Chapter Text
Hurts.
It hurts.
It doesn't hurt in the sense like he fell out of tree and broke his arm, or in the way as Green knocked out his tooth with a door and thread, it doesn't hurt in the sense like he burned his finger.
This is different.
It hurts,
it hurts everywhere.
Everything around him is burning. Each part burns — old curtains, carpets, books, tables, the fire easily spreads throughout the house.
His muscles ache, his brain slowly stops working, and he can barely see more than an inch in front of his eyes.
He coughs.
Then he hears a scream. Somewhere behind him, on the periphery, for a second it seems to him that he is hallucinating.
He takes a step forward, and the scream is heard again. This time it's louder, more desperate.
Blue, without thinking, rushes towards it.
Hearing another scream, Blue realizes who it is. He knows exactly who it is.
It's the little one with the surprisingly large fangs. The one who chats with him every time about how his day went and which of the strange characters with photoshopped faces (yes, Red talks about them all the time too) is the strongest.
Blue isn't thinking at this point — he barely notices that the firefighters haven't yet reached their floor, he barely noticed that the pain was becoming more and more noticeable with each passing second as he ran into the thick of things, not distinguishing between fire and the absence of it.
He feels his hair catch fire.
He feels the smoke easily enter his lungs.
He coughs and coughs and coughs, spitting out not only the smoke but all the remaining air. His ribs and lungs hurts. His eyes are burning with a sharp pain that is still more ignored than taken into account. Tears accumulate in the corners.
His legs are burning, his whole body, to be honest. He runs through the burning floorboards, following the sound of a crying child, and stumbles.
Blue has scraped up his knees and feels no better than a chicken in the oven; he knows he's running on nothing but adrenaline and some kind of heroic feeling.
There was no point, the firefighters were right here. A couple more seconds and they would have been there.
Blue gets up from the floor and runs anyway. He finds the boy in the only corner untouched by the fire and easily scoops him up. He holds it in his arms, barely bending under the extra weight; his hands are covered in soot, grime, and he barely registers what is happening.
And something's happening.
Blue can't remember what—he remembers the haze before his eyes and the pain. Aching, crushing, enough to kill all the adrenaline in his body.
Blue remembers his legs being pinned under some kind of board. He remembers his bleeding knees rubbing against the wood over and over again, and he remembers being unable to hold back his screams.
His body weakens under the onslaught of fire and smoke, tears streaming down his face, turning into a disgusting mess on the floor, and it does nothing to help his situation.
Blue feels like he's going to die. He has no choice.
No one will save him. He doesn't have the strength to scream.
He won't survive.
He just won't make it.
He is not going to make it.
Saliva is dripping from his mouth, mixing with dirt and tears, his hair is burning, he's all on fire, and it's so fucking painful.
Blue just can't do this.
Blue won't survive.
He really, really wants to survive. Just one breath of fresh air, just a little strength for one more scream, please, please—
Blue doesn't want to die.
He was supposed to live to old age, become some kind of farmer or doctor (he could never and will never be able to decide what he wants to become). The only way he doesn't make it is if he gets into a car accident in Red's car once he buys it and gets his license, because, well, don't be ridiculous, Red will never learn to drive.
Blue can't just die here—
His fingertips, despite the fire covering them, burning tissue maddeningly fast, go numb. He sees a piece of wood in front of him, sparks blurring before his eyes.
Purple told him by reading his palms that he would live longer than almost anyone else in this room. And Purple is the best fortune teller anyone could ask for—
Blue just can't die.
He can't die here, in some volunteer center, playing the hero for the last seconds of his life.
The child, following his, Blue's, instructions, gets to the room where he is met by a firefighter.
Blue is going to die.
Blue doesn't want to die.
He wants to be in Mom's arms, he wants to listen to Green's new masterpiece on the piano, he wants to chat with Yellow and he wants to say 'Thank You' to Orange one more time and finally do something he hasn't been able to do for months and he wants to catch frogs in the pond with Red again and prepare the promised charlotte to Purple and—
His vision darkens faster than he can even think about what else he wants to do. He makes a quiet, pitiful sound into the void, bordering on a sob and a scream, and loses consciousness.
