Posted originally on the Archive_of_Our_Own at https://archiveofourown.org/
works/169499.
  Rating:
      Explicit
  Archive Warning:
      Graphic_Depictions_Of_Violence, Rape/Non-Con, Underage, Major_Character
      Death
  Category:
      F/M
  Fandom:
      Homestuck
  Relationship:
      John_Egbert/Vriska_Serket, One-Sided_Jade_Harley/John_Egbert, Karkat
      Vantas/Terezi_Pyrope, Dave_Strider/Aradia_Megido
  Character:
      John_Egbert, Gamzee_Makara, Sollux_Captor, Vriska_Serket, Kanaya_Maryam,
      Karkat_Vantas, Terezi_Pyrope, Dave_Strider, Rose_Lalonde, Jade_Harley,
      Aradia_Megido
  Additional Tags:
      Torture, Vivisection, Immolation, First_Person, third_person, Slavery
  Stats:
      Published: 2011-03-11 Completed: 2011-06-28 Chapters: 13/13 Words: 30567
****** Depravity ******
by KR_Grim_(KR_Grim)
Summary
     Depravity: n, perversion of the moral faculties; corruption,
     viciousness, abandoned wickedness. (OED)
Notes
     This started off as me just wanting to write out some gratuitous
     torture. It morphed into Homestuck fanfic. I'm not sure whether to
     say "Enjoy" or "I'm sorry", so... I guess both. Enjoy. I'm sorry.
     Also I think this is the first instance of Gorn Without Plot in this
     section of the AO3.
See the end of the work for more notes
***** Pain *****
The whole point was death. That was what he had been taught, what he had tried
to emulate. And for a while he had been successful. Murder… If he thought back,
he could remember the sweet sight of flowing blood, the futile resistance of a
windpipe gasping for air it would never receive. It was beautiful. But then
they had stopped him. And now she was in charge.
He had been chained, once. Those were the days when she had been alone, when
she had administered his “punishment” on her own. He no longer needed the
chains. His psyche, broken and twisted as it was, recognized the futility of
escape, and gave in to despair.
He looked over her form. She, unlike he, was human, and her pale skin looked
almost white in the strange dungeon’s light. It was an unnatural illumination
of an unnatural paleness; no being he had seen before had ever been so pale.
The mammalian paleness shocked and frightened him.
Her skin struck a contrast with her black hair, which pooled around her neck
and face like a strange tangled mess of liquid wires. The mass of hair served
only one purpose — to draw his attention away from the gray jumpsuit and
towards her face. Green eyes, with irises that looked like someone had frozen
broccoli and placed it on a human statuette. A sharp lump of cartilage, affixed
to her face and marring it as so many human extremities did to their owners’
bodies. And her mouth was a thin smile, her lips pressed together to create a
tight, almost-acceptable appearance. He shuddered.
He forced his attention away from her face, down to her hand. The talons of her
left hand were long and sharp, and curved like strange knives. She smiled at
him, leaning into his face. She opened her mouth slightly, and he could see a
few teeth poking out. Though they were mostly square-bottomed, two were
pointed, and these two frightened him. After all, they were so much like his.
Oh, how he would have loved to have ended this now. He could have, he knew;
hers was no powerful race. But the idea of her, the meekest of her kind,
destroying him so utterly… A small grin traced his face.
She began with his left eye. Her strange devices forced it open, peeled the
eyelid back to the point of utter pain as his blood began to flow from the
tightly-wound lid. A few sharp blasts from the hose stopped the bleeding,
though. They always did. And then she would proceed to mark the eyeball. Her
talons were delicate, delightful, fruitful. First the one symbol, then the
other. During their first session, he had been tied, and he had screamed. He
had called for her to stop.
Now, as the yellow ran down his face, he did no such thing. It would have been
pointless. She wouldn’t have stopped. She hadn’t the first time. By now the
scars on his eye would be permanent. The strange backwards runes were
everywhere. At least, everywhere he could see.
The job was done there, for today. He had to suppress a laugh in his throat.
She moved on to his right eye, using only her sharpened nail to cut through the
eyelid. This move wasn’t her usual practice. Usually she would simply wind the
eyelid up as she did the other. He screamed, for the first time in sessions.
She paused, smiling as she carefully wiped the blood off his eyeball, which
stared at her finger, not daring to stop its gaze. Not that it could, even with
the continued bloodflow. Facial wounds, after all, bled like crazy. She smiled.
“Shirt off, now,” she whispered. He pulled it up, over his head, over his
horns. She looked over him. She could see his scars, from where others had
fought him, from where others had fought their doom. She walked over to a tray
her assistant carried. She took from it a scalpel. He paused. Was she planning
on re-opening his scars again, as she’d done at the first session?
Pain tore into him as she pressed the scalpel’s blade to his horn. True, it was
made of tougher stuff than she would have anticipated, but… He felt it dig in.
He heard her audible gasp as it began to bleed. He should have laughed, should
have told her that trolls bled from their horns when they were beaten or
snapped or broken. He should have told her, that would have horrified her, and
maybe the first session would never have happened.
Pain surged through his horn again. She had hit the bone, and was now cutting
around it. He reached up a hand to stop her. In an instant, her assistant had
restrained it. Lovely. It was the one who was male, and who looked like her,
but with eyes of blue. He could not move, could not scream, as she finished her
slow, methodical cut. She walked over to her assistant again as blood ran down
his cheek. Slowly, he laughed. In another time, this would have excited and
amused him. Oh, what a joke this all was, oh how laughable.
The bonesaw was in her hand now, though she still had the bloodied scalpel. As
the bonesaw bit into the horn-bone, he couldn’t help but scream. The bone
itself had begun cracking. The pain probably wasn’t any more real than his
right eyelids’s had been — was probably less real, in fact — but it hurt all
the same, it hurt as she cut into the center of the bone, sliced through the
marrow, pushed her way through the rear sponge. The top of the horn came off as
clean as it could and fell to the floor with a thunk, some marrow spilling from
the center. She took a cautious lick from the outside of the horn, as if the
fact that it had landed on the floor was irrelevant.
“Tastes like candy corn,” she said, the sarcasm running thick in her voice.
“Let’s try dipping it in special sauce.” She dipped the tip in the freshly-
exposed horn marrow, pulling out a horntip covered in a substance the same
color as the blood that flowed through his veins. But when she brought it to
her mouth, instead of licking it, she gnawed on the damn thing, chewing off the
keratin.
He couldn’t tell her what he wanted to, what she meant to him. But this was
only partly because he didn’t know. He suspected that hate was a necessary part
of it, but at the moment, pain was his only concern. Pain, and trying to avoid
it.
“Ah-ah-ah,” she said, and the hose fired again, spraying his face with ice
water and knocking out three fangs, which she quickly collected. “No falling
asleep, no matter how tiring I get.” She gripped one of the fangs by its roots
and dragged it across his chest. She pressed it hard into his skin as she
carved a rough circle around a sensitive spot. She laughed a little. “You know,
trolls don’t need nipples… especially not boy trolls.” The fang dug deeper. He
was being maimed with his own body parts. His own fang was being used as the
scalpel that removed his nipples.
Eventually, she finished, and he chanced a look down at her handiwork. It
looked like his chest was crying blood, as two thick rivulets of the stuff
poured down his chest, staining his pants. He prided himself on not screaming
once during the interval, even though it would have been acceptable for anyone
else. But not for him. No, never for him.
Her finger traced down his chest, lightly scratching with her fingernail (her
grotesque, far-too-long fingernail, which seemed to serve no purpose). Upon
reaching the hem of his pants, she paused. He prayed she wouldn’t remove them.
That would be frightening.
It was then that she turned her attention to his left hand. That was, after
all, the most important direction. It was the holiest one, too, by his outdated
standard. He felt her scratch the inside of his left palm. Once. Twice. Five
times, ten times. In her hands the scalpel worked wonders, never rusting in the
pooling blood or losing an edge to his tough hide.
The scalpel reached deep as she continued up his fingers. It was not strong
enough to cut bone, but it snapped ligaments like so many rubber bands,
stretched thin before they were severed by a knife. Bone by bone, his fingers
collapsed into useless pain-sources. But he could withstand it. Just because
she had mutilated one hand, and would probably mutilate the other, did not mean
that he would fall. Not here, not to this.
She smiled, and stood, and walked over to her assistant. Her tools were taken,
and she was presented with a fresh scalpel and a pair of tweezers. His right
hand scrambled, trying to find the cut off piece of horn through the pain.
Perhaps it could be reattached if he just placed it on the —
She had returned. A damp towel mopped up the blood in his wounds, stinging
slightly with the bearable sting of clean water. He could see again, as clearly
as ever. His horn was in the hands of her associate. And her hand was moving
towards his unmarred eyeball.
His eyelid tried to flutter closed, aware for the first time in a long while
that it couldn’t. Her fingernails gripped the orb and gently pried it partway
from its socket. He wanted to scream, wanted to call her a twisted, psychotic
bitch. But he couldn’t, though whether by now it was his pride or sheer
exhaustion was debatable.
At a certain amount of extension, her fingers released the eyeball, replaced by
the tweezers’ viselike grip on the optic nerve. The nerve screamed as she
stretched it further, roaring with pain. His eye frantically turned to see what
was going on. And it was then that the scalpel was again used in a
spectacularly wrong fashion. It was a scalpel, not a saw. The up-and-down (or
was it left-and-right?) motion as it sawed off his optic nerve was painful not
only for its actions, but because he knew what it was for.
She returned to her assistant, his now-useless right eye lying next to his
horn. He reached for them, but her accomplice restrained him again. She laughed
as she grabbed her new tools and walked over to him. “Ah-ah-ah,” she said,
grinning. “Bad boys don’t get to keep themselves intact.”
He wanted to respond. He wanted to tell her that he hadn’t been intact for
years. He wanted to explain, in excruciating detail, what had happened to him.
But the most he could manage was a choked sob. She smiled as she brandished
another scalpel, as well as a pair of surgical tongs.
“Assistant.” He was suddenly pinned, held down, neck exposed. She drew a line
with the scalpel, consulting a book she’d perhaps picked up in her travels. Or
perhaps she’d found it here. It didn’t really matter. She peeled apart the
layers of flesh, opening his throat wide before carefully and methodically
slicing out his vocal cords. A needle and thread sewed him back up admirably.
He could no longer scream. He watched in silent awe as she pulled the remainder
of his clothes offShe then called her assistant over. From his proffered table,
she took a paintbrush, a can of oil, and a box of matches. Slowly,
painstakingly, she used the oil to create a pattern on his bodyIt skirted some
wounds while others were marked for cauterization. His right eye socket, in
particular, was coated with oil. The brush made his cavity itch.
And down the brush went, down along his legs, covering them in spirals and
curlicues, tracing down the outside and back up the inseam, up to…
The gentle caress of the brush on his genitalia was almost erotic. It was the
first pleasurable sensation of the whole session, and he allowed himself to
betray it. As his penis grew more erect, she painted smaller, more intricate
designs on it with the oil. The highly flammable oil.
Despite his sudden terror, his erection adamantly refused to shrink. Not while
the brush continued its gentle attentions. Not even as she single-handedly lit
the match and dropped it on the bridge of his nose. The fire spread quickly,
burning flesh away, causing bubbling black injuries instead of cauterizing
wounds. Even his manhood screamed for surcease of pain from the flames even as
the pain spurred him to heights of perverse pleasure. His heart pounded,
screaming at him to leave, but he couldn’t, he was being held town…
And now, his burning left leg was being lifted high into the air, and something
was approaching it, something vaguely sickle-like. And now it had sliced
through his achilles tendon, and the pain, on top of the fire, was too much to
bear, even as the flames reached the wound, cauterizing it. She grinned at him.
The flames winked out almost as she willed them. He dipped a hand into the
still-smoldering bleeding burns on his chest. His right hand was still intact.
He wrote two words in his own blood as she stood up, admiring her handiwork.
