"Because my place is compromised by Rend, and Dragon's was too close!" Alex grumbled, rubbing her temples. "That and I couldn't think straight."
"There's like thirty people outside!" She yelled, while Dragon wordlessly stood and fetched a shirt from a cupboard. He raised his eyebrows, but contented himself with a plain white shirt that looked two sizes too big. "And I haven't even cleaned up. One of my panties was hanging off the fan. [/i]My panties![/i]" She grabbed the shirt from Dragon without pausing for a breath, though her voice was muffled slightly when she put it on. "And there's still pizza boxes on the counter! Oh my High, you picked the worst time ever to drop hundreds of people in my house!"
"There's barely a dozen at best, and what would you rather I had done?" Alex said back, her voice rising slowly. "I get ambushed and tortured by my supposedly dead brother, come back to be attacked immediately, barely fend that off to show up for another fight. A fight that, I should add, was way out of my personal league. Then there's this big fuck who could kill us all in his sleep with a super team of Epics just as scary. I brought us to the first viable place I could imagine! Or would you rather I dump us all back there and we can all die?!"
"Don't you have some sort of bunker in the back of your garden like all the rich people do? Where you run and hide when the tornados and the mad epics and whatever else comes roaring through town? You could've dumped them all there!" Spectrum shouted, her skin paling to white. It was probably inappropriate that Dragon had noticed the way Roxana filled out the shirt before he realised the two women were shouting at each other. He stood to try and get between them, but he was pushed back to sit on the bed. "That's what rich people do all the time, isn't it? Hide behind their money and their walls when things get difficult and leave the rest of us?" She pushed Dragon down again before shouting, "And then you just dump everything on me like you'd never gone away and everything's just fine because you think it is. 'Of course Rox will let me use her house to hide from people in. She's always such a nice person.' You could have said something! You could have just told me before you just decide you do what you want."
This time Dragon didn't let her push him back down, taking Roxana's wrist and pulling her into an embrace where he felt her anger break and the light subside to a sullen red. "Shh. That's enough, Spec."
"You know damn well I gave up that life," Alex said coldly. "What my parents have I can't say anymore. All I had was what I made myself, and you. That's what I thought, anyways. Apparently I was wrong. I'm sorry the first place I think of for safety is your place. I won't make that mistake again. I'll go drop everyone off somewhere else. Bunkers are too deep for me. You know this."
She stepped forward towards the door, stopping a few feet from Rox. "I'll portal everyone around a bit till I find somewhere that works."
Dragon reached out with his free hand and stopped her. Spectrum was busy crying into his shirt and trying not to look like it, so he guessed it was up to him. "Alex." He lifted his head free of Spec's hair and repeated himself. "Alex, I think she's just overwhelmed. Don't go anywhere, alright?"
"And I haven't been? If not for Charlotte I'd still be in a heap right now. All I've wanted to do was just..." She threw her hands up, unable to finish the sentence. Her body shook from all the pent up emotions. She lowered her arms slowly. "All I'm seeing right now is that I'm not wanted. That I'm just making things worse. That yet again I can't do a damn thing right. Ben was right..."
"Who's Ben?" Dragon asked, more as an excuse to keep her around while Spectrum pulled herself together. "If you want to talk." He huffed out a breath, and Roxana giggled against his chest, though it got stifled by a sob. "Or you can go and wash your face and I'll get this drippy rag- Ow!"
Spectrum had punched him. "I'm not a rag!" she protested, glaring half-heartedly at him. "You don't get to call me stupid names." She punctuated each word with a soft punch. "Where's Alex?" She asked, her face covered by her hair. "She didn't go, did she?"
Alex had moved to sit against the wall, staring blankly at the two. "My brother. Rend." She answered softly. "He died when Papyrus attacked. I couldn't save him. Turns out he lived and got powers."
She buried her head in her arms, hugging her knees. She shook as she cried silently, everything being too much for her to hold on anymore. "Just let me leave. I don't want... This. Don't want... Can't..." She trailed off into incoherent mumbling.
Dragon closed his eyes to cover for rolling them. He'd expected Spectrum to be in pieces, but two of them at the same time? He was a lot of things, but a psychiatrist was not one of them. "Okay." He stood up, leaving Spectrum to slide off his lap onto the floor. "Spec, Alex, you sort each other out. I'm..." he cast about for a moment, then settled on, "going to check on everyone else."