Instead of darkness, he sees his fourth birthday with Green, when they both fell ill with a childhood illness and celebrated it in the hospital. Green was then grumbling under his breath with discontent, being feverish, and Blue was falling asleep every three minutes, as he couldn’t close his eyes due to coughing the previous night.
He sees the bedtime stories their mother used to read them. One of them was about a mother rabbit and her little baby; it was one of his favorites. She always followed her child, explaining it so simply that it reminded Blue of her mother and Green; the similarities were amazing.
He sees Green's first concert, where he's still much smaller and less talented, but still just as confident. He remembered how he threw a bouquet in his face afterwards, and Green burst into tears before going to bed, saying that he had mixed up the notes and was so worried! Blue then said that Green is his favorite pianist. His older twin laughed, muttering he was the only one he knew, but nodded in belief.
She sees Red hit her in the face during their first meeting, which caused a fight. In fact, Green was the one who started it, but they were never more than a meter away from each other, so she also took part. Then they sat in the principal's office, sulking; Red had a black eye, Blue had a broken nose, Green escaped with only a bruise on his shin and, surprisingly, was able to avoid punishment, blaming it all on Blue.
She wasn't too sad, though—she and Red found common ground a second later, laughing at the director's expression and shamelessly avoiding their mothers' eyes.
He sees Yellow, with whom they became friends in the yard two months later. She was sitting under a tree, on a bench, reading a book, while Blue was perched on a tree with Red. They somehow dropped an apple on her head and then joked that she was Newton.
She punched their faces. Then they became best friends.
He sees Red and Green throwing flour at each other every second in Red's house, simply because they could. Red later whined for a long time about having to clean everything up, even after the twins stayed for sleepover and helped clean up.
He sees Orange, who fell asleep on his shoulder on the school bus. Blue rode three more stops, not daring to move. Orange was the new kid at school with a strange accent, communicated in sign language, and few people tried to get to know him.
The driver approached them at the last stop and was surprised to see a +1.
She sees Orange's smile. She sees Yellow's peaceful face, Green's relaxed grin, Red's joy, and the pride that appears on her mother's face for the first time.
At the moment when she feels something painfully bitter in the area of her head, it seems to her that dying is not so scary.
Consciousness returns gradually. First, his hearing activates, and he hears a beeping sound right next to his ear. Then, he feels the familiar smell of medication in huge quantities. After, with great effort, he opens his eyes, squinting from the bright light. They are strangely dry. He blinks several times, trying to get rid of the dryness; it only gets worse.
Everything is blurry. It looks more like Heaven, judging by the number of white flowers, but Blue doubts something green would have greeted him in Heaven.
"Blue?" It sounds like someone is saying his name underwater. He barely hears it, and, trying to turn his head toward the sound, he lets out a loud, indignant breath.
Oh, so this is her Green.
Green, without thinking twice, approaches her. He's wearing some kind of disposable clothes, it seems like medical gown or something, and gloves—without hesitate, he grabs Blue's hand. She feels the strange surface, like sandpaper, but says nothing.
She tries to cope with a slight dizziness.
"Oh," He exhales quietly. Blue can't see him, but she can feel him pressing his forehead into her palm. It takes a lot more effort for her to move her fingers and touch his cold forehead. "Oh, dammit, Blue, I thought..."
Green whispers quietly, his voice so unusual, so unsuitable for him, that Blue starts to worry. She tries to open her mouth, already about to say something, but only a wheeze comes out.
He tenses slightly, and instead of a conversational sound, a hoarse squeal comes out again. His larynx hurts like crazy.
Even her normal breathing is labored and wheezing. If she looks closely, she feels something pressing into her skin, in the area of her mouth and nose. Mask?
Wait, where are they?
It was as if he was shackled in invisible handcuffs with special properties. He feels like the air stops entering his body for a second when he holds his breath.
It hurts.
It hurts him to hold his breath and breathe.
He has forgotten how to breathe and cannot remember how to do it properly.
This scares him.
He can't remember how he got here. He can't remember most of the things — he barely understands what Green is talking about, or who Miss Amber is that his twin is talking about.
Blue tries to take a deep breath, but it doesn't work, it stops halfway, breaks off, and tears come to his eyes.