She had the audacity to laugh at him after he had done so. “Perhaps,” she said.
“But then again… so were you, once upon a time. Brother?”
“Right behind you, Sister.” The second human grinned. “Oh, almost forgot to
give him his mirror!” The human boy gave the poor, half-horned troll his mirror
back. It was a thing of vanity, as tall as he had been. He looked in the mirror
as the two humans left the room, giggling about what they’d done as if he were
some video game. He could see the blood dripping from his wounds, even the ones
that had supposedly cauterized. The remains of white make-up were smeared with
ash and blood — but not the blood of others. No, this blood was all his.
He whined to himself, because nobody kept watch over him anymore. The one
lotion for his constant misery, and he was forever denied it because it was no
more. The slime was gone, brothers and sisters of the dark miracle. And the new
truth? Well, that was the truth that J.H. had burned into him. He looked into
the mirror, where it was reflected perfectly on his chest. “No more miracles,
Gamzee,” it whispered. “Not for you.”
***
John had accompanied his sister on these excursions several times. He tried to
remind himself that she was still a good person. But when it got hard, he
remembered what she’d told him the first time he’d come with her.
“John, I never hurt my friends. That’s the first thing about being friends. You
don’t hurt them.” Her gaze had turned black at that point. “Gamzee hurt my
friends. Gamzee isn’t my friend. And I can’t let him die, because if he did…
he’d hurt my dead friends. This is the only way to keep him from hurting
anyone. I have to fix him.”
***** Curiosity *****
Chapter Summary
     Vivisection: n, the action of cutting or dissecting some part of a
     living organism; specifically the action or practice of performing
     dissection, or other painful experiment, upon living animals as a
     method of physiological or pathological study. (OED)
Chapter Notes
     I kinda hate myself for what I'm doing to Sollux in this chapter.
     Also, this begins sowing the seeds of an actual plot thread that arcs
     its way through here in a winding path of trauma and horror. A
     difficult-to-write path. Especially with chapter 3, which I somehow
     completed (don't ask me how; it was almost physically painful to
     write, and the reason why will become apparent once it's been
     posted.)
     At any rate, here's chapter 2.
I still have the powers. She wasn’t able to take them away — not that she
didn’t try so damn hard I couldn’t bear it, practically. She said I ran away.
That was what she told KK. Ran off into a corner of the Veil and got fucking
lost, wound up dying to Jack Noir.
She never talks to Terezi, I think. It’d be a good thing if she did, then I
might finally be freed. Terezi told me once she could smell lies. After seeing
her nose in action, I believe her.
But the door opens and it’s her, her and Egbert, who’s always with her when she
can’t pry him away from Vriska. At least, that’s what she tells me. It’s
probably true, he’s probably keeping Vriska from running off and facing him.
And the first tools I feel aren’t really tools. But, same as always, I feel her
tie me to the vivisecting pad. She’s already dissected all the dead trolls over
and over again, I think. She knows how most of us tick. But Egbert is
protecting Serket, and I’m the only living psychic left.
Well. The only living psychic who isn’t her friend. So she’s antipathetic
towards me. My burned-out eye sockets focus on her, and my nose, poor as it is
at smell-o-vision, can still pick out where she is and what she’s holding.
Every session begins the same way. She holds the bone saw eagerly and looks
through my hair, trying to see if the horn stumps had grown back. They never
have, because troll horns stop growing when they become damaged because we’re
built on a fair few sound principles. But she keeps hoping, and I guess she
takes that hope out on me.
The bone saw gets put away, and out comes the scalpel. Today it appears she’s
researching my arms again as she takes one and slices it open. It’s split like
a ripe peach, and by now I’m used to her cataloguing of every muscle.
The removal is new, though. Muscle by muscle, she toes through and removes
about half my left arm, followed by half my right. She sews me back up, but I
feel strangely empty and deflated. It isn’t even that she rendered the arm
useless — which she probably hadn’t, pain of use was her main turn-on. It just
looks wrong for an arm.
Before I can object, she’s done the same thing with my other arm. Not that I
can really object beyond a muffled groan. I’ve heard the screams my neighbor
used to give. He doesn’t scream anymore, it’s more of a high-pitched whine, so
I’m thankful for my ability to gargle out muffled gasps of anguish through the
gag and the strap biting into my wind pipe.
She continues to my legs. I’ll have to relearn how to walk, and knowing Harley,
she’ll demand it before I can get my food. Onto the chest, the abdomen, the
back. By the time she’s done filleting me like a fish, half my muscles are gone
and I’m a mass of stitches. But at least I still have my psychic powers. She
can’t take those from me. Not without some very precise…
She cuts open my skull and takes a look at my brain. I had forgotten that she
was the WItch of Space. If she knew which parts of my brain did what from her
autopsies of Tavros’s, and the dissection of the other brains… with help from
Terezi or Kanaya or someone like them…
The scalpel begins playing with my brain. It dips into the Occipital lobe,
deftly cutting out my sense of color. It swings into the Temporal lobe, neatly
scooping out most of my ability to speak. I could still cry out without words,
though. Finally, I feel her do two last things. The first destroys any psychic
ability I had ever had, tearing out the piece of brain that had been
responsible for my abnormality. The second is a strange snipping sensation. It
seems to do nothing, which makes me all the more afraid.
But in the meantime, she isn’t done. She grabs something else, I can’t tell
what, from Egbert’s waiting tray, and shoves them into my eye sockets before
fusing the metallics into my brain. Two small cameras activate. I can see
again. The world is a grainy black-and-white, and the eyes are likely pilfered
from a robot part pile, but… Mother of miracles, I can see.
She laughs at me. “Hello, Sollux. Can you hear me?” My understanding is
perfect. I look helplessly at her for a minute before I try to form words
around the gag.
“R… Bbbrrr…. khl…” A trail of drool drips down my front. I try to say the one
word I can. Egbert takes a step towards me.
“Stop. If you want it off him, do the windy thing.” John shudders and complies,
allowing the Breeze to unhook this wretched gag and pull it from my mouth.
“Well, Sollux? Are you happy? Do you like the gift I have given you for being a
good patient?”
I cough. I can feel my brain drying out; she still holds the top of my head in
her hand. “Y-yuh… yuh-yes. G-good… y-yes… y-yes.” I’m trying to say more,
something, anything, but the only word that’s coming easily at all is “yes”, so
I keep saying it. Jade laughs.
“Pitiful,” she sneers as she unties me. “Still, I suppose that was informative.
And a source of meat, albeit stringy.” Jade begins to walk out. This is my last
chance, even as I’m a sobbing wreck on the floor.
“Y-yes… yes… w-want… yes… k… k…” It look at her, frantically pulling myself
closer to the door, not caring that I’m pulling out stitches. “W-want… K… K…” I
want to scream “Bring me karkat, you pailsmashing grubfisted douche!” I want my
old command of language back.
Jade laughs, opens the door, and closes it behind her. John looks at me with a
mix of revulsion and pity. I look plaintively at him “W-want…” It’s not the
word I want, but he seems to get the message.
“Once Vriska is safe,” says Egbert. “We’ll find Dave and Aradia, and we’ll get
you back to the way you were, back when you were whole.” He nodded, as if it
were a promise. “Once Vriska isn’t in any more danger.”
“Yes… good K.” I know it doesn’t make any sense to him, but… perhaps this will
remind him to bring Karkat and Terezi.
***** Forbidden *****
Chapter Summary
     Rape: n, Violation or ravishing of a woman. Also, in moderate usage,
     sexual assault upon a man.
Chapter Notes
     WARNING: THIS CHAPTER MAY CONTAIN TRIGGERS FOR RAPE VICTIMS. READ AT
     YOUR OWN RISK.
     This was the hardest chapter for me to write, at least in part
     because I felt like it might be insensitive. I've tried my best to
     depict this horrid act as the psychologically traumatic event it is,
     although whether or not I've succeeded in displaying both the proper
     gravitas and the proper amount of horribleness I leave up to you, the
     reader. In addition, the difficulty of writing this chapter was due
     to my extreme discomfort with thinking about this act, and my
     personal conviction that those who commit violent sexual crimes,
     whether against adults or children, should be punished in ways that I
     believe the U.S. Constitution would disallow under the eighth
     amendment (the one that forbids cruel and unusual punishment,
     although I'd argue that anything I did to them wouldn't be as cruel
     as the crime they committed). Rape is not a matter to be taken
     lightly, and I ask you to trust me that it will not be taken lightly
     in this story as I move forward.
     Again, I wish to reiterate that I do not, in any way, condone rape,
     sexual assault, or other violent sexual crimes.
Vriska knew, when he entered the room again, that something had happened to
John. It wasn’t the normal horrors about his sister. Seeing Gamzee, or Sollux,
or Kanaya, all in her grasp… it was almost unbearable. And he had seen all
three. Had seen what she had done to them, what she would have done to Vriska
if she’d had half the chance… or if she hadn’t cared about her brother so much.
But those, he could stand. Those horrors he’d lived through. He’d become
stronger than her by surviving them. This time… She looked at him, as he
stumbled into the room. Something was different. His clothes were more rumbled
than usual. His glasses were broken. He was bleeding from his wrists and
ankles, bleeding that candy-red blood that Terezi always fawned over.
Something was wrong. And Vriska was going to find out what. She looked at him,
took a step towards him. His eyes were hollow. He looked at her, scared out of
his wits. “John?”
John backed up toward the door. “D-don’t… d-don’t touch me,” he gasped. Vriska
stepped back, her hands anxiously in front of her chest. “D-don’t look at me!
G-get out! GET OUT!” Vriska took another few steps back as the Breeze began
flying around the room, picking up light objects in a sort of hurricane. Vriska
was too lucky to get hit by anything too heavy, but a few dolls hit her in the
face.
She grabbed one out of the air. “John… what did Jade do?” John sniffed.
Vriska’s fear crept further into her voice. “John… what happened? Please.
Please tell me. Did she kill someone?” John shook his head.
“She… sh-she…” John’s hands went to the hem of his shirt, pulling it down over
his pants. Wheels in Vriska’s head began turning. Wheels that reminded her
uncomfortably of Mindfang now that her matesprit had been… Had she really
admired her Ancestor for doing those things? Her stomach turned. Her desires
were set aside. John wouldn’t want that. Not after what had happened.
“John… she forced herself on you, didn’t she?” John blanched, but nodded.
Vriska stayed across the room. “Can you tell me what happened?”
John took a deep in-breath. Vriska had a feeling this was going to be a long
story.
***
The fifth vivisection of Kanaya since they’d returned to the asteroid had
concluded. Jade had given her a bucket of Gamzee’s blood as a reward for her
screams, and John had been, as usual, disturbed beyond belief at his sister’s
depravity. She was going to kill one of these days, and he had a feeling he was
going to be at the top of the list. After all, once she began killing, she’d
keep alive only one person, and then for breeding purposes. And he had a
feeling she wasn’t going to begin incesting any earlier than necessary.
“Oh, John, we need to stop by my room.” Those words were frightening. Not
because Jade’s room was filled with gore or blood or guts. No, her room was
actually somewhat normal for her. It was green, filled with pictures of animals
and plants and all sorts of machine type devices. It looked, for lack of a
better word, normal.
John had been in there twice before, never for a really good reason. First, she
had previewed four different labcoats for him. The labcoats had always struck
him as a bit of a lie, given how she wasn’t really doing science. She was just
messing with others. The second time, she’d asked him to come in and help her
clean off her tools. It had ended up with John doing all the cleaning and Jade
getting into her pyjamas… but not before spending an amount of time naked that
had made him horribly uncomfortable.
This time, she entered behind him, closed the door, and locked it. John didn’t
like the sound the lock made, and when he tried to open it, the handle zapped
him before saying “Incorrect identification, please try again.” He wasn’t eager
to try it a second time. Especially since Jade was calling him over to her
experiment desk. He walked over.
