molly’s wandering thoughts screech to a halt as she’s jostled in her friend’s arms, and a second later, she’s flung away from his as a loud BANG sounds out behind her.
Quickly sitting up on her elbows and knees, she turns her face with a cough and a wheeze to look for Scratch, and finds him on the forest floor, ghostly form wriggling around as he claws at the tree he slammed into, and the ground surrounding it, screaming as he flings himself around to scratch at whatever he can.
He halts abruptly in his fit of anger, his head snapping up as his expression contorts into horror. His head twitches as he searches for something- for her, Molly realizes- and when he gazes straight past her, seemingly unable to find her, he lets out a garbled scream.
“NO NO NO NO NO,” He howls, body thrashing about. His head knocks against a tree once, then twice, and it only makes him scream louder. “NO NO NO- NEED TO- NEED TO- NEED TO FIND, HAVE TO- MY SISTER WHERE IS- KEEP SAFE-”
Molly could leave. She could leave and run back to her family, shaken but unharmed, and mourn her best friend, never daring to utter his name.
She runs forward, instead.
“IT’S OKAY, SCRATCH!” She yells, barreling into him and wrapping her arms around him tightly, not willing to let him go. “I’M RIGHT HERE, I'M- I'M SAFE, I PROMISE!”
He thrashes against her hug, her headache worsening as he screeches in protest, and he is slashing the tree in an attempt to pull himself free, but she refuses to move and instead falls to her knees, burying her face in his side.
“I’m okay, Scratchy,” She whispers, tearful and choked. Scratch halts in his movements and his screams, heaving. “I’m safe. I’m protected. I’m okay.”
Scratch makes a sound that’s so utterly confused it breaks her heart; she feels him lower himself down, and a hand places itself on Molly’s head, shaky and uncertain.
“Molly?” Scratch cries, and it’s the clearest thing he’s spoken since this happened.
“Sc- Scratch,” Molly wails, hugging him tighter as she dissolves into ugly sobs.
She blinks her eyes open as she gasps for breath between sobs, and her vision is obscured by an endless black, with flecks of blue spotting across it. She feels Scratch curl around her, arms wrapping protectively around her as he reciprocates the hug, and she falls into his side as she hiccups and gasps for breath.
Vision blurry with tears, she gazes into nothing but the darkness and glowing freckles of her brother’s melting body, and feels as though she is staring at stars.
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