Chapter Text
After a few minutes you unbury yourself from dirk’s shoulder, your blood and tears staining his shirt. You sniffle a few times and then sit up straight. Dirk is the least hurt out of anybody, he only has a cut lip. You could crawl out the car window if you wanted to, because the car is flipped and the windows are broken, but Aradia needs help, and you’re terrified of whatever’s out there. You scooch over to Aradia. She lifts her head to greet you with a whine, and struggles to her knees. Both of her arms are visibly broken.
“Shit. Fuck. Um, oh god. How, uh, fuck, how bad is it?”
Aradia coughs feebly, “Really… really bad.” You begin to panic slightly. This is bad. Everything that’s going on is bad. You’re going to die here. You’re going to die in a car crashed on the side of the highway in the middle of nowhere. Then it dawns on you. Damara is already dead, isn’t she? Why isn’t Aradia more concerned? You look in the direction where you came from, but to your surprise, you hear yelling and fighting… Damara yelling and fighting.
“Dave?” Aradia asks, voice shaking from pain.
“How is she– how is she still alive?”
“Dave!” Aradia shouts, returning your attention to your hurt friend.
“What?” You snap back, still incredibly stressed by the situation.
“Why are you glowing?!”
You look down at your hands and shout. You are glowing. What the fuck! You begin shaking your hands up and down, hoping the glowing will go away. It doesn’t. You turn to look at Dirk, hoping he might know what to do. He’s doing that thing again, where his lips are drawn into a straight line. He either knows what’s happening or is pretending he does. He takes a deep breath and nods.
“Touch her arms.” You both look at Dirk like he’s insane. Aradia’s arms are broken. Why would you touch them? “Just do it, Dave. Trust me.”
Aradia looks down slightly, “I’m strong, I can handle it. My arms, I mean. Also my arms being touched. They’re just compound broken.” Aradia looks up to meet your eyes. “Who knows, maybe it’s some kind of healing ability.”
You reach your hands out and carefully grab Aradia’s, the glowing spreading to her arms. Her eyes widen as you both watch her bones and skin mend. She gasps once the glowing ends. “Your nose,” she says, pointing with her newly healed hand. You reach up and feel your face. Your nose isn’t broken anymore. She was right, it is a healing ability.
“Get…the fuck…out of the car…NOW!” Damara yells from the road. “Bring Dirk, too.” You look over to find Dirk rigid where he is sitting. Only explanation is that Damara stopped time.
Aradia scrambles for the shattered window not thinking about the broken glass shards, while you struggle to pull your big brother out of there. Once all three of you get out of the car and back onto the road, there is a troubling display waiting for you. From the looks of it, you were right. Whatever attacked Damara wasn’t human. It looks like she was attacked by…medusa? Is that medusa? Whatever, she’s frozen right now. It looks like they fought a bit after the Damara was thrown into the car, sending you tumbling. Judging from the blood trail across the highway, Damara dragged herself to the ditch.
“Dave help her!” Aradia yells at you, shaking your shoulders. You want to help, but you don’t know how to start glowing again. You squeeze your fists. Nothing. You clench every muscle in your body. Still nothing. Damara’s breathing is getting raspier by the second. You take a deep breath, and attempt to clear your mind. But your mind never clears. Ever. So you stand there, getting stressed from the fact that it isn’t working. You get more and more stressed until you realize that getting stressed isn’t going to make you glow, and the thought alone makes you more stressed. You’re afraid that Damara’s going to die, and it will be your fault.
Then you feel something, calming in an instant. You’re confused for a second, of why you’re calm, but suddenly you are. It’s as if the sun itself wrapped its arms around you, and assured you it would all be okay.
“Great! Now heal her!” Aradia shrieks at you. And sure enough, you’re glowing. You quickly reach down to Damara and wave a hand over her broken body, the glow spreading across her like wildfire. Her wounds seal before your eyes, her bruises melt away, and her bones mend all in the span of about ten seconds. You and Aradia stand there, waiting for Damara’s reaction to it all. She continues to lie there for about ten more seconds, and Aradia is shaking.
Standing up at an ungodly speed, Damara runs over to the side of the road and slides down to the car. She haphazardly flips it on its side, with unmatched strength, and walks over to the trunk. As a result of the crash, your things are spilling out of the broken car. Damara grabs them and hauls them onto the road. She rummages around the inside of the car a bit and pulls out some other things. She stuffs her pockets full of trinkets and treasures you assume mean quite a bit to her. Once she’s done, she instructs you and Aradia to grab the frozen gorgon.
“Um, okay.” you say, holding the monster’s legs while Aradia holds her arms, “now what?”
“Bring her over to the car. Put her inside.” Damara says, face unreadable. You and Aradia oblige, walking to the ditch and rolling the gorgon down to the car. Damara picks her up and slides her inside. Then she walks to the gas tank and opens it.
“Go. Get away from the car, it’s not good.” She tells you and Aradia, pointing at the other side of the highway. “Oh, and don’t forget Hairgel McPointyglasses.”
You grab Dirk by the shoulders and drag him to the other side of the road, and watch as Damara pulls a lighter out of her pocket and what looks like a blunt out of her bag, then unfreezes time. She lights it, takes a long draw from it, makes a smoke ring or two then blows the rest out her nose, and flicks it into the open gas tank.
You feel the shockwave from the explosion, and Damara stumbles a bit but regains her balance. Dirk looks incredibly confused as to how he got to the other side of the road, and why there’s fire everywhere. Damara quickly grabs your bags and runs to your side of the road, and Aradia just stands and watches the wreck, entranced in the flames. You all can hear the gorgon screaming from inside the car.
Dirk helps Damara with the bags. He asks her, “You do realize intentionally burning someone to death in a car explosion doesn’t constitute ‘self-defense’ and is a crime, right?” though he doesn’t seem to care as much.
Damara smiles, “Not human.” she says. Dirk’s expression shifts from stoic to unsettled in seconds.
“What?” he asks, pausing.
“Not human. Gorgon.” she says, smug, “Like from myths.”
Dirk drops the bags and begins rooting through his, desperately searching for something. “Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck.” he says, finally pulling a pocketknife from his bag. “Goddamnit, Damara now we can’t get to her.”
Dirk runs toward the burning wreck, screams coming from inside. He strafes backwards from the heat and shields his face from the flames. He keeps trying to find a way to the car that doesn’t end in imminent death, but his attempts are futile. He looks like he’s about to give up until the gorgon slowly climbs out of the ditch.
“You…do you think a little fire will kill me?” She says, backing Dirk up. “You foolish- what- did you… plan to meet me? Wearing your…freakish tinted glasses.” She swings at his face and he dodges.
Damara grabs your wrist and holds on tight. “Dave.” she whispers in your ear as she pulls you and Aradia close, “No moving. No fighting her. You are like a little baby…eto…little baby bird. Stay here, don’t fly yet.”
“Damara, what’s going on? Why isn’t it dead?” Aradia whispers.
“Don’t know.”
“Damra, let go. I have to help him!” you whisper yell. Damara lets go of your wrist and grabs your waist and pulls you closer.
“No.”
“Damara he-”
You hear a screech as Dirk stabs the pocket knife into the gorgon’s stomach and twists it. She turns to ash and takes one final swing at Dirk before her hand blows away in front of him, leaving no trace she was ever there. Dirk quickly runs back over to the three of you, making sure you’re all okay.
You need a moment to take it all in.