As soon as he got there, Jade forced a rag in his face. It smelled unusual, but
he couldn’t figure it out. Not until Jade said, “Why, John. I had no idea you
liked the smell of ether.” It was about there that he passed out.
When he came to, ropes were tying him to the bed. Ropes with complex knots,
knots that the Breeze wouldn’t be able to undo without at least an hour of
sustained work. And the knots were itchy as well. This distracted John for at
least half a minute from the other change in his situation. That change was a
lack of clothing. Here he was, tied to his sister’s bed, stark naked. And she
had just finished removing her clothes. “Finally awake, hm?” She grinned,
bouncing over to him. “About time, breezy brother.”
“Jade, what… why…” Jade laughed.
“Because I love you, John!” Her voice had no right being that cheerful. “I love
you and I want to show you just how much!” Her hand moved to his penis, and she
began playing with the flaccid organ. “You know, all this play with the trolls
has led me to understand a little bit about how to get a boy excited.” She
crawled onto the bed; John couldn’t help but get a bit harder when he saw her
snatch. She grinned, rubbing against him and getting him harder as she slowly
pushed a finger into his anus. His body’s reactions only filled him with more
fear. He didn’t want to do this with her, but she somehow knew how to prepare
his body for… for…
He was completely hard when she finally stopped her anal probing. Completely
hard, and slick with her yearning juices. In one swift, smooth motion, she
slammed his shaft into her waiting hole. A small amount of blood trickled out
of her; she giggled. “Look at that, brother dearest! You took my first time!”
John tried to free himself, the knots scraping his wrists as they slowly began
to draw blood. Jade didn’t appear to notice as she began bouncing up and down,
apparently enjoying the feeling of John inside her.
“Jade… we’re siblings! Brother and sister!”
“I know!” Jade’s grin was absolutely feral as she plunged him inside her again,
pulling off his glasses and throwing them at the door. “I know. That’s what
makes this so frustrating. You won’t love me back just because I’m your
sister.” John’s blood ran cold. “So I guess I’m just going to have to take your
love. Pity, that. I really do love you, John. But you don’t love me. And that
hurts.” She clawed at his chest, making him bleed. “So I’m going to hurt you
back.” She laughed raucously as she continued to thrust him up into her. “Ah…
but it feels so good… do I feel good, John? Does my hole feel good on your
rod?”
John was almost too frightened to respond. But he couldn’t say no. If he did,
she’d kill him — or possibly she’d kill Vriska, or Gamzee, or Sollux, or one of
the others. So he had to lie. “Y-yes… sister… y-you feel good…” To distract
himself, he began working the breeze through the knots. It was responsive
enough, even if it could only do those small things.
“Excellent… I’m almost at the edge… I’m going to pull you over with me…” She
grabbed his shoulders and yanked hard. One of his arms was dislocated, the
other barely avoided it but was instead treated to a crack in the wrist. She
slammed down on him, forcing the whole of him inside her, and she began
tightening and spasming. John couldn’t hold back, even though he desperately
wanted to. “Heehee… oh, John… I wonder what our baby will look like…” She
turned off him and fell asleep in her bed, lying next to him. John had to get
out, had to get dressed.
The breeze finally untied the ropes, and he used it to bring his clothes over.
He hurriedly got dressed, not caring that his clothes were wrinkled beyond
repair.
He didn’t have time to race through the door, either. No… out the window was
his best bet. Out the window, and then let the Breeze carry him back inside…
***
Vriska didn’t even try to approach him. She fired up trollian on her glasses
and contacted someone who would probably be better at this anyway.

arachnidsGrip [AG] began trolling carcinoGeneticist [CG]
AG: K8rk8t.
AG: We h8v8 8n 8merg8ncy.
AG: G8t y8ur 8ss to J8hn’s r88m n8w.
AG: ::::(
CG: WHAT THE NOOKSTAINING BULGEREEK FUCK HAS GOT YOU SO UPSET?
CG: FINALLY GET IT THROUGH YOUR HEAD THAT HARLEY’S FUCKING SNAPPED AND THAT’S
WHY I’VE KEPT AWAY FROM HER?
CG: I MEAN, GOD, THE SIGNS WERE ALL AROUND.
AG: Sh8 j8st r8p8d J8hn.
CG: …
CG: FUCK.
CG: I’LL BE RIGHT OVER.
CG: DON’T TOUCH HIM, HE’S PROBABLY STILL TRAUMATIZED, HE NEEDS ANOTHER MAN
THERE, SOMEONE TO SUPPORT HIM.
CG: NO OFFENSE TO YOU, BUT YOU’RE A WOMAN, AND HARLEY IS TOO, AND SO HE’S
PROBABLY UNCONSCIOUSLY ASSOCIATING YOU AND HER.
AG: 8 G8T 8T J8ST G8T Y88R D8MB 8SS 8V8R H8R8 N8W K8RK8T
CG: ALL RIGHT, I’M COMING, I’M COMING.
CG: I’M ALMOST THERE, ACTUALLY.
CG: I AM OPENING THE DOOR. THE HAND ON THE HANDLE IS ME.
CG: TELL JOHN NOT TO FREAK THE FUCK OUT.
Vriska looked at him. “John? I called Karkat. That’s him opening the door now.”
A gray carapaced hand pushed the knob open. A pair of nubby horns attached to a
slightly worried gray face pushed their way in.
“John?” The human looked at him. Karkat came in and closed the door. Vriska
stood back as far as she could. “John… I’m sorry, first off, that this
happened. And I know it hurts, but… I need you to tell me what she’s done. And
then we need to alert Dave and Aradia so they can get back here.” John sniffed.
“When they get back… we can get out of here. We can get rid of her, leave her
behind.”
“B-but… she’s my s-sister, Karkat…” Karkat stared blankly at him. She had
forced him to have sex with him, she had shattered his innocence over the past
few days with his forced exposure to torture, had mounted lie upon lie in his
malleable little brain, and he wasn’t willing to return the hurt she’d laid
upon him? “I… I can’t leave her behind…”
“But she… I mean, there was all that… And then the…” Karkat couldn’t finish his
sentence.
It was Vriska who stepped in with sanity, somehow, even if she did stay in the
corner of the room, clutching that doll. “Why, John? Why can’t you?” He looked
at her, confused. “Because you’re related by blood? If that’s the case, then I
should have just let Eridan kill me because we were both formed from the same
slurry and because he wanted me dead!” She stalked over to him, glaring. “My
god. I helped you reach god tier because I figured you were worth it, that you
had courage and power and all those things I wish I had! And now here you are,
complaining that you’re too cowardly to leave behind the one chain that’s
holding you back!”
“B-but… Vriska, you… you don’t understand. She’s the only family I have left…
and… and you never leave family behind…” Karkat growled.
“…You want to have a family to stay with?” asked Karkat. “You want family
who’ll help you through your tough times? Because that bitch Harley isn’t going
to be that for you. Not with the way she’s acting.” Karkat cut open his hand
and grabbed John’s still-bleeding wrist. “There. We share some blood. We’re
brothers. This angry, obnoxious, self-righteous prick and you are now
brothers.” John looked at him. “We’re family now. I am officially your fuckwit
brother who is suggesting that you kick your sister out of the family circle.”
Karkat sighed. “Seriously, John. Tell me some things about earth families.”
“W-well…” John swallowed. “Y-you’re supposed to protect each other. And… help
each other out with stuff. And… and you’re supposed t-to… to not hurt y-your
family…” Karkat nodded.
“So… Let’s see if Jade matches your criteria. Protecting you? No, she’s
actually pretty much done the opposite. She’s exposed you to a hell of a lot of
harm, if what you’ve said about ‘fun time with Gamzee’ is correct.” Karkat
glared at the door. “Helped you? Well, you’ve helped her, that’s for certain,
but she hasn’t helped you. Not one bit. I mean, think about it. When has she
ever done anything that’s aided any of your goals?” John sniffed back a tear.
“Exactly. So that’s two out of three down the load gaper. And as for not
hurting you…” Karkat looked at Vriska. “What do you think, Vriska? Do you think
she’s done grievous emotional harm?”
“And possibly more,” said Vriska. And for once, John heard the anxiety and
worry in her voice. “That bitch shouldn’t be allowed anywhere near him again.”
“Then it’s settled,” said Karkat. “She’s not our family. She’s not our sister.
And I, as your brother, will do everything in my power to protect you from that
miserable writhing cunt.” He hugged his newly-found brother tightly, a few red
tears spilling onto John’s shirt. “And I will make her pay for every injury
she’s inflicted on you. I swear to whatever entities created our universe, she
will pay.”
“…so if she’s not my family anymore…” John looked at Karkat. “But… there’s some
things I have to tell you. We can’t leave yet. And we can’t overthrow her
unless we want her to start killing us. We’re going to need some help getting
rid of her.” Karkat nodded. “And she’s got Sollux and Kanaya.” A vein in
Karkat’s forehead throbbed, and his fist clenched.
“That… that absolute pail-melting grub-fucking bitch,” he whispered. “I will
murder her in her SLEEP.” John swallowed.
“I don’t think that’s possible… not without someone who can break into her
room.”
“Which is pretty much impossible,” muttered Karkat. “…We’re going to contact
Dave and Aradia. And then… we’ll come up with a plan. And then we’ll set our
plan into motion.”
***** Rainbow *****
Chapter Summary
     Murder: n, The most heinous kind of criminal homicide; also, an
     instance of this. The unlawful killing of a human being with malice
     aforethought; often more explicitly willful murder. (OED)
Chapter Notes
     "You were the only one who could stop it. But you didn't." In some
     cases, a good reason for trial. In no case at all a good reason for
     murder. This chapter will, most likely, debunk a lot of speculation
     of my readers'. I apologize for that, but this was planned from the
     second chapter.
See the end of the chapter for more notes
Jade stormed into the room, her right hand shaking slightly. “Hello, Kanaya. My
assistant has been dismissed for a few days due to emotional distress.
Something your kind did to him.” She grabbed the scalpel from the table. “You
know… your kind are very bad influences. You encouraged Rose to go after the
horrorterrors, you encouraged John to set up the Tumor, you killed John, you
made Dave go away forever, you made John realize that he could never love me
like I loved him…” The scalpel slid smoothly into Kanaya’s wrist, wrenching
through veins that weren’t meant to heal, that wouldn’t bleed out the way a
living troll’s veins would have. “So I’m afraid you won’t see him again.” She
placed the scalpel aside. “Shame, really. We used to be such good friends.”
“We… can still be friends,” said Kanaya. Her eyes seemed to almost plead with
Jade. “Please… Jade. We don’t need to be enemies…” Jade picked up a large
wooden shard, almost like a crudely-hewn stake.
“We don’t need to be,” agreed Jade, “but we are.” She looked the long stake
over lovingly. “This is holly. It’s said that driving this through a vampire’s
heart will kill it. Let’s see if the same is true for a rainbow drinker.” Jade
placed the holly stake carefully over Kanaya’s heart. Kanaya eyed it fearfully;
she didn’t know earth vampire legends, or if their weaknesses were shared by
rainbow drinkers. Jade drew her hammer and pounded the stake through her
carapace, into her heart.
Kanaya let out a piercing cry of pain. She didn’t feel dead; on the contrary,
it was probably the most alive she’d felt since giving up life to become a
Rainbow Drinker. But the sensation was disturbing and she couldn’t help but
feel more frightened as Jade pinned her to the table. “Jade… please…”
“Hmm. It didn’t work.” She frowned, picking up the next item on the tray.
“Garlic. Said to be the bane of the vampire. Let’s see what it does to the
rainbow drinker.” Kanaya froze. She knew what garlic did to rainbow drinkers.
It wasn’t lethal, but… Powdered garlic flew everywhere, on her face, in her
eyes, up her nose… More screams of pain left her body as the garlic wriggled
its way into her carapace. As she writhed against the table she could feel it
being absorbed, could feel it like fire running through her veins, a fire whose
burning would never stop.
