[Seeing ghosts, well, that's just normal. Background noise of her insanity. She's stronger than her gifts, and so she ignores them. She walks through cackling spirits so she doesn't draw attention for sidestepping them. She has panic attacks in the bathroom at school. She attends her father's church every Sunday. She cries until she throws up, some nights. She watches horror movies with her friends, no matter the subject matter. She tells no one.]
[She cracks. She tells Gamzee.]
[She learns about the Makaras' cult in the form of a locked basement door and a fuzzy memory of a green hell.]
[She tells no one.]
[The ghosts aren't alone anymore. Demons crawl between floor tiles and under her fingernails, whispering green promises, green threats. The panic attacks get worse. She stops eating. The ghosts start talking to her, softly closing her eyes at night. They stop being distinguishable from living people. She catches herself talking to them.]
[She tells no one.]
[Her father finds out anyways.]
[The therapist doesn't believe her. Ghosts aren't real, Doctor Scratch says, his hand heavy on her shoulder. She hates him. He smells like licorice. The green demons like him, squirming lovingly around his goddamned pristine white shoes. He calls her a schizophrenic. She doesn't tell him about the green hell.]
[Everyone finds out anyways.]
[Three bodies in Gamzee's basement. Kitkat's hairbands in the trophy cabinet. New therapist. Taken off medication. Court case. News coverage. Green hell ebbs and flows. New therapist. Drop out of school in the tenth grade. New therapist. Doctors find trace amounts of green hell in her blood. News coverage. New therapist. Doctors solve green hell. News coverage. Suicide attempt. New therapist. Suicide watch. Still not eating. Medication for depression, anxiety. Improvement.]
[It's more of a blur than the green hell ever was, and Kitkat has to redefine her definition of the word 'hell' just to describe it. She can't go back to school, not after all that bullshit on the news, it hit nation-wide by the end. Looks like the American public loves a good cult story. She's become a complete recluse.]
[So her father uproots them, and they move. England. Kankri is already in college, so he moves in with the boyfriend he thinks she doesn't know about instead. Kitkat wonders if their father threatened the entire Strider clan, or just Dirk. The plane ride makes her want to die, and her father doesn't want to drug her through it. Nobody stares at her in the airport. She wants to kiss the first person who actually mispronounces her last name, it's been so long since it hasn't been a household name.]
[She likes their new apartment, or, well, "flat", if she wants to be accurate. It's smaller than their old one, but her father wastes no time putting up all her favorite glass sea animals and paintings of the ocean. She remembers how much she loves him. He lets her buy pet hermit crabs. She names them Cancer and Luna. She misses Kankri, and is surprised by it. The ghosts are quiet, welcome housemates, no longer the least bit scary after the green demons. She doesn't tell her father. She doesn't want him to worry more than he already does. He checks her wrists everyday, and draws little crabs and dragonflies on them in permanent marker. His own little version of the Butterfly Project. She names them after her hermit crabs, her father, her brother, and sometimes, when she's feeling a little better, after the friends she left behind in America.]
[She's a year older than her classmates on her first day back to school. She doesn't mind, she's tiny and only just now putting back on the weight she lost over the bad days. She looks young enough. The ghosts are just as thick here as they were back in her American school, and even though she doesn't smile or introduce herself to anyone, she feels better now than she has in years.]
[And then she sees the boy with the demon.]
[It's the first demon she's seen since they treated the drugs remaining in her system after Gamzee, and her hand immediately goes to where the little pellet of green hell was imbedded in her hip when she sees it. Clean. She's okay. It doesn't really look the way the green demons did, anyways. It's not some kind of insectoid monster, in fact, it's almost human. There's just something deeply wrong about it, even discounting the horns and vicious, needle teeth. It's a monster.]
[She tells no one.]
[At first, she fears the boy as much as she fears the demon. She doesn't know him, and for all she knows, the demon that clings to his shoulders belongs to him in some manner.]
[She stops believing that on her second week. She only has one class with the boy, whose name, she's learned, is Ryou, and it's currently her worst class, grades-wise. It's hard to focus with that thing in her peripheral vision, even if it hasn't done anything yet. That Thursday, the demon actually does something, leaning over the boy's shoulder to whisper in his ear and digging his claws into his back. And Ryou looks like she looked all last year-- tired, sick, frightened. It's subtle, but she can see it in his eyes.]
[After school, she gathers all of her courage and catches up to him outside of the library. She's terrified to come into contact with the demon, but she needs to reach out to this boy, see if he's like her. He might be just like her.]
