No One Really Understands

Cold.

The wet, crimson eyes in the mirror stared back at me intently, dull and unblinking. They had seen less than 24 hours of sleep in the last 8 days, mostly because of the nightmares. Usually involving falling or Karkat dying or both, they plagued me almost every night that week and usually required Dirk to come into my room and calm me down from the screaming, crying mess I became every time I woke up from one. But even after he left, I'd sit there, trembling and crying softly to myself for hours, terrified to go back to sleep for fear of seeing Karkat plummet to his death again and again. I'd sit there until morning, if I didn't collapse from pure exhaustion into a dreamless stupor (which I ended up doing more often than I'd like to admit), until Dirk came to check on me and found me crunched in a tight, sweaty, wild-eyed ball in the corner of my room.

Dirk didn't even try with school, thank god. I'm pretty sure it was less that I was too emotionally distraught and more that he was afraid of what I'd do if I saw John there. That bastard. More than once, Dirk had to take my phone away because of how furious I would get every time he tried to text or call me. I'm so sure that if he hadn't, I would've ended up throwing my phone through the wall sooner or later. I spent a lot of that time biting my knuckles and grinding my teeth together, trying not to scream. I was just so unbelievably angry with him. I mean, I had hated him before when I found out he was bullying Karkat, but that wasn't even a fraction of how much I despised him now. In fact, I might have even wished him dead once or twice.

I cut, too. It was inevitable, really. I was already kind of unstable before, and this just tore me to shreds. I couldn't stop myself.

The wounds usually coincided with the nightmares, sometimes coming before, sometimes coming after, sometimes both. They were never really that deep, but there ended up being a lot of them over the 8 days, equating to a lot of blood soaked tissues. Mostly, they were on my thighs, but some nights it wasn't enough and I needed what only a wrist could give me.

I knew Dirk saw them. He had to have at some point; I never even tried to hide them. I saw it in the way his eyes would flit down to my forearms as he coaxed me out of my corner. The way his jaw would tighten ever so slightly. But he never said anything about it, which I'm grateful for. He knew better.

Dirk... I'd never even considered how much of a toll this all had to be taking on him. I mean, I was being nearly impossible, and it was clear that he'd cared about Karkat quite a bit. It couldn't have been easy. He tried his best to keep his spirits up for me, but I caught him one night. I'd woken up from another nightmare, the usual terror gripping my chest, but for whatever reason, I couldn't scream or make a sound to alert Dirk, so I had to try and calm myself down. Eventually, I did, and it was then that I noticed the faint acrid smell of smoke. Curious, I padded from my room into the hallway. The smell of smoke was stronger, and both the back door as well as the door to Dirk's room was open. I sniffed again. It was cigarette smoke. As I approached, I saw a figure sitting on the edge of the porch. I watched them exhale a cloud of smoke and sigh deeply. They carded a hand through their hair and brought the cigarette to their lips again.

I watched him take two more drags before I slowly backed away from the door and back into my room, careful not to make any noise.

I'd only ever caught Dirk smoking once before, a handful of years ago, when one of his very close friends died. It was just like this: I found him smoking in the backyard in the middle of the night, the day after the funeral, and I, being the 12 year old piece of shit I was, started berating him for it.

"It's only when I'm stressed, Dave," he had snapped. "Jesus. Calm down." He had sighed and crossed his arms. "It's only when I'm stressed."

The incident stuck in my mind and after that, every time I thought Dirk might be stressed, I'd watch him to see if he'd do it again. Not once in the three years since then have I ever caught him again.