Don't You Forget About Me (a DHMIS Fanfic)

Black

(This is the part most inspired by the Tumblr post I said before. There's lot's of blood ahead, so TW for gore)

...

The smell. Dear God, the smell. It was sweet and bitter, with the iron taste of blood, and a pinch of decomposition. Robin smelled of death, and Red had to swallow the vomit rising to his throat.

"Robin. Robin, wake up" he called, trying to sound normal, even cheerful. Was he dea-...? No. He couldn't be dead. All that outgoing personality, neurosis, intelligence could not be taken away so easily. They shouldn't be. He slowly turned the bird over his back, trying to put his organs in their healthy place, trying his best not to hurt him. He was his coffee every morning, his best friend, his nap partner, his... everything.

And now he was dead. Robin was dead and Red felt it was his life the one disemboweled in a mix of mud, blood and green feathers.

"Come on, sleepyhead, wake up..." he sang softly, like he used to every morning. And then when the bird would whine quietly, he would chuckle a little bit and tickle Robin's soft feathery stomach (what stomach? The same meaty sack covered with blood out of his body?) Until he would laugh and wake up (he isn't breathing, is he?) and make him coffee and bring it to bed (but he can't move now, he's dead, because you abandoned them at the mercy of the singing objects, it's all your fault, he's dead and Manny is next) and enjoy a few minutes of privacy with the caffeine and the duck running through his veins, equally addictive; until Manny would wake up and go to their room and jump on the bed demanding breakfast (Where's Manny? Is he dead too? Did they really kill a little boy?)

He wasn't a talkative person, but he continued saying comforting words, fighting back tears that won anyway; he didn't want Robin to feel scared. He remembered being freaked out when he got there, and he knew Robin was the anxious kind: the duck would definitely lose his shit in this world. 

If he were alive.

But maybe, just maybe, he was alive. Red could have sworn to have heard really soft whimpering. Perhaps it had been the rain, though. Rain in their world was little blue felt drops, nothing like this weird thing that froze him to the bone; he was starting to hate rain. He got closer to Robin, touching his forehead, close enough to hear, to his relief, the weak and faltering breath of his friend.

He was alive, Robin was alive! But if he didn't stop shaking and crying instead of doing something productive, it wouldn't be for too long.

He wrapped the open wound with his scarf, the closest thing to gauze around. All the blood was nauseating, and the rain was freezing, and his own feelings were overwhelming. He took off his jacket and wrapped it around the duck who was flinching his eyes, his mind probably trapped in a past where there was no pain, numbed by the freezing rain and his own brain.

Bringing the duck back to reality, where he was probably going to die and where Manny was still missing anyways, was almost too cruel to be true. But if he could see those smart blue eyes staring at him for the very last time...

Robin seemed to listen to his thoughts, since he suddenly sighed, shaking his whole body, and slowly opened his eyes. 

"R-red?" he covered Robin's beak with his hand, holding his head with the other.

"Shhh... Don't worry, you'll be fine" he assured, but he didn't know that for sure. "I won't leave you"

"You... you were the missing thing" Robin said faintly

"Please don't die. God, I'm gonna kill the fucker who did-"

"M-Manny... did it" the bird said at the top of his strength, and fainted.

Manny?! But there was no time to think about it. He carried his feathered friend, covering him from the freezing rain that had turned him a darker shade of red, the same shade of Robin's blood.

He didn't notice the telephone box had disappeared again in London's fog.