“Hmm. That’s odd. Garlic should be killing you, but it almost doesn’t work.”
Jade pulled out another holly stake. “Still, may as well pin you down further
before moving on to the banes of the rainbow drinker as so carefully outlined
in your book collection.” Jade giggled. “How foolish of you to leave your
weaknesses in plain view of someone who knows that, in the end, your race is a
horrible blight upon paradox space and ought to have been wiped out ages ago.”
Kanaya felt the stakes align themselves as Jade exercised the same powers
Kanaya had once had. “Wh-why… Jade? Why are you hurting me so much? If you
wanted me dead, why this prolonged charade? Why this continued torture?”
Jade’s reply was the swing of a hammer, pinning her hand to the table. “I want
to know things, Kanaya! All sorts of things!” She grinned at Jade as she moved
onto the other hand. “Besides… you hurt me very badly. All trolls hurt me very
badly. You destroyed my childhood, you blamed me for things I had no control
over, you even turned my best friends crazy.”
Kanaya struggled against her wooden bonds, but she just wasn’t as strong
anymore. Not with the pain from the garlic still coursing through her system.
Jade hammered one foot into the table. “But Jade… I tried to dissuade Rose. I
contacted you only after you had entered the Medium. I was…” Jade hammered in
the last spike of holly wood.
“Yes,” she said. “You were helpful, in your own way. A Prospit dreamer, and one
of the ones who underwent a drastic post-death transformation.” She pulled out
a different scalpel, one with a sharp blade that glinted a little more than
steel ought to. “And here’s the bridge in the gap. Silver. You know, in the
original Dracula, he’s beheaded with a silver knife.”
The instrument slid gently across her face. The burns arising on her face were
proof of the extreme cold silver inflected on rainbow drinker flesh. Her face
was quickly coated in a combination of ice and frozen troll ichor. Jade grinned
as she put the scalpel away. Kanaya simply stared in horror. If she was putting
away the silver, that meant she had another bane… the one that would kill, but
very slowly. And painfully. She gasped. “J-J-J-Jade… puh-puh-please duh-don’t-
t-t-t-t….” Her fangs were chattering as Jade withdrew the item that had her so
frightened.
Jade laughed. “You know, I never would have expected this of you. But… this
stuff is excruciating for you, isn’t it?” She played with the onion in her
hand. “It’s possibly the strangest weakness I’ve ever heard of… although it’s
not too different from our vampires’ weakness to garlic. Even if it does make
the death of the rainbow drinker take a lot longer than a simple silver knife
to the head or obsidian spear in the head.” Jade grabbed her pulper as a few
tears welled up in her eyes.
“Man, this stuff is strong,” she chuckled as she poured onion juice on certain
non-key areas of her body. First the knees, then the hands, then down the arms.
Kanaya felt it burn into her. The creeping cold of silver was nothing compared
to the liquid nitrogen sensation of onion juice. She had no idea she could
still feel this much pain, but there she was. It was as though her plan had
been to inflict pain as much as possible.
It certainly explained certain things about her treatment. Such as the fact
that the onion juice was now being dripped on open wounds. Wounds like the
stake wounds, or the carvings on her face made by the silver knife. The burning
from the garlic dust mixed with the ice of the onion juice, but instead of
canceling each other out, it caused her to stiffen, her wounds screaming for
release from this torture. “Please!”
“No, no, Kanaya. No release for you.” Jade grinned. “I’m sorry, old friend.
Although I suppose it doesn’t matter, since Rose won’t be a lover of yours. You
know she’s not interested in women.” Kanaya tried to arch her back, but
couldn’t. The onion juice was freezing off her extremities. The pain she felt
was horrible. She wanted it to stop. She needed it to stop. And then Jade
brought out the final bane. Obsidian, crystallized in the heart of a volcano,
carving off bits of flesh. “You’ll die eventually. I’ll make sure of it. But
first, I want you to feel what your kind have done to me. All the pain you’ve
caused, all the life you’ve ruined. Here, I’ll show you.” She forced Kanaya’s
mouth open with a sort of strange expander attached to a funnel, pouring in
another whole onion’s worth of juice. Her insides froze and shattered, unable
to repair themselves due to a lack of fresh blood.
“Heeei… Heeeiggghh…” Tears welled up in Kanaya’s eyes. She tried pleading with
her tormentor, tried to shout her name, tried to beg for mercy. Even as her
vocal cords shattered, she pushed sound through her mouth. “Hhhhh… Hhhhh…” The
sounds became sobs of pain, silent screams for mercy.
“Wider?” asked Jade. “Well… if you insist…” She turned a screw on the device.
Kanaya’s jaw expanded further with a sickening crack, the sounds of bone
snapping and muscle tearing and carapace cracking. Jade smiled, the expression
on her face as eerie as Gamzee’s empty eyes had been. And still she could do
nothing but feel her insides freeze and shatter, feel the onion juice flow
through her windpipe, down into her lungs… she could feel her breath being
denied. Air refused to flow into her lungs, because her lungs didn’t,
technically, exist anymore. Crack. Shatter. Snap. Kanaya stared at Jade, who
whistled as she was messing around with bottles. A tear ran down her face.
She couldn’t take it any more. Even if she’d wanted to stay alive, the
destruction of her lungs and her inability to breathe meant… In her final
thoughts, she cursed Jade. May you be destroyed by your own misdeeds.
***
John looked up as Jade entered the room that now served as kitchen and mess
hall. He slid back a few feet, backing off from her. Karkat had told him not
to, but the urge to not even be in the same room with her was still incredibly
strong. “Ah. John. Take another few days off. I’ll be… well, I’ll be looking at
alternate experiments for a while. I may not even need sleep.” John shuddered.
This wouldn’t be good. It wouldn’t be good at all. He had to see what she had
done this time. He traced her tracks, arriving at the lab where she’d been
keeping Aradia. He opened the door hesitantly.
The sight on the table was gruesome. John couldn’t help himself. Everything
he’d been holding back in his time with Jade came spilling forth. He dropped to
his hands and knees, sobbing as his vomit splattered on the cold tile. He could
feel it pool around his hands, but at that point, he didn’t care. He had to
purge what Jade had done from his system. Every last moment of torture and
grief. He continued to heave long after his stomach’s meager contents had
emptied themselves onto the tile floor, long after the stomach acid had risen
up as well and coated his teeth. The acrid stench of the various liquids and
the telltale markers of a corpse wafted upwards as John shakily got up and
turned from the room, the door slamming shut behind him. There was no time.
Karkat had to be warned.
When he returned to the mess hall, vomit staining his shirt and hands, he gave
Karkat a pointed look. Karkat nodded and stood up, heading off to speak with
Terezi. It was necessary. Then John left for the bathroom. True, it probably
wasn’t entirely safe from Jade… but he had to wash up. The purge did nothing if
you weren’t cleansed afterwards.
Chapter End Notes
     This chapter wasn't easy to write. Especially since I genuinely like
     Kanaya and try to be nice to her in most of my other works (see, for
     instance, her having Vriska as a girlfriend in the 70s AU, or her not
     being killed by Eridan in Sixteen). Still... Sadist Jade demanded two
     things: Blood, and a shot at everyone in the cast who wasn't already
     dead. So... I'm sorry, Kanaya. D: So very sorry.
***** Lies *****
Chapter Summary
     Isolated: Placed or standing apart or alone; detached or separate
     from other things or persons; unconnected with anything else;
     solitary. (OED)
Chapter Notes
     For future reference, Dave and Aradia are currently MIA setting up
     stable time loops for the defeat of Bec Noir. I'm not sure if it's
     been mentioned in prior chapters or not, so I'm mentioning it here
     and now, as an important thing for the plot.
See the end of the chapter for more notes
The first thing she noticed upon waking was that her nose was plugged with what
smelled like black cloth. Black was all she could smell. It was like back when
she was first blinded. Back when Vriska had gotten her back for the incident
with the white oracle. She heard footsteps, and turned to face them. After all,
even though it wasn’t as developed as her smell, her sense of hearing was quite
developed. The second thing she noticed was that she was tied to the chair,
expert bindings holding her in place.
“Hi, Terezi!” said Jade. Terezi steeled herself. Kanaya had told her in her
last dream what Jade had done, had told her that Jade wasn’t sleeping anymore.
“I was hoping we could talk.”
“Is there a reason you’ve blinded me? Not that I don’t appreciate the ‘blind
justice’ pun, but I’d rather talk to you unhindered.” Her voice sounded like
she had a particularly bad head cold. “Although I suppose the bindings on my
arms do that as well.” She twisted in her rope bindings. She was Justice, and
Justice could not be bound by stupid knots. Her fingers fumbled; they felt numb
as she tried to undo the knots.
“Hee hee… Terezi, you know as well as I do that the bindings on you are
completely necessary! Especially since we both know what you’d do if I were in
your position.” Jade continue pacing in front of her. “You’d sentence me to
hang. Hang by the neck until poor little Jade’s face was blue, and oh wouldn’t
John be angry that you’d killed his sister.” Terezi imagined a cruel grin on
Jade’s face, something like what Vriska used to wear when she was feeling
particularly vicious. Jade’s buck teeth ruined it.
“John doesn’t think of you as his sister anymore, Jade.” Jade’s laugh was
unhinged and broken. “He thinks of you as someone he can leave behind. Someone
who hurt him.”
“Oh, but I didn’t hurt him,” she cooed, and Terezi could feel Jade’s hand trace
her jawline with a mockery of a lover’s caress. “You all did that. I just…
showed him love and kindness.” Jade giggled as she withdrew the hand. “You’re
the ones who broke him, who took him away from me.”
“Then tell me why he smelled of vomit six nights back.” Jade laughed. There was
the sound of her picking something off a tray.
“Because he threw up,” said jade. “Really, it’s not at all uncommon when your
diet’s as bad as his has been. Besides… John eats his meat medium-rare, but
troll shouldn’t be eaten at all until it’s cooked through. Upsets the stomach
otherwise.” Terezi frowned.
“So all these meals, we’ve been eating…”
“No, just the latest one,” said Jade. Terezi felt a sliver of pain as a knife
sliced off her ear. Small blade. Probably not actually a knife at all, but a
scalpel. That would be congruent with the size of the blade. Paper cloth was
pressed to the side of her head. “Oh, such a mess these wounds make. I wish we
were in one of my labs.” Terezi felt the scalpel pierce her right eye, felt the
dead organ leak blinded fluid. “Oh well. Can’t be helped.” Something cold slid
into her side. Terezi almost immediately recognized it as another scalpel. “You
know… I’ve learned something about trolls.” The scalpel slid further, cutting
her abdomen right in the bend at her waist. “Specifically, the boys have
nipples but never use them, and the girls have ovaries… but the ovaries are
only dormant, not vestigial.” A slice up the other side of her body. Jade
carefully lifted up her shirt, leaving behind the cut flesh. “However… even if
a troll used her ovaries… she’d still lay eggs, I bet. Nipples would still be
useless.”
“Are you trying to get me to scream from pain? Because it won’t work.” Terezi
felt Jade shove something in her mouth. An expander. It forced her mouth open
as she grabbed something else from the tray.
“You know what? You’re probably right.” The device she’d picked sounded large
and mechanical. “Then again, I’d also bet you haven’t had a tooth pulled with a
pipe wrench.”
“A hhhu’k’?” She felt the strange earth device clamp down on her front two
teeth. With a sudden wrench, the two teeth in the bottom front had abandoned
ship. She winced as she began bleeding from the mouth. But she was strong. She
was Terezi Pyrope. She could handle anything this bitch could dish — The clamp,
or whatever it was, pulled out two more teeth. Then another pair, and another.
Soon a round dozen teeth were missing from her mouth.
“I was really lucky to find the code for this,” said Jade. “So lucky. You have
no idea. But… I dunno.” She collapsed and removed the expander. “Sure, pulling
teeth feels good — it feels real good. But… I think it’s time I use it for a
more intended purpose, hm?” Terezi felt something collide with her knee. Pain
coursed through her body. The wrench swung again and hit her left eye, which
had up until that point merely been burnt out.
