How could you let this happen?
Party Poison woke up with echoes of her voice trailing after his mind. He shook his head a little, trying to forget it, but it remained. She always did.
Forget it.
There was this tune that just never went out. And he never knew who wrote it. He could hardly remember it from Before. It just came and went, some days. Every time he heard it his heart broke a little more: it reminded him of something he had long forgotten.
And he tried to hold back to that feeling as hard as he could: he wanted to remember.
But it was too late.
It seemed as though it had been forever, now.
But there was that vague feeling that he must have been from Somewhere, Before.
Before wasn't just a time. It was a place, that place Ghoul had told him about.
He must have wanted to forget it for a good reason, at first.
But he doubted it now.
And Kobra Kid, with his eyes.
Kobra remembered.
His eyes, as empty as his heart. Poison had forgotten how to unlock him.
His eyes, wounding him more deeply than any words could have.
And his eyes, his eyes, his eyes.
Two wrongs had never made a right, just like a split in the middle had never made two wholes.
They were all just children playing around with matches.
Everyone was sick now.
Poison was breathless.

Kobra Kid had been gone for a couple of days now, and nobody could find him.
Poison should have been worried of course, but strangely he didn't mind that much.
Because of his eyes.
It was his eyes that hurt him the most.
But, because he didn't care, people thought him heartless.
And then maybe he was.
It was Cherri Cola who eventually found him, lost deeply in the heart of the Wasteland.
Kobra had found Destroya and had never came back.
He had tripped over its moon face and broke his leg. Falling had felt like flying, just for a short second.
And Kobra remained fallen, waiting for his wounds to birth new skin.
Cola carried him back all the way to the Radio House: his feverish body and his bones exposed didn't weight much anymore. As though he was almost gone.
And Cola looked at his face and remembered how young he was. He forgot about it, sometimes.
He would never walk quite properly again, Tommy Chow Mein, the expert, said.
Kobra didn't mind much. They said it was because his mind was gone somewhere else, but he knew it had gone Home ahead of him.
The closest thing to a wheelchair they found in the Trash Lords was a trolley, in which Cola carried him around for entire days.
"You can't take care of yourself." Cola often said.
And that was partly true. Kobra could, but didn't want to.
Living was equal to dying, to him, because he was already a little gone.
Doctor D in his wheelchair and Cola behind his trolley would have races down the dunes sometimes.
It was as though they were children.
Kobra knew.
He liked the wind blowing on his face.
And he missed running, sometimes.
He thought maybe Poison had figured, because, once again, he was always gone.
He had once again reported his entire affection on The Girl, now.
But as much as Kobra stretched his skinny arms, he never reached.
It was all because Cola was watching over him, now, because he knew, and wouldn't let the same thing happen twice.

Party Poison with white arms and blood red hair, with blistered bare feet, Poison ran. He never wore shoes much anymore. He liked it when it hurt.
He missed the wind so much sometimes, and running was his only way to breathe again. He only ran because stopping would have made him lose his balance.
And maybe that was running away.
But Poison never ran away, Poison always stood.
So maybe he wasn't quite Poison anymore, but he had forgotten who else he could have been.
A split in the middle never made two wholes.
And maybe suffocating his heart into these many blankets not to hear it shriek had killed it after all.
And it hurt, but Poison liked it when it hurt.
It felt as though his whole skin had suddenly been peeled off, and he was left naked, scorched to the blood, vulnerable.
He only ran not to lose his balance.
How could you let this happen?
How could you let this happen?
How could you let this happen?
And Bunny screamed, and Bandit sobbed, but they were in a place he couldn't reach, so he couldn't make it better.
He was never at peace, and they weren't either.
They opened their mouths like black pits in which he fell, they screamed and screamed and screamed and he never stopped hearing them.
They wanted to tell him. They wanted to tell him.
It was the deads' words against the livings, and Poison wouldn't listen and Poison wouldn't believe.
His entire self was being torn in half. A split in the middle had never made two wholes, just like two wrongs had never made a right.
How could you let this happen?
His child sobbed. He could hear her under all this sand he had buried her in. Her body was with the Wasteland, now.
And at night, once everyone was asleep, he would go out behind the Radio House and dig her up again. Because he had heard her cry and he wanted to make sure. But every time her little body was a little less like her, and her skin was slowly crumbling apart. Except there was nothing to lose, under.
And every time he would be torn a little more, burying, once again the body of his child.
But he was good at concealing, and nobody have could ever known he was suffocating.
Only Ghoul thought maybe there was Something Wrong.
Poison's kisses felt hopeless now and his eyes were always empty.
He would spend hours simply laying his head on Ghoul's lap, staring at the sky without ever really seeing it. But he never cried.
And Ghoul wondered what he saw, and where his mind was.
The question of Love had often crossed his mind, but he had never dared to ask it.
He was scared of the answer, somehow. Because Poison seemed too desperate. Because the Wasteland was too desolate.
But if it wasn't love, then what was it?