18
[Seeing ghosts, well, that's just normal. Background noise of her insanity. She's stronger than her gifts, and so she ignores them. She walks through cackling spirits so she doesn't draw attention for sidestepping them. She has panic attacks in the bathroom at school. She attends her father's church every Sunday. She cries until she throws up, some nights. She watches horror movies with her friends, no matter the subject matter. She tells no one.]
[She cracks. She tells Gamzee.]
[She learns about the Makaras' cult in the form of a locked basement door and a fuzzy memory of a green hell.]
[She tells no one.]
[The ghosts aren't alone anymore. Demons crawl between floor tiles and under her fingernails, whispering green promises, green threats. The panic attacks get worse. She stops eating. The ghosts start talking to her, softly closing her eyes at night. They stop being distinguishable from living people. She catches herself talking to them.]
[She tells no one.]
[Her father finds out anyways.]
[The therapist doesn't believe her. Ghosts aren't real, Doctor Scratch says, his hand heavy on her shoulder. She hates him. He smells like licorice. The green demons like him, squirming lovingly around his goddamned pristine white shoes. He calls her a schizophrenic. She doesn't tell him about the green hell.]
[Everyone finds out anyways.]
[Three bodies in Gamzee's basement. Kitkat's hairbands in the trophy cabinet. New therapist. Taken off medication. Court case. News coverage. Green hell ebbs and flows. New therapist. Drop out of school in the tenth grade. New therapist. Doctors find trace amounts of green hell in her blood. News coverage. New therapist. Doctors solve green hell. News coverage. Suicide attempt. New therapist. Suicide watch. Still not eating. Medication for depression, anxiety. Improvement.]
[It's more of a blur than the green hell ever was, and Kitkat has to redefine her definition of the word 'hell' just to describe it. She can't go back to school, not after all that bullshit on the news, it hit nation-wide by the end. Looks like the American public loves a good cult story. She's become a complete recluse.]
[So her father uproots them, and they move. England. Kankri is already in college, so he moves in with the boyfriend he thinks she doesn't know about instead. Kitkat wonders if their father threatened the entire Strider clan, or just Dirk. The plane ride makes her want to die, and her father doesn't want to drug her through it. Nobody stares at her in the airport. She wants to kiss the first person who actually mispronounces her last name, it's been so long since it hasn't been a household name.]
[She likes their new apartment, or, well, "flat", if she wants to be accurate. It's smaller than their old one, but her father wastes no time putting up all her favorite glass sea animals and paintings of the ocean. She remembers how much she loves him. He lets her buy pet hermit crabs. She names them Cancer and Luna. She misses Kankri, and is surprised by it. The ghosts are quiet, welcome housemates, no longer the least bit scary after the green demons. She doesn't tell her father. She doesn't want him to worry more than he already does. He checks her wrists everyday, and draws little crabs and dragonflies on them in permanent marker. His own little version of the Butterfly Project. She names them after her hermit crabs, her father, her brother, and sometimes, when she's feeling a little better, after the friends she left behind in America.]
[She's a year older than her classmates on her first day back to school. She doesn't mind, she's tiny and only just now putting back on the weight she lost over the bad days. She looks young enough. The ghosts are just as thick here as they were back in her American school, and even though she doesn't smile or introduce herself to anyone, she feels better now than she has in years.]
[And then she sees the boy with the demon.]
[It's the first demon she's seen since they treated the drugs remaining in her system after Gamzee, and her hand immediately goes to where the little pellet of green hell was imbedded in her hip when she sees it. Clean. She's okay. It doesn't really look the way the green demons did, anyways. It's not some kind of insectoid monster, in fact, it's almost human. There's just something deeply wrong about it, even discounting the horns and vicious, needle teeth. It's a monster.]
[She tells no one.]
[At first, she fears the boy as much as she fears the demon. She doesn't know him, and for all she knows, the demon that clings to his shoulders belongs to him in some manner.]
[She stops believing that on her second week. She only has one class with the boy, whose name, she's learned, is Ryou, and it's currently her worst class, grades-wise. It's hard to focus with that thing in her peripheral vision, even if it hasn't done anything yet. That Thursday, the demon actually does something, leaning over the boy's shoulder to whisper in his ear and digging his claws into his back. And Ryou looks like she looked all last year-- tired, sick, frightened. It's subtle, but she can see it in his eyes.]
[After school, she gathers all of her courage and catches up to him outside of the library. She's terrified to come into contact with the demon, but she needs to reach out to this boy, see if he's like her. He might be just like her.]
[She taps him on the shoulder.]