“Liar,” she said. “Everything you say is a lie, isn’t it?” She heard Jade
laugh. “Sollux is alive, isn’t he?”
“For now. Although whether he’s still quite the same as the Sollux you knew is…
debatable.” Terezi reached out with her power, trying to see the twists and
turns of Jade’s mind. Perhaps she could get some insight into her tormentor,
figure out a way to get out of this predicament.
The sensation was unlike any mind she’d ever glimpsed. Karkat had been
straightforward, like staring down a hallway. Dave had been a confusing maze of
twists and turns and dead ends trying to conceal a straightforward mind like
Karkat’s (no wonder she had been attracted to him). John had been deceptively
twisty and secretive for someone so naïve and kind, almost like Vriska’s mind,
but sweeter. But they had all felt whole. Jade’s mind felt broken, and it
burned at the cracks. Terezi flinched away at first before allowing her mind to
slowly seek out the paths that would lead her to an idea of what to do without
getting burned.
Something was shaving her left horn. She could feel the blade biting into the
flesh as it slowly scooped out some of the horn, leaking some of her teal blood
in a small rivulet. Then came the scraping of her kneecap. She grit her teeth
and bore the pain as her patella was slowly and surgically exposed and removed.
She knew the same would happen with the other kneecap. She focused all her
energy on trying to figure out Jade’s mind.
Fires hotter than Sollux’s planet had been flashed in her head. She could smell
the flames, green and white, almost as if Jade’s brain were the green sun. But
that obviously wasn’t the case. Rose had seen the Green Sun. It had been
described in great detail. A pure, green, warm glow that didn’t burn, except
with enlightenment. The only harm inflicted by it was that its wielders
inflicted. Such was not the case with Jade’s brain.
The fire seared through Jade’s brain, and Terezi caught a whiff of some of the
images in it. John, tenderly kissing his sister (if she remembered right, a
taboo). Karkat, disrobing the human eagerly. Vriska with a bullet in her heart
as John smiled at the corpse, holding a smoking gun. Bec Noir on a leash, kept
like a vicious pet. The images continued, a parade of the perverse, the taboo,
and the vile. She pushed through, seeking the epicenter of the flames, teeth
clenched to keep herself from crying out as a needle and thread sewed up her
wounds. There had to be some reason. Some overarching thing that had happened.
There was no other explanation. She couldn’t be this broken from her life. Not
even Gamzee had been like this, when she’d finally glimpsed his sober mind.
Terezi felt the sewing needle finish its job. Desperately, she pressed onward,
seeking the source of the damage, the place where it had all started. Was it
there, where her grandfather lay dead? Was it there, where her dog had blown up
the entire world? Was it even there, when Karkat had begun trolling her? She
couldn’t tell. So many possible epicenters, and yet none of them felt right for
the epicenter. Perhaps if she dug deeper, searched further, she could find the
path through the twisted, flame-cracked passageways of Jade’s mind. Perhaps, if
she’d just ascended to Godhead…
The pain was almost gone. Terezi felt the numbing agent. Her hands were still
tied. And then she felt an unusual sensation. The cloth that had tickled her
nose was gone. There was a source of illumination, which allowed the colors to
be smelled. She could see the teal stains on Jade’s shirt, could see her lick a
bit of teal off a finger. “You taste good,” she said. “Now then, I’ve set it so
the ropes fall off as soon as the door closes. But… at the same time, the
lights will go out.” Jade laughed. “Oh, and I have your sylladex. So… I’m
afraid you’ll have to occupy yourself.” Jade turned and began walking out.
Terezi focused on her. She had to keep Jade from leaving until she found the
epicenter.
The troll girl opened her mouth. “Hey! What are you doing?” she asked. Her dead
red eyes betrayed her confusion. Jade just laughed again.
“This is an old human invention. It’s called a sensory deprivation chamber.”
Jade had reached the door. “I think I’ll leave you in here for a while.” The
vault door slammed shut. The light went out. Everything was black as pitch. The
only sensations left were her clothes, now half-gone, and the decreasing pain.
She reached up to her left horn. It wasn’t even bleeding anymore.
***
She had tried to keep track of time. After the pain had gone away, she had
begun counting in paces. But she couldn’t keep up paces, and the room muffled
any noise. The chamber was as warm as she was, so she had only the texture to
go on — and through a troll carapace, that was difficult to go by. She had been
through eight thousand nine hundred forty-six paces when Jade returned,
briefly, to strip her of the rest of her clothing. Jade had flooded the room
with knockout gas before entering, a clever trick that had almost killed
Terezi. As she continued walking, she began talking to herself to try and stay
sane.
By the first sleep, she was a gibbering, hallucinating wreck. “Karkles, no, I’m
not letting you touch me there with your bone bulge. Seriously, do you have any
idea how disgusting that is? Would be?” She grinned at the air. “Of course I
love him, Gamzee. I’m only walking around like this because my clothes
vanished. No, Kanaya, I don’t blame you. It wasn’t you who suggested we play
‘Hide the snake in the cave’…”
She turned as the door opened. “Eridan?”
“Nope!” came a dementedly cheery voice. Terezi turned. That voice inspired fear
for some reason. It wasn’t any troll, that much she knew. She sniffed; whatever
it was, it was pink. Pink and black-haired and wearing… glasses. “Guess again.”
“…Mindfang?” The cheery voice laughed again. Something triggered in the back of
Terezi’s memory. A name… “…Jade.”
“Good, you remember me!” Jade grinned at her. “I’m glad to see it. Especially
since I left you in here for so long… I’m not sure how many hours it’s been.”
Terezi shuddered. Karkat would be worried. She’d tell him what happened as soon
as she… Jade shoved her to the floor. “Now now, Terezi. I hope you weren’t
planning on running! Not when I was just delivering you some food. I imagine
you’re starving.”
“Food? Why should I eat anything you…” Her stomach grumbled. “Anything you
made?”
“Because it’s that or continue starving… and it’s already been two days. Trolls
can’t survive too long without food. And I’m being merciful to you! Sollux once
went seven days without food. Gamzee took a nine day hiatus from eating while
his achilles tendon was still causing him too much pain. I think John’s been
eating less too… tsk tsk, so unhealthy for him. And his sperm count.” Terezi
took a step backwards. “Here. Eat. Otherwise Karkles… well… hee hee hee…”
“What are you doing to him?” asked Terezi. A note of horror crept into her
voice.
“Nothing yet. Eat, and I probably won’t do anything to him. Don’t eat… and I
definitely will.” She set a plate of food on the floor. “Sweet dreams, Terezi.
Sensory deprivation is go again…” The door slammed closed. The black was back.
The only thing she could sense… was the food. She dove onto the plate and began
frantically eating, hoping that a clean plate would save Karkat from Sollux’s
fate.
***
Karkat looked at John. “She should have been back by now. It wasn’t a difficult
assignment. Send Dave a message explaining what Jade’s doing to us, asking what
to do.”
“She should’ve been able to get the most recent Dave, too,” he added, opening a
package of rice and pouring it into the pot of boiling water. “You don’t think
that…”
“Don’t say it,” said Karkat. “If that’s true, I might become sick to my
stomach.” He sighed. “I’ll get Rose to write a message for him. I just hope
it’ll work.”
“I hope so too.” John looked at the covered pot full of rice. “I hope so too.”
Chapter End Notes
     Ten little Soldier boys went out to dine; one choked himself and then
     there were nine.
     Nine little Soldier boys sat up very late; one overslept himself and
     then there were eight.
     Eight little Soldier boys traveling in Devon; one said he'd stay
     there and then there were seven.
     Seven little Soldier boys chopping up sticks; one chopped himself in
     half and then there were six.
     Six little Soldier boys playing with a hive; a bumblebee stung one
     and then there were five.
     Five little Soldier boys going in for law; one got into Chancery and
     then there were four.
     Four little Soldier boys going out to sea; a red herring swallowed
     one and then there were three.
     Three little Soldier boys walking in the zoo; a big bear hugged one
     and then there were two.
     Two little Soldier boys sitting in the sun; one got frizzled up and
     then there was one.
     One little Soldier boy left all alone; he went out and hanged himself
     and then there were none.
***** Candy *****
Chapter Summary
     Slavery: n, The condition or fact of being entirely subject to, or
     under the domination of, some power or influence.
Chapter Notes
     This was probably the secondmost uncomfortable chapter to write,
     after chapter three. Read onward if you dare.
See the end of the chapter for more notes
Karkat hadn’t seen Jade or Terezi for ten days. Vriska’s luck wasn’t getting
her anywhere with the search except finding Sollux — and barely evading Jade
coming out of the room. After what she’d done to John, she didn’t want to be
alone with Jade, and Karkat couldn’t blame her. Given how Jade was, she’d
probably kill the god girl. Even though she probably technically couldn’t.
Jade’s surprise arrival in his room, therefore, had been an extreme shock.
Moreso when he noticed what she was holding. She was holding what appeared to
be a set of shackles. “OK, what the fuck.” The sickle was in his hand before
she’d even opened her mouth. “Where the fuck is Terezi.”
“Aww… Karkles has a crush!” Karkat growled. “Don’t worry about the blind girl.
She’s reasonably safe. For now. I make sure to clean up after her so that there
aren’t any sensations for her. I have a feeling if I didn’t she’d go crazy.”
Karkat took a step towards her.
“You crazy bitch. What the hell have you done to her?” Jade smiled.
“Like I said. She’s safe for now. But if you keep this up… well… I might just
have to go and make sure she isn’t.” For a moment, Karkat was paralyzed. That
was all the moment Jade needed, apparently, to throw something at him, knocking
the sickle out of his hand. “Don’t worry, Karkles. I have a way for you to keep
her safe.”
“…” Karkat shuddered. Terezi didn’t have a dreamself anymore. If he wanted her
to be safe, he’d have to protect her himself. “What’s the way?” Jade’s grin was
some horrible mocking expression of joy.
“So glad you asked!” She walked forward with the shackles. “The first step is
to let me put these on you.” Karkat shuddered. “I’ll need your wrists and your
ankles for this one, Candyblood.” His incredulous expression must have betrayed
his hesitancy, because she said “Now Karkles! You have a choice, you know! You
do this itty bitty thing for me, or dear sweet Blind Spot isn’t safe anymore!”
Karkat stepped forward. “This is where I’d say that this is low,” he said,
holding out his arms, “but for you? This is an improvement.” The heavy iron
shackles were soon tight around his wrists and ankles. “So how long do I have
to wear these?”
“Until I let you take them off,” said Jade, grinning. “Now then. Empty your
sylladex and strife specibus.” Karkat’s look said it all; he thought she
thought he was mental. “Do it. Otherwise I’ll let Pyrope be tanglebuddies with
the Horrorterrors. And I don’t mean by letting her die.” Karkat emptied
everything out of his sylladex and specibus, removing even the simple sickle
he’d started out with. Jade collected it all, and then snatched away his fetch
modus and his specibus. “You won’t be needing these.”
“OK, what the fuck gives you any right at all to — “ Her hand moved faster than
he thought possible. Before he knew what was coming, she had slapped his face.
“You will not speak until spoken to.” Jade looked him over. “Good, good, looks
like a firm, strong, healthy specimen.” She had begun to affect a strange,
drawling accent. Karkat would have found it erotic if it weren’t looking over
him like a piece of furniture. She shoved open his lips and gave his teeth a
once-over. “Good age, too. Yes, I think this will do nicely.” Karkat glared at
her. “Now all we need is a name… how about Tom? Yes… yes, Tom sounds good. It
sounds very good.” He tried to back out as she took a cast-iron collar from her
sylladex, but the stupid shackles meant she was faster than him, and before he
could object she had him collared and chained. “Well, I do declare. The
payment’s been made in advance.” She grinned, grabbing the chain and beginning
to walk from the room. “Come, Tom.”