The Girl never cried at night. And everybody loved her. Poison cared more. He always was more. Because he was Poison.
She had curly hair, just like Bandit once had. The Girl never knew about Bandit, nobody told her, or else she would have just been the shadow of somebody else.
Because it was never her Poison thought about when he held her little hand or flew her into the sky.
Yet he would spend a lot of time with her, playing, showing, talking. And every time he did so, a bit of pink blushed up his cheeks, and his eyes shone a little more.
It was never her face that he saw.
She reminded him of who his child could have been.
She would always come along with the Fabulous Killjoys in any mission. They would drive around the Wasteland in Trans AM, going around killing Dracos and S/C/A/R/E/C/R/O/W agents, sometimes. The thrill of the kill was the only way to keep their hearts beating. And these were the only moments they truly felt alive.
These were the end of their Golden Days, and soon enough their Danger Days would be over as well. They had already felt freer, but they could give the illusion they had never been so much. And they could be happy, when they tried not to think about it.
But The Girl was too young to understand, and, to her, this was the happiest time she ever lived, surrounded by her family, being loud, dangerous and free.
And, years after, long after the Killjoys would be gone and her little girls would have little girls, she would gather them around and tell them how these moments were the happiest she ever lived.
She would never feel that way again.
They were the only family she ever had.
The Fabulous Killjoys.

It was night time and Poison and Ghoul still held hands near the Witch's postbox shrine. Back at the Radio House, Jet Star looked over The Girl, sleeping, while Cola tried to teach Kobra how to walk again. He had carried him out of his trolley and held him tight against him, showing him how to put his feet on the ground again, one after the other.
But Kobra's legs were too shaky to find stable ground, not even at home. He knew this wasn't where Home was.
He felt weak, disabled, and he hated it.
He forced himself to stand straight, supporting himself on Cola's arm, and tried to reach the door.
A wave of pain radiated through his leg and he crashed on the floor once again, banging his head on the side of the couch. His nose started bleeding while Cola rushed to his side, concerned.
He felt helpless. He didn't attempt to get up again this time, but started sobbing really hard instead.
How long had it been since he had last cried?
How long had it been since he had last shown anyone he cared about something?
Things were changing.
And in order to do so, everything had to fall apart.
Cola wrapped his arms around Kobra, rocking him back and forth in a vain attempt to comfort him.
However he misinterpreted the origin of his lover's tears. They weren't much engendered by distress anymore, but Hatred.
Miles away, Poison and Ghoul stood up, tired of gazing at the stars.
"I wanna go to the Trash Lords." Poison had said. And Ghoul had followed, without a question.
They crossed the cooled down sand, passed the Radio House and got there.
The Trash Lords were but shadows, and Bat City's lights printed themselves behind their eyelids.
And it was so bright it lit out the stars.
And, even though they didn't admit it neither to each other nor to themselves, they thought it was beautiful.
"That's where I'm from." Poison said.
He said it because it was where everybody came from. So, surely, he must have been from it as well. But he didn't remember.
"I know." Ghoul said. "I'm from here too. And one day we'll find our own way back there."
"I feel strange..." Poison whispered after a while.
"How do you feel?" Ghoul asked gently.
"I don't know for sure... I know I have felt that way before, but I don't remember when, or how, or what for... It feels as though my heart was suffocating because there was something missing... Do you know what I mean?"
Poison didn't share much his feelings with the others, so the rare times he did, Fun Ghoul listened closely: it made him figure Poison out a bit better.
"It feels like ... like California, do you know what I mean?" Poison whispered broodily.
And Ghoul knew exactly what he meant.
It was a vague memory of a warm summer evening lying on the grass observing the stars.
It was the lack and pursuit of happiness.
It was Melancholy.
It was Nostalgia.
And Poison never told him he had forgotten.
Because he knew it had begun.
The fall apart.

Notes

Shout out to my friend Soph for making me add this chapter!