He barely feels anyone holding his hand tighter; his eyes open, blurry and frightened, and look at Green.
"It's okay," Green mutters quietly.
Blue blinks. It's stupid and not like her Green at all.
"Close your eyes," Green quietly directs her, and for some reason, even knowing it's an impostor, Blue obeys. "Calm down, it's okay. One, two, three, four," Something clicks in her head; Blue inhales. "One, two, three, four, five," Hold. "One, two, three, four." Exhalation. "It's okay. Do it again."
It's okay. Yea. Mostly. It's okay.
Blue counts in his head for a while before Green speaks from somewhere below.
"Okay, this is not okay, none of this is okay, but–" He bites his lip, resting his forehead on the back of his hand again.
Blue sighs softly and, with another effort due to the weight of her limbs, moves her hand from under Green, rising up to the top of his head. Her brother does not resist, on the contrary, he watches her actions with apprehension.
She runs her hand through his hair. It's absentminded and probably a bit painful — she barely feels what she's doing. The tips of the fingers, like the whole hand in general, went numb.
Green is silent. His eyes are blank; Blue somehow knows he really wants to cry, but for some reason he can't. She touches his cheek, stroking it with her thumb.
It takes him a little while, but he too exhales and relaxes.
"Yea. It will be," Blue tries to smile, but it comes out weak and, judging by Green's face, not very pretty. "You are ugly." She rolls her eyes.
It still hurts. Not the memories, but his body, even though there are more drugs in his system than there is normally circulating blood.
It's cold here.
He has a small room. He doesn't know where his mother found it, but there are wonderful nurses there. Sometimes he feels like he is in a mental hospital because of the white walls.
The railings and sheets are cold here. The room is constantly ventilated, even though it's November. The window is wide open, and the feeling isn't from the pleasant ones, but it's not like she chose it.
Her bandages are changed daily. She doesn't remember much and doesn't think about much — the calm and tranquility of drugs doesn't inspire her to guess, but rather makes her sleepy.
Blue, waking up, now knows her name and why she's here. It's not a good feeling, to be honest—she's asked the same question every time, and she knows it's just a precaution and all that, but this is starting to get annoying.
Sometimes Green comes with Mom. Sometimes they come separately. Sometimes neither comes at all.
She hasn't been doing so well alone lately.
She hasn't been doing well in every aspect lately.
She's scared, and she's in pain from time to time, and she still has trouble breathing — every now and then she gets a twinge of anxiety that squeezes her chest, and then she can barely breathe because of the pain and, as she's been told, because of some kind of respiratory problems.
She is absolutely not okay here, half-lying, half-sitting on the bed, staring blankly at the ceiling.
Blue knows she's not okay.
The only thing that's okay with her is her right arm. It's not covered in bandages below the shoulder, and it's probably a miracle—she doesn't remember how this could have happened.
Most of her body is covered with third-degree burns. Her right arm and, apparently, her face have second- or first-degree burns. Most of her body barely feels pain. The sensations are phantom, old, now never to return due to the loss of nerve endings.
The only thing she knows is that her arm is functional. Although she hardly uses it; now she doesn't care anymore.
It's just an arm. One arm. It's all she's not afraid to move. It hurts; unbearably and constantly, until she's given morphine.
And the rest of her body...
He knows he looks terribly bad.
No one talks about it.
At least not in his presence. Real or phantom — they will calmly talk about it if his eyes are closed.
Nobody talks about it, even if he knows it anyway; he feels that same Green's gaze on him, like he's looking at a beaten puppy. Green smiles at him every time he comes, but every day he becomes dimmer and dimmer.
Mom doesn't even try to pretend she's in pain. She comes in, smiles for about two minutes, and then cries, squeezing his right hand.
Blue knows the rest of him looks terrible. He knows his ankles are broken or something; he knows his whole body is covered in burns. He's not sure about his face, though. He knows he has burns, but they don't deserve bandages; he doesn't know what's going on there — he has difficulty moving his facial muscles and sometimes has problems with his eye.
Something is wrong, and Blue knows it, but he's still afraid to check. He refuses and does not want to look in the mirror until it becomes necessary.
He has no idea what is wrong with his face or what these burns look like.