Under his breath, Karkat muttered, “Not on your fucking life, you bitch.” Jade
yanked the chain, her voice unbearably cheerful.
“Tom, come!” Karkat remained stubbornly still. “My, my. Looks like we have a
lesson needs to be taught.” She somehow fastened the chain in place to a
cabinet, and from a strife specibus she pulled out a long, heavy whip. “I think
thirty lashes ought just about do it.” She walked around behind him. His stupid
fucking leg irons meant that he wasn’t going to be able to move fast enough to
avoid her —
“Ow!” The whip scored a line up the entire length of his back. “What the fuck!”
“A good slave obeys its master’s orders, Tom.” Wha-crack! The whip fell again,
tearing a line a good foot long through Karkat’s bare carapace, spilling the
candy-red blood underneath. “A lesson you’ll have to learn.” A third crack of
the whip. “Otherwise I don’t think your mate’ll live to rut with anything.” A
fourth crack. He could feel his blood burning on his back. “Strange to see
somethin’ so inhuman have human blood.” The fifth crack of the whip scored the
base of his neck.
“Jade… what…” A crack of the whip lashed the space between two of his ribs.
“My name is Mistress, Tom.” The seventh and eighth cracks fell with grunts of
pain — Karkat could hold out, but this was ridiculous. “Who am I, Tom?” A ninth
whiplash. Karkat’s shirt was a bloody tatter on the back. “I said who am I? A
slave ought be prompt in answerin’!” The tenth whip-crack scratched one of his
horns as well as scraping another line on his back.
“Y-you… are the Mistress,” said Karkat. The eleventh whip-crack came, and
Karkat’s grunt of pain went almost unnoticed.
“Louder,” she said, and the whip came down a twelfth time.
“Y-you’re the Mistress!” Thirteen.
“No contractions now! Who am I, slave?” Fourteen.
“M-mistress… agh… you are the… ngh… m-mistress… YEOW!” Eighteen. Nineteen.
Twenty. Karkat felt the new wounds opening, felt the blood pouring down his
back and running through the cracks already made in his carapace.
“And you are?” Twenty-one.
“Kark—AUGHFUCK!” Knight of Blood or not, this was still a ludicrous amount of
blood loss. He knew he’d survive it, but he would be weakened for days. “Kark
— OHGOD!” There was more of a bite in that last swing, and Jade spoke again,
furiously lashing the whip as she did so.
“Your! Name! Is! Tom!” The shirt was finally shocked off him. “Now. What. Is
your name.” Her voice was quiet.
“Karkat… Vantas.” Another lash. That made thirty. And then another.
“Thirty more lashes,” said Jade, “and another ten every time you get your name
wrong. Now what’s your fucking name.”
Karkat wasn’t sure how many lashes he could handle, but he wasn’t going to give
up. “Karkat.” The lash stung as it whipped his raw back further. “Vantas.” The
flesh was being flayed. “Karkat.” He shuddered as she continued to whip him.
“Vantas.” The whip’s rise and fall coincided with his continued utterance of
his name. Before too long, his carapace was so broken it might as well not have
been there, and the raw muscle was being torn by the whip. But still he kept
saying his name. By his calculations, he was up to forty-five out of a
staggering two hundred ten lashes. “Vantas.” Forty-six out of two hundred
twenty now.
Although he didn’t know it at the time, he would reach eighty lashes before he
passed out from exhaustion and blood loss.
***
When he woke up, his back was covered in lash-marks. The wounds had scabbed,
and he began counting. “Eighty out of five hundred sixty lashes delivered, Tom.
You are one stubborn, ugly cuss.” Jade grinned at him. He turned his head and
saw the candy-red stains on the floor. “But I was right in my assessment! Hale
and strong. Probably virile too, but I won’t check that. Leastwise not afore
you’ve gotten your next four hundred eighty.” She pulled a knife, an honest-to-
god bowie knife, from her sylladex. Or perhaps her strife specibus. He wasn’t
sure anymore.
“You know, Tom, you seem almost human. Hell. I think I’ll do you the honors of
making you as human as I can.” The knife sliced through his left horn without
much resistance, and Karkat kept his response to the intense pain to a grunt.
“And the other one,” The knife sliced the other horn clean off, as well as
removing bits of scalp and connected skull. “Then dock the ears…” The knife
wasn’t meant for delicate work. As it sliced through his ears, he could feel it
cutting into the bone behind. “And then come the hard parts.”
She looked at him, sighing. “I’m afraid there’s nothing I can do for your eyes.
So we’ll have to work extra-hard on the rest of you.” Jade stripped him of
everything but the irons. “Now… Let’s bleach, hm? Good way to get rid of
pigment, bleaching. Kinda toxic, though. Might want to wait until the bloodflow
stops.” Jade drew a file from her sylladex. As she did, her voice returned to
normal. “Now, no biting, or we’ll bleach anyway and if you die…” Jade shrugged.
“Well, Pyrope’s lived a fulfilling life. Alone in a tree for thirteen years,
orphaned, raised by animals, falling in love with the first poor sap to give
her anything…” The file came down on Karkat’s teeth, and as she scraped the
teeth painfully, he grimaced. This was a metal file. Was she really using this
to…
Karkat began sweating. In the movies, and probably in real life, SM/torture
blackrom scenes always had a safe word. But Jade had whipped him into
unconsciousness and then waited for him to come out of it before ladling on
more torture. That realization terrified him almost as much as the prolonged
damage to his teeth hurt him. He had proud Alternian fangs. He was no
herbivore. And no human bitch was going to make him into… into… Karkat winced.
If he didn’t play along (although he was less sure this was play anymore) then
Terezi would be hurt. Possibly killed. He knew Jade had it in her. John’s
vomit-stained shirt told him that much.
“OK! Teeth done! Now then… I think the ears are scabbed over well enough!” The
accent had returned. Jade led him over to a disconnected ablution trap. “Hmm.
You know, I suppose I could claim that you’re suffering from argyria… but
you’re my slave, and slaves don’t eat Mistress’s silver jewelry.” Into the tub
went several gallons of industrial-strength bleach, emptied from their
containers and mixed with something Jade called “soap”. Karkat was dubious of
this claim. Still, she motioned for him to get in.
The sensation burned. The bleach was whitening his carapace almost like it was
a bad dye, stripping him of pigment and causing him extreme pain, while the
“soap” (which Karkat now recognized as lye) burned away at his skin, giving him
a chemical burn that would last forever. “AAAARGH!” Karkat looked at her.
“MISTRESS!” She pulled him out, heavy gloves on her hands. “Mistress…” She
began dousing him in vinegar and soda. “Mistress… burns…”
“Shh… shh… I know it does,” she said. “But that’s the way it has to be. That’s
the only way to make you presentable.” Eventually the bases were neutralized,
and Karkat was placed back in the irons. They were, by now, his only clothing.
“And there! I seem to have done a number on little Tom, though. I doubt he’ll
work again in the same way.” Jade smiled, and whispered in his ear, “If you
will remain my slave, Terezi will remain safe. Well? Do we have a deal?” Karkat
shuddered. It was for the good of the team, he reminded himself. The good of
the team, and their best hope of getting out alive.
“Y-yes, Mistress,” he choked. The smell of vinegar and urine wafted through the
room.
“Good. Now, Tom, go to the galley and tell Cooky that I’d like one steak, well
done, and be quick or you’ll get the lash more than you already have comin’.”
Karkat gasped. He’d be able to talk to John. He’d be able to tell him that the
plan needed to be accelerated.
***
John wasn’t sure who the shackled, naked, white person who came in was, but the
paleness of his complexion was blinding and his eyes were suspiciously yellow.
“Hey, John.” John gasped at the voice. “John, you’re going to have to ask Rose
to find Terezi. Jade’s making me serve her or something, she keeps tossing the
word ‘slave’ around.” He shuddered. “Make sure Rose finds Terezi and gets her
the fuck out of where she is. Until then I’ll have to be Jade’s shitty
servant.”
John looked into his pot. “Karkat… she hasn’t… has she?”
“Not yet. Believe you me, though. When this is over? When this is over she’s
going to be a fine paste.” Karkat glared at the pot. “In the meantime, Jade
wants a steak. She says well done. I say… add a little cyanide.” John
shuddered. Karkat’s eyebrows narrowed. Surely John wasn’t going to refuse, was
he?
“I… I can’t hurt my sister like that, Karkat.” John began cooking a steak. “If
it were laxatives, or some prank, I could, but…”
“She’s not our sister,” growled Karkat through clenched teeth. “She raped you,
she’s torturing me, she’s taking things out on my best fucking friends…” Karkat
glared at him. “Look. I’ll play along with your little game. But the moment
Megido and Strider return, we switch to my plan.” He watched John flip the
steak over. “And my plan is this: Harley. Dies.” John’s attention was firmly on
the steak. “Get Rose. Tell her to rescue the fuck out of Terezi. And then we’ll
go from there.” Karkat took the well-done steak in his bare hands. The numbness
was, for once, in his favor.
Chapter End Notes
     All it takes for evil to succeed is for good men to do nothing.
***** Seer *****
Chapter Summary
     Distraction: n, The drawing away of the mind or thoughts from one
     point or course to another; diversion of the mind or attention. (OED)
Chapter Notes
     Wow. Can't believe I forgot this. Anyway, this is the part where the
     rescues begin. Thankfully. It's only taken what, six chapters of
     people disappearing? So yeah. Still not sure why I didn't note it up.
See the end of the chapter for more notes
The white oracle had been kind enough to provide a map to the sensory
deprivation chamber Jade had built, as well as a way to bypass her security
measures. Rose opened the door. It seemed she was fated to do this. Someone sat
in the middle of the room. Someone gray-carapaced and naked. She seemed to be
trying to type something in midair without a computer. “Silly Tavros,” she
muttered. “They’re not just for girls! Eridan plays FLARP too…” Rose approached
her. “Who’s there? You… pink and gold? You’re not the weird laughy one who
brings the food, are you?”
“Terezi… It’s me. Rose.” The blind girl turned to look at her, nostrils
flaring. “Remember?” The nostrils flared again.
“R… Rose…” Terezi looked lost in thought. “I… I remember, Kanaya talked about a
flower called a rose, once… it was one of her weird rainbow drinker romance
flowers… Does that make you a… rainbow drinker?” Rose shook her head. “Hmm…
You’re strange, Pink Gold Rose. Terezi reached out and rubbed her scalp. “No
horns. I’m so sorry. Did something happen?” Rose shook her head. “Where are we
going?”
“Terezi… who’s your best friend?”
“Oh, that’s easy!” Terezi grinned. “Karkat and Vriska! Karkat’s a grumpy
sourpuss but he’s OK enough, and Vriska’s kinda crazy but she’s also super
cool. We’ve been FLARPing together for half a sweep now! That’s actually how I
met her, through FLARP.” She looked down. “D’you like my symbol? I picked it
‘speciallly because it’s a beautiful teal symbol. The perfect symbol for a
future legislacerator, even! It means balance.” Rose nodded.
“Terezi, how old are you?”
“Gonna be four sweeps old next perigee. I’m super excited because Karkat said
he’d come up to my hive! I may need glasses, though. Everything’s all blurry. I
don’t remember it bein’ this blurry…” Rose plugged her nose. “Ah! Rose! Where
are you? Why did it go dark?!”
“Terezi… you went blind. After Vriska killed Aradia.”
“Vriska… killed Aradia?” Terezi looked incredulously at Rose. “What the hell
are you talking about? Aradia’s still alive! She visited me in my dream last
night. She was a fairy queen.”
“Terezi, you’re six sweeps old. You’ve been blind, from what you’ve told me,
for a sweep and a half by now.”
“…But… I…” Terezi looked at rose with pleading eyes, almost as if to say “No,
please don’t do this.”
Rose pressed forward. “Vriska crippled Tavros, and eventually killed him. You
played a game called Sgrub where you eventually created a universe.” Terezi
collapsed to the floor.
