#printer paper

~

If Red was smart, they'd have pulled the lever already.

Hah. Just another shortcoming added to the pile, then. Red's entire life is a series of if onlys. If Red was braver, they wouldn't have signed that NDA. If Red was stronger, they never would have caved to MIRA. Hell, if Red had been better at their own damn job, this whole alien disaster never would have happened.

But Red is none of those things. Purple had been, once, but Red had fucked that up too.

Setting down the container of badly cooked pizza dough, Red shifts the sacks of salt covering the trash disposal opening, moves aside the repurposed vent grate behind the bags.

Purple's visor stares up at them from the bottom of the chute.

"Morning," Purple's voice drawls out, and a long tendril of flesh whips out from their shoulder as Red tosses the container down; the alien had stopped caring about pretenses after Green's death had secured their imprisonment. They snag the container from the air easily, tossing it in the air. "Are you finally finishing the job, then?"

Red ignores them, readjusts their cap. "Fifteen days until we reach Industria," they say instead, and watch as Purple's body groans and slumps back down to the floor. It's all wrong, the way their body crumples, legs twisted, joints bent the wrong way, but it doesn't seem to bother them.

"I knew you were a coward, but I didn't know you were a dull coward. What happened to all that captainly bravado?" they complain, and settle on the floor in a way strikingly similar to when Purple used to lounge on the bed and watch Red play video games after work. "Too pathetic to finish me off before you get back to your oh-so-beloved MIRA corporation. Either throw yourself down here or dump the sacks. It's not rocket science, Redsy."

"Don't call me that." Red flexes their hands, clammy. Anywhere else but here, they'd wished once, back when they were young and still applying to unpaid internships. But what was the point of wishing that now? There wasn't anywhere else to be. Red could have been anywhere in the world and their feet would have carried them right here, to the place they deserved. "Those aren't your memories. You don't get to call me that."

Purple's shoulders shrug, unbothered. "Nobody else is here to claim them. Finders keepers, Redsy. If you don't like it get down here and I'll personally ensure it stops. Or salt me, just pick one."

"Shut up," Red says. "Just shut up."

A sigh, unusually sibilant. A stretch that turns into a roil, then an undulating wave, muscles bulging and receding uncannily. "Just saying. I'd have thought you'd want to put Purple out of their misery, honestly."

"Don't you dare talk about them," Red snarls. Tears prick at the edges of their visor. A dry swallow. Calm down. It's no biggie. Calm the fuck down.

Below Red, the alien's head tilts, watching silently. They can sense the shift before it occurs: shoulders hunching in, slouching slightly, knees drawn up to their chest, wary and tired and pained.

"Red," Purple says, exhausted, and when that visor looks up again it's them it's them it's them. "When will you finally let go?"

The vent grate slams back into place so hard it dents. The salt bags topple over it with a muted thud.

Red's hands are shaking. Their palms sting. Oh. They cut themselves on the edges of the grate.

A quick self portrait on a crappy printer paper lol ✏

I want to draw this one again... maybe on a better paper next time 💀