Well, he has ideas, but each one is worse than the other.
The last days are bad days.
Something's happening. Something's happening outside; here, in what appears to be a center or hospital, a person familiar with magic has been found, now taking part in all sorts of things.
Some kind of magic is added to her morphine, and she feels even more elusive than before. Now she barely even exists in her own life.
She's had surgery — something magically stitched into place, and it's pulsing under her skin, spreading warmth down her shin, but she's not sure what exactly is going on there.
One of the doctors, seeing that she was a little out of it, asked her if she knew what her scars looked like and what she knew about them.
And, oh, Blue knows about the burns.
She knows there have been and will be surgeries. She knows the healing is going well, she knows it's a bit surprising, especially considering the inexperience of most of the staff. She knows that scars are unavoidable and she knows that her body is maddeningly varied in color and dryness.
She doesn't know if she can move her legs. Still doesn't know if she can move the fingers on her left hand and isn't sure if she wants to try any of it, even if she's forced to.
Blue is not really sure what's wrong with her left arm. It's completely covered in blisters, it's dry, like it's charred, and maybe it is. She can't move her fingers now, but everyone thinks she can.
Her pore doesn't hurt; it's just dry, irritating, and the blisters and other colored tissues are freezing.
It's all strange and incomprehensible. It frightens her, and lately, Mom and Green have been coming less often, only for a couple of minutes before leaving. She doesn't know what it's connected with.
The haze continues. The morphine is dwindling, the magic is growing. Blue can feel it coursing through her veins, and it doesn't seem to be addictive. For now.
The feeling is still weird.
She's still unsure how many days or weeks have passed. She barely listens to the doctors or keeps track of the calendar lying nearby on the table. She hardly notices the time when her family arrives.
She's not sure how many surgeries she's had and she feels like that's not how many surgeries she should have had for someone who only had third degree burns.
Blue is less concerned about having skin grafts. This... can be tolerated. She suggests. She's still scared, but with every hour or minute in this room, everything becomes less significant.
(Blue is more concerned about where her mother gets all that money. On bad days, they could barely afford the utilities. But now she has a whole room in some center, operations, morphine and sterile conditions. She doesn't know where all this came from or why these doctors so kind to her. Especially someone who has magic.
She just hopes they didn't sell the house or anything.)
Blue still knows he looks terrible. He can see it in his still-covered whole body. He can see it all closer when it's time to clean it all up.
Nobody talks about it yet.
Because there's no one really to talk to. It's too painful for Mom to say anything beyond "I love you" and "I'm so sorry," and Green...
Green is afraid to look at her twice. She knows it. He feels awkward and looks away again and again, because it hurts to look at her. Blue can't blame him.
Blue knows it's physically difficult for Green to stay in this room. She feels how much fatigue is affecting him; she can see it in his sunken cheeks and shaking hands. Blue wants to tell him that everything is okay. Just like he did that day. Tell him that he’s a good guy, no matter what, and he doesn’t have to come if it’s hard for him, and it’s hard for him. She knows it already, but
she's not much of a talker for now.
Her neck hurts. It's burned too, she knows, and it's excruciating—she can barely even raise her head from the pillow. She can't speak because she seems to have lost her voice while calling for help.
He really, really wants to talk.
He just wants to tell his mom not to worry so much, that he'll pull through, to tell Green not to push himself, to tell them he loves them and he'll be fine. She really wants to ask where it all came from, and she's concerned about whether those children survived,
Blue has so many words on the tip of her tongue, but she can't say any of them. It hits her so much harder than if there were no words at all.
Blue doesn't know how many days pass.
Every day is the same.
She's less on morphine and she's getting ready for another surgery, something impossible is being asked of her, and she just doesn't understand what she's doing.
Blue feels terrible in many ways. She hardly feels alive, but she can’t call herself dead either.
She just exists, watching everyone from behind a foggy, smoky curtain.
She no longer panics about her appearance — she doesn't care about her appearance.
This somehow faded into the background when she accidentally glanced at Green's phone and saw herself. She looks ugly. Not that that's a top priority right now.
Blue doesn't want to just watch.