“I… I what?” Rose picked her up and held her.
“You were the Seer of Mind. You had — and still have — the power to delve into
others’ minds. Here, attempt mine.” Terezi looked at Rose plaintively, her dead
eyes still suggesting some emotion. “I know you can.” Terezi reached out slowly
with her mind. The benefits of being a Seer, Rose knew, extended to a variety
of powers, but the best of it all was the ability to instinctively pierce
deception.
Provided you weren’t crazy. “I can’t be. Vriska’s the one with mind powers, not
me.”
“Please. Just try. Reach out with your mind.” Rose felt the other girl probing
her mind. Rose concentrated on the mental image of Karkat. Hopefully that would
help.
“…Why are you thinking about Karkles? He’s mine! Mine mine mine!” Well, that
was a step forward, even if she was still thinking of herself as a young girl.
“But… wait… I remember… He wanted to talk to me… he had a plan…” She looked at
Rose. “…A message for… for Dave. Someone named Dave.” Rose could see the her
straining to remember, to break through the madness that held her. “I… I can
see it. I… was supposed to… message… for Dave…” Terezi shook slightly. “How
long… in there…”
“Sixteen days, at least,” said Rose. “Things are different now. We’ll have to
hide you. John’s room or the kitchen are the safest places. Jade never goes
there.” Terezi nodded. “I’ll bring you to the kitchen. John or Vriska can help
you from there.”
***
“Rose? Why, Rose, what a pleasant surprise!” Karkat’s front and face were a
mass of lash scars. He was passed out again, bleeding from eighty new cuts.
“Tsk tsk tsk. Tom still won’t accept his new name.” Jade smiled at Rose. “What
do you think? He looks almost human, doesn’t he?”
“Yes. In some demented way, I guess he does.” Rose arched an eyebrow. “You
know, I have some friends who would be interested in seeing what you’ve
become.” The grimdark was hers to control. Rose could call forth the
Horrorterrors’ influence if she felt she needed to. It was almost on par with
god-tier. There was no way Jade could…
“Friends?” Jade grinned. “I know all about your friends. They’re Feferi’s
friends, too. And Jack wants to hurt them… but he wants us dead more.” Jade
laughed. “But it’s OK. I know your friends want to talk.” Jade idly drew her
whip and lashed Karkat again. “So let’s me and them… talk.”
Rose snarled. She raised her right hand. Grimdark forces crowded into it. That
grimdarkness flooded her body, grabbing her and shaking her body like a rag
doll. She finally stood, holding her twin wands in her hands, the yarn between
them black as night. “Bl’groth mb hothaht, Jgdgd.” Jade laughed. “Mb hothaht!”
“So funny,” said Jade, her whip coiling around one of the Thorns of Oglogoth.
“You think you can kill me. You think your black magic can zap a hole right in
little old me.” The wand cracked against Karkat’s skull, its power fizzling in
a decidedly un-explosive fashion. Rose clenched her fist tight. Rose raised the
wand and fired off a beam of black power, a beam that Jade somehow dodged,
despite the close range and the wand aimed at her midriff. “Powerless. You
refuse to think of yourself as such, but you are.” The whip was swapped out for
a different one, one that had no seeming physical difference… until it sliced
into Rose’s right arm. “Like it?” Rose dropped the thorn in surprise from the
whip seemingly having a bladed edge. “The lash is made of scalpel.” Another
slash, this one cutting through Rose’s midriff. “Rose, Rose, Rose. Why are you
fighting me?”
“Nglb’bf.” Rose gritted her teeth. “Nglb’bf kzok Tglrb’gzgr.” Jade laughed.
“NGLB’BF!”
“I guess that means anger.” She laughed as Rose ran at her, tossing the whip
aside. “Anger for what I did with Tom Candyblood?” Rose stopped suddenly mid-
run, eyes wide. “Why, Rose. I do believe I see something in your stomach. Let
me get that for you.”
Rose looked down. The knife in her abdomen expanded as Jade pressed a button on
the hilt. Her stomach was rent in twain by the knife’s sharp edges, and as Jade
pulled it out, she could feel the wound widen. Another knife quickly found its
way to her solar plexus, a knife long enough to pierce her all the way through.
Rose wondered how Jade could get a knife that long. She would have had to
alchemize a… sword…
She could hold out no longer. Rose collapsed from the massive physical trauma.
The last thing she heard before blackout was “Aww. But I wanted to play some
more.”
***
Rose awoke hours later. At least, she figured that was how long had passed. She
looked at her still-bleeding wounds. Karkat was kneeling next to her. “…ngh… so
I’m a… glorified pincushion?”
“And she’s having me keep you alive. It hurts, doesn’t it, Rose? I… never
really got the hang of Blood Healing. Sorry I can’t do anything more.” Karkat
ran a finger under her abdominal wound. “I’ve sewed up your stomach as best I
can. This other wound… well, it’s taken all my power for now to keep it from
bleeding you out.” Karkat sat, hands in his lap, and sighed. “Did you at least
get the message for Dave written?”
“Yeah. And I have a surprise. One that Jade won’t mention, if what you’ve said
to John is true.” Rose smirked. “Terezi’s in the kitchen. She’ll be in John’s
room by tonight. And Jade can’t exactly kill you while Terezi’s at large, or
Terezi will find and kill her. And with Jade in that uncertain spot…”
“She could still kill you,” reminded Karkat. “John’s in human love with Vriska,
not you.” Rose shrugged.
“John’s suggested that I might have had a chance with him, in the past. And
honestly? I don’t mind sharing him with Vriska, if it comes down to that.”
“You sure you weren’t hatched a troll?” asked Karkat. Rose laughed.
The door slammed open. Jade glared at her newest acquisition. “Rose… we need to
talk. Tom… keep her alive. Use any means necessary.” Jade grabbed a scalpel and
several metal clips. “I’m going to make you tell me what you’ve done, Lalonde.
We’re humans. We’re supposed to stick together, rise above those sub-humans.”
Rose could feel the scalpel cutting into her skin, could feel Jade peel the
flesh back to expose muscle, bone, and organs. “But I guess you don’t care
about your species, Rose. You don’t care about your own family compared to some
gray-skinned menace from another universe.”
Rose spat at Jade as the other girl slowly pored over her victim. The spit hit
her nose, and Jade’s only response was to wipe it off and shake it into Rose’s
body with her hand. Rose shouted. The pain was almost unbearable, she was
trying her hardest to shut it out, but… Jade began messing around. “Hmm.
Appendix still hasn’t been removed? Well, that’s vestigial. I can take it out,
no repercussions.” Jade deftly sliced out the organ. Rose screamed from the
pain. It hurt, but the idea of Jade finding where Terezi was hurt more. “You
want to tell me what happened with my pet?”
“B…blow me…” Jade arched an eyebrow before grinning devilishly.
“Hmm. A bit feisty still.” Jade began rooting around through her intestines.
“Here we go. Kidneys. Plural.” She cut one loose from its moorings, and Rose
let out a high-pitched whine of pain. “But you only need one. Just like you
don’t, strictly speaking, need your spleen.” That organ was severed as well,
and Rose grit her teeth and tried hard to suppress the cry caught in her
throat. “So. You’ve had an appendectomy, a kidney removed, and your spleen has
gone on to greener pastures. Will you tell me what you did with experiment four
A?”
“Ffffffuck… you.” Rose could tell Karkat was using his powers to keep her from
dying from the exposure of her organs to air, as well as the internal bleeding
Jade was causing. Jade tsked and placed the scalpel aside.
“My, how uncooperative. I suppose we’ll have to go to more drastic measures,
since you don’t care about redundant organs.” Jade drew a needle and thread
from her sylladex. “Now then, Rose. I think I’ll start by sewing an eye shut.
Your left eye, as a matter of fact. The one with the magic vision.” Rose didn’t
dare struggle as Jade approached her with the needle. One simple move, and she
would die. Now, that would be a good thing if she weren’t still needed
according to Karkat’s plan. His horribly messed up plan that should have been
given more forethought. Rose whimpered as Jade sewed her eye shut. At least it
wouldn’t be as cruel an injury as she could be given. “Now will you explain?”
“A-huh… a-huh… n-no…” Rose didn’t mean for those dry sobs to happen. But then
again, she had to acknowledge the pain. Her strength lay in her mental
resilience. She could bear physical pain. She had to.
“Well, poo. There’s a few things I don’t want to cut out, seeing as you’re
still a human girl. John might have use for you.” She moved to get rid of the
metal clamps when an idea dawned on her face. “…You know, Rose… I’m not sure
I’m all that ready to forgive you maturing faster than me.” The scalpel was
back in her fingers. “But for an answer, I’ll let you keep them. Now where. Is.
Four. A.”
“G-huh… G-huh… Go to…hell…” Rose knew what the scalpel was doing the instant it
hit her flesh. She gritted her teeth. Involuntary breast reduction surgery was
the least of her worries right now. Pain could be suffered to keep others safe.
As soon as Jade sewed her back up, Rose threw up. It wasn’t the wisest move;
her stomach was still tender from the puncturing it had received earlier that
day, and the acidity of her vomit was only exacerbating the problem. Jade
looked at Karkat. “Keep the flesh doll alive, Tom. She’s going to be our new
friend.” Rose glared at her as best she could. “I think I’ll call you… Bunny.”
Rose didn’t make a move. So long as she stayed in position, she could keep up
the façade. And then, once Jade left… Jade turned and went out the door. Rose
collapsed, weeping and screaming from the pain. Karkat placed a hand on her
shoulder.
“I’m sorry, Rose. We have to trust our hope to Dave now.”
***
Vriska had whisked Terezi away almost immediately after entering the kitchen.
“This isn’t part of a one-upmanship plot, is it?” Vriska sighed. “Remember our
truce, Mindfang.”
“Ugh. I swear on Dualscar’s obsessive clinginess that it’s not a part of a one-
upmanship plot. Besides, this is something I wouldn’t want to try to one-up
someone in.” Vriska growled. “Anyway. You need to recover. And if what Rose
says is right, that means being around us. Me and John and Rose. The last three
free people. Well, three of the last four now, counting you.” Vriska sighed. “I
just hope Rose isn’t doing something stupid.”
“She is,” said John, walking in the door and shutting it quietly. “Karkat just
came down for Jade’s night order. Rose went to fight Jade. But… She lost.” John
looked at the floor. “Vriska… I’m going to free them. I’m going to get them out
of that hellish nightmare. Please… give me some of your luck.”
Chapter End Notes
     They think our heads are in their hands
     But violent use brings violent plans
     No more can they keep us in
     Listen, dammit, we will win
     They see it right, they see it well
     But they think this saves us from our hell
***** Jealousy *****
Chapter Summary
     Immortal: adj, Not mortal; not liable or subject to death; deathless,
     undying; living for ever. (OED)
Chapter Notes
     Even though you led him to your friends, even though you tried to
     kill them... you never really wanted them to die. There was no part
     of you that wanted them to die.
See the end of the chapter for more notes
I used to be the luckiest person ever. I could waltz through traps and they’d
not only refuse to go off, they’d outright implode. I could make the ground
fall out from under my opponent. I was so lucky I didn’t even need to beg my
dice for good results; they’d give me exactly what I wanted, when I wanted it.
Then John asked me for some luck. He said he wanted a little, but I knew John.
What he wanted and what he needed were usually two wildly different things. And
right now? Right now, John needed a lot of luck. Almost all of it. If he was
going to do what he said, he’d need more luck than… well, than I’d be able to
part with safely. I’d be dipping back into unluckiness. But I had to. John was
the one who stood the best chance of rescuing everyone. John was the hero.
I was just a pretender to the throne.
***
The door to John’s room was upgraded by Aradia when she recently dropped by. It
was some time after Terezi disappeared for those weeks. She’s still not better,
but given enough time I think she’ll make as full a recovery as she can. It’s
improvement.