Roxana watched him go, confused and slightly hurt. He was a rock, a steady place and he'd left and... She looked at Alex. She crawled over to her, took her arms and put them around her shoulders, so Alex was leaning on her. "Don't leave, please," She said, sniffing to stop herself crying. "I don't know what to do and you always do and now I don't know how to fix things and..." Roxana hugged her friend tightly.
"You're the one making it seem like you don't want me here..." Alex said quietly, looking at Rox through her hair. "I'm trying to do right and... Apparently I'm no good at it."
It took Spectrum a few minutes to get her thoughts in order. She wanted Alex to stay but she was still angry at the invasion of her space but she kinda understood and Dragon had left and that hurt a little when she wanted him and she a little bit wanted him but Alex was important and... "How many times have we beaten things together?" She asked.
Alex shrugged.
"But we beat them together, right?" Spectrum asked, holding Alex' hands. "You know what to do and I make it done."
"I don't know what to do anymore, Rox. That's abundantly apparent since you hate me right now."
Alex may have well punched Roxana in the chest. She went limp, all colour drained from her skin. "I..." a lump formed in her throat and she choked on it, tears forming at the corners of her eyes. "No..." This time she dissolved into tears properly, and bolted out of the room, grabbing hold of Dragon in the small kitchen and noisily sobbing into his shirt.
Alex banged her head against the wall, feeling lost. Alex looked at the ceiling, feeling like she was falling into an abyss. All she wanted was to fix things. Make it right again. Not lose get best friend. To do things right .
She felt that inner power bubbling up, the drive to run. For a moment all she could see was everywhere she could go. All the places in the world she could reach flashed before her eyes before it came back to one face.
Roxana.
Everything seemed to shake, and the images all faded away. Was she going blind now, too?
Things started appearing. No, not appearing. She could feel them. Like when she wanted to swap things. But... She couldn't see them. She could feel them.
The bed. Herself. Roxana. Dragon. Even the air.
Her eyes flew open. The answer had been so obvious. She shouldn't be pushing, she should be pulling.
In that moment, all she wanted was to find Roxana, get her help in making this right. Making everything how it was meant to be. Not fractured, but whole.
She jumped to her feet as that desire took hold, and she vanished.
Silently she appeared across from Roxana, utterly confused as to how.
A deep breath and she all but ran forward, seemingly skipping through the space between them like she was a lagging character in a video game.
She paused her hand hovering, before she laid it upon her friend's back.
"I'm sorry. I let everything get in the way and I just...I need your help. To fix this. I can't lose my best friend because I'm being an idiot," she said quietly. "Please, forgive me and let's... Work this out. Together."
Clinging to Dragon like a lost child, Roxana had managed to get some colour back, even if it was painfully dim red. He'd had to abandon the kettle, and she was preventing anyone else getting close enough to turn it on. It didn't seem to bother Dragon much though, as she quietened and rested against him. He was the first to notice Alex appearing, without a portal, then... stuttering towards the couple. "Spec."
"Nuh-uh," she refused to turn around. With another sigh, he tried to lift her, but she hung on like a limpet. "Is not Alex," she mumbled against his chest. "Alex is in my room and she hates me." Her voice broke again, but she buried her face against him and stifled the sob.
Making another futile effort to pull Spectrum off without ruining his shirt, Dragon waved at her and asked, "Could you... get her off? I love you, Spec, but I need to go hang up the shirt before the dye gets on your face."
Alex blinked and the shirt appeared on the counter, still in the form it had been on Dragon, dropping as if it had been released by hand a few inches above the surface. "I don't hate you, Rox. I love you. It just hurt so much when it felt like you weren't there for me. Like I couldn't do anything right because I brought everyone here. I could never hate you..." Alex said softly, gently pulling at Roxana's arm. "I need your help. I can't fix us by myself."
While having her face against Dragon's bare chest wasn't strange to her anymore, the speed at which it happened did. Roxana lifted her head up to look, and then when Alex pulled on her hand, pulled away from both of them. ""B-but you yelled at me. Said you hated me."
"You yelled at me too, Rox," Alex said slowly. "And I said you hated me. It was stupid and emotional, and...I was stupid and emotional. Can you forgive me? Please?"
After a hesitant pause, she let go of Dragon and latched onto Alex with the same strength.
Alex sighed, returning the embrace just as strongly. "Something happened to me though. I...I can't portal anymore. But it's like this lock was lifted and everything's connected," Alex muttered hesitantly into Roxana's hair.
"Hug now." She said.
As Alex held onto her friend tightly, things started disappearing from view. The clothes found themselves in the bedroom one by one. It was the least she could do for her friend.