She's here, right here, but she can't do anything as she watches Green fade so easily before her eyes. She knows Green is trying to hide it, she admits he would have succeeded if she hadn't known him better.
Blue has so many words, but she is still silent. She still can't.
The only thing she can do is hold his hand and smile with great force.
And it doesn't help, not even for a second; Green just gets tired of pretending and comes here for less and less time each time.
Green looks worse every day. He barely holds his phone when he enters the room, barely paying attention to anything, leaning against a chair or her sheets. He does not respond to light tapping on his palm or cheeks; he, according to both sensations and knowledge, does not want to be here at all.
Green doesn't talk much.
This is somewhat surprising, given how loud and boisterous he can be at normal times; it's not surprising when she recalls that she usually provokes him into recording rap as they climb the stairs to the apartment.
There's something wrong with Green—and Blue knows it's not just her whole situation. Blue sure there's more to it, but she can't figure it out.
Something is happening there, far from her and her sight, but no one wants to tell her, and she can’t ask. She doesn't know anything, and with each passing day, despair and anger at everything increasingly grips her chest.
She is still silent.
Green is excellent at hiding his emotions and often isolates himself easily when he feels out of place; but this looks much messier than usual, and something has happened and Blue doesn't know and can't even ask!
(Well, okay, he went a bit too far here — Green would never have told him her whole truth after interrogation. There needs to be a longer approach there, and again, this whole Blue situation isn't helping much.)
Every day Blue feels like he's drowning.
In these sheets, in these endless bandages, in an incomprehensible feeling of weightlessness and at the same time of a body that is too heavy. He feels like phantom pains are trying to haunt him, but they can't, and that makes it even worse.
He gets lost in everything. He gets confused by the words that are said to him and doesn't try to understand them.
He seems to be getting better. The tissue is healing, something related to his legs and left arm. The good news is that he can move two fingers! Very useful, considering that the skin is completely white in places, covered with blisters and swelling, and dark red in other places.
Blue feels like she's going crazy.
No more visitors come here, and Blue deeply regrets that on the first day, going through a stage of denial and complete despair, he refused his friends' invitation.
Oh, Blue misses them very much.
It's not that they haven't seen each other for a long time. He was just, like, on the verge of death, and he was sure it was about to happen, but it didn't happen, and he really wants—
He really wants to see them. He wouldn't even want to talk — okay, that's a lie, he would really like to talk, but he just can't — he would agree to endure his silence. Blue would like to see Red again and count every freckle on his cheeks to make sure, he would like to sit with Yellow again, listening to her tediousness, unfortunately, not daring interrupt, he would really like to see Orange and look through his new sketchbook, which he's probably already half-filled, and he wouldn't even be particularly against Purple's company.
(Purple is a different case. He doesn't trust him, but believes every word; he knows every mole that runs across his arms, but he's still not sure what exactly prompted him to betray them that time. But Green knows. And Green forgives.
Blue trusts his whole life to Green twice and back without thinking, but here he doesn't believe a single word or feeling from him.)
Blue would like to feel Red's energy, she would like to hear Yellow's voice, she would just like to look at Orange one more time and she would luke to sit listening to Purple humming a song, and Green joining in after a while.
Oh, how Blue misses them.
She doesn't notice how she starts crying again. Tears stream down her face, touching the dry spots, and she winces, sniffling.
She misses them so much it hurts. Her chest tightens again, and there's a lump in her throat that she can't swallow, but she can't scream either.
Hot tears fall lower, and she, overcoming the pain that has recently begun to appear due to the morphine wearing off, wipes them from her cheeks.
It hurts.
It hurts everywhere: from the phantoms at her fingertips to the burning blisters on her face.
It hurts even inside when she imagines that Yellow could be chatting with her casually, and Red could be whining about homework, and Orange could be doing some origami—
Why can't she just say something? Why doesn't anyone want her to even try to text? Why are Mama and Green always silent, like someone's dead?
...
What if someone actually died?
Well, if you think about it, it's definitely not Orange, he has immunity like a bull, it's definitely not Red, since Green is looking after him, it's not Yellow—
That's not how deaths work.
Now Blue has to wipe away her tears as loneliness overwhelms her completely after imagining the death of one of her friends.
She misses them too much.