John was going to bring them back, one by one. It was easier to keep a handle
on your luck with small groups, I’d told him. Pairs were ideal. John had taken
that to heart, thankfully. He’s not usually one to look out for his own self-
interest. He wants to make sure others are doing all right. It’s his most
endearing quality, as well as the one that makes me want to throttle him nine
times out of ten.
I had told him I’d head to the galley and prepare some food. He knew I was a
horrible cook, and this was mostly an excuse to leave the safety of that
concrete cage he’d trapped me in… but he still let me go. Poor, dumb John. I
wish I could say I’d manipulated you. But… I think you genuinely wanted me to
get out and have some freedom. It was so frustrating, being cooped up in that
little room all the goddamn day and all the goddamn night. And I was sick of
hiding now. I was going to find Jade and kill her. End her puny little life.
I got maybe seven feet from her before she’d filled me so full of bullets I
could be used as Eridan’s boat’s anchor, if he still had a boat and he weren’t
so dead. You never really think about the immortality bit of godhood until it’s
tested. I could feel my body shifting the bullets around, lubricating them in
blue blood as they pushed through my body. I was still alive, somehow. I think
it’s because I’d gone back to unluckiness.
If I were lucky, I wouldn’t have survived. Or maybe I would’ve been able to
dodge.
The Fluorite Octet fell from my hand as I collapsed in an expanding pool of
blood. I watched it roll out something. Perhaps I’d get lucky. Wound
transference. Flesh-eating worms. All 8s again. Of course, it didn’t happen.
They were some random assortment of numbers. Some of them doubled up, nothing
really damaging. The worst part was, I’d half expected it. Expected Jade to try
and kill me, expected the Octet to be useless. My luck didn’t matter, in the
end. It was all John.
***
I woke up strapped to an operating table, forceps digging into me, searching
for bullets. They weren’t tweezers. Tweezers didn’t go rooting through open
flesh as the hands of Jade Harley, who was leaning over my abdomen with piqued
curiosity. “You know… You’re a goddess, Vriska. That means so much. You’ve got
so much power. I almost wonder if you haven’t grown complacent. I mean, you
didn’t even try to steal my luck!” Jade plucked a spent bullet from my
intestines. “Shredded you up pretty good with the gun, though.”
“Can’t steal luck from you,” I said. It was hard to speak; my diaphragm and
lungs had both been damaged, and their repairs were being slowed by Jade’s
search for the bullets. Still, I managed to force out another sentence. “Can’t
steal what isn’t there.” Jade laughed.
“Oh, come on! I had to have some luck. I got Sollux, didn’t I? And I captured
Gamzee. Not really things a person could do without a little luck.” I smiled
grimly at her. She was saving the bullets in my heart for last.
“Could be bad luck.” I gasped in pain as she pulled on something that was most
definitely not a bullet.
“Interesting.” She continued to root around in my stomach. “You know, it almost
seems like you’ve got an even more complex digestive system than us. You have
no idea how lonely it gets. I only have Tom and Bunny to talk to, and they
don’t like me. I mean, I still talk to them, but Tom doesn’t respond to his
name, and Bunny just sits there and stares.” My teeth were gritted as Jade
continued to play with my insides. Her squeal of joy at my liver was almost
demented. “Oh, Vriska! Your liver! It’s blue!” Her eyes focused on mine, and I
could feel the loathing coming off her in waves. “Just like your blood. And the
rest of your insides.” I would eventually be saved, I told myself. Eventually,
all would be well. I would be rescued from the demoness.
***
It was six hours, I reckon, before John got them all together. My torture had
lasted at least that long. His luck had been phenomenal, and he’d saved almost
everyone. Gamzee… well, John had wanted to save him, but I had no idea if he’d
succeeded or not. I hoped he had; sure, Gamzee was terrifying now, but he was
still my friend.
All that was left was me. And I was still being tended to by Jade. I wasn’t a
villain anymore. But I wasn’t dying, either. It was as if my destiny had
refused to allow me dignity. Wasn’t I good enough to be a martyr? Jade had
fished out the bullets, as well as removing half my gastrointestinal track and
a large portion of my internal anatomy. I could feel the vestigial organs
growing back. I could feel the lungs slowly pushing against everything else,
could feel the slow grows of every internal organ. I wished John would come
soon. It would be a blessing.
Finally Jade turned from me. She pulled off her bloodstained gloves. “Well,
time to check on experiment one A!” Jade grinned as she rushed out of the room.
I, meanwhile, was trying to scream out the pain of regrowing my lungs. Usually,
that doesn’t happen…. but then again, usually I hadn’t had my lungs half torn
apart while they were still being put back together, or had my chest clamped
tight in a vise. Still, I was able to grit my teeth and just bear it.
A sudden pain shot through my left leg. I wasn’t sure what the electrical
signal was, but I had a feeling that my escape was going to be much harder to
effect. Next thing I knew, two other joints had joined the right knee in
spasming, and the muscles around those joints had begun to twitch erratically,
contracting as current passed through them. Protip: current fucking hurts. And
that combined with the pain of regrowing organs, well… Someone unobservant
would probably see the jerking caused by the electric jolts and assume it was a
seizure. And then I’d get the restraints tightened on me. I just hoped I would
have some good luck for once.
It was about then that John came in. I’m fairly certain I screamed the word
“hurts”, and a few yelps of pain as I twitched… and by some stroke of luck, he
understood and loosened the restraints. Perhaps being the Heir of Breath
allowed him to sense electricity? He hefted one arm over his shoulder. “Can you
walk?” I winced as I tried to put weight on my right leg. It was still healing,
and I could feel it stitching itself back together, sapping my strength to do
so.
“I… don’t think so.” The pain of my organs growing back was lessened thanks to
the damned restraints being off, but healing was still an intense process. I
felt him lift me — strength so gentle, bravery so bold — and hold me in a
fireman’s carry. As we left the room, my consciousness began to fade.
***
When I came to, I was in the separate side-room John had built for me to keep
me safe. Karkat, white-carapaced and hornless, was watching me. “Thank fucking
god,” he murmured. “I’m going to let Egbert know you’re awake. Poor bastard’s
been frightened out of his mind, worried that you were going to die from your
wounds.” I laughed weakly. My lungs were finally back to full function.
“Can’t die like that,” I whispered. “I’m a god.” Karkat rolled his eyes, and
the next thing I knew, John was in here, gently stroking my face as he slowly
pulled me into his lap. I smiled up at him. “Sorry to make you worry,” I
whispered.
“Apology accepted,” he whispered back. For the longest time, we said nothing;
his hand gently caressed my face, his fingers occasionally brushing some hair
out of the way, and my hand, holding steady on his face, with the occasional
brushing of his earlobe by my thumb.
After a few moments, I looked at him. “The others?” John sighed, helping me
move into a sitting position. My energy would be in the gutter for a while.
“I went for Sollux first. He… she did something to his brain, cut something
out, and now he can barely speak.” John frowned. “She… she hurt him so bad. And
from what I’ve heard, it’s not going to get better ever.” John hugged her. “And
then I went to save Gamzee…” John looked down at his shirt. I looked at it for
the first time. He had splotches of purple on it.
“He was bleeding?”
“He… I think he remembered me. What I’d done. What we’d done.” He shuddered.
“He… he attacked me, and I almost let him kill me, for what I’d done to him…
but then I thought about you, and how you needed me…” What seemed like a sob
wracked his body. “I… at least it was clean. Ish.” He looked down. “But… I hope
I never have to do anything like that again. I’m not Jade. I can’t just kill
someone.”
I stroked his face gently. If I’d been able to, I would have kissed him on his
forehead. All the human actors did that to calm down people in those movies,
must be a cultural thing. Anyway, I just kept stroking, since it was the only
thing I could do. “And then you saved Karkat?” I asked quietly.
“Him and Rose at the same time.” He swallowed. “The… the only one missing by
then was you. You and Dave and Aradia, but they’ve been gone so long…” I
nodded. I really hoped it was just them taking a while. Sure, they had all the
time, but temporal stability had to be maintained. “But… I saw Aradia. A lot.
She just… every time she was there to distract Jade.” My gaze sharpened as I
looked at him. “A… a lot of those times, she died. I don’t think there was one
where she didn’t.” Something sank to the pit of my stomach. I’d seen the Daves
dying left and right before, whenever he did something stupid that made a
branch timeline. It had made me laugh then.
I wasn’t laughing now. “She was trying to correct the past. Keep us from this
fate.” I looked at him. “Then, when you got me…”
“She was there. Standing outside the door. She said you were… restrained, that
you needed to be freed. When we left, I saw her go down in a hail of gunfire.”
I winced.
“She… she sacrificed herself for my sake.” I coughed. I couldn’t help myself. I
was on the verge of crying. “We’ve got to stop her,” I whispered.
“I know.” John closed his eyes. “I know. Karkat has a plan, but Dave has to be
here for it.” He sighed. “Somehow, I know it’ll be all right.” He wrapped his
arms around me, which surprised me. He felt warm and gentle. I couldn’t help
but wonder… But John was holding me. We’d make it work out. After all, he was
here with me. And that was all the luck I needed.
Chapter End Notes
     I don't want the world to see me
     'Cause I don't think that they'd understand
     When everything's made to be broken
     I just want you to know who I am...
***** Broken *****
Chapter Summary
     Futile: adj, Incapable of producing any result; failing utterly of
     the desired end through intrinsic defect; useless, ineffectual, vain.
     (OED)
Chapter Notes
     And in this chapter, Dave comes in and... can't quite make with the
     rescue.
See the end of the chapter for more notes
Time travel is precise. It is a science. None of this flying off the handle
bullshit is allowed. The Knight of Time has to be its keeper. I have to be
impartial. I finally get it.
At one time, I was worried the dead Daves would scare Jade. And if it had been
Old Jade? Probably would have. I know she was fucking terrified when she
pestered me about the doomed past-clone she’d seen snuff it. But then… then
came the Scratch, and we were on the other side of the Veil, and something had
gone just plain wrong with Jade’s backup or whatever. Maybe resetting without
your dream self was so traumatic it did something to your brain, and John’s
god-tier bullshit allowed him to resist.
I’m not sure when I realized I couldn’t change whatever had gone down here.
Probably about fifteen dead Daves ago. I kept finding them in various states of
decay all around, kept cleaning them up when I could… At least four of them had
been split open like ripe pumpkins and carved up by some sort of gruesome
doctor death. At first I thought it was that fucking juggalo. It’d be like him
to do that, I figured. All clowns were creepy-ass monsters. Then I saw him in
there. Purple blood spilled everywhere, John holding a tray, Jade laughing as
she did all sorts of things to him. I burst in.
I was the first dead Dave. Jade hit me with a scalpel through the brain. John
might’ve seen me too, and if it did, I probably scared him. Not sorry, though.
***
After twelve dead Daves I got a timeline down. Five weeks ago, something began
that wound up with Dave getting a scalpel through the right eye, tickling his
brain. Then came the bullet-ridden one who had about twelve thousand tiny holes
dotting his body, at four weeks and six days ago. Another one, later that same
day, had gotten some sort of metal hook treatment. That was the only
explanation I could think of for the bloodstained teeth and the feeling that he
was lacking internal organs.
Four weeks ago, impaled. Three weeks ago, garrote. Two and a half weeks ago,
body pretty much pulped — but I knew it was me. You always know your own dead
body somehow. It’s a time thing, I think. You get so used to dead you popping
up you know him on sight. Two weeks and two days ago, neck snapped. Two weeks
and one day ago, burned to death — or, and this was my hope, burned after some
other death. Burning to death would be way too fucking painful.
Two weeks ago, stabbed with some sort of steak knife to the gut, and what
looked like a fork to the heart. Thirteen days ago, I either vomited to death
or was killed in vomit. Twelve days ago, whipped to death. Really don’t want to
know the story behind that one. Nine days ago, death by blood loss. I also had
my balls ripped off on that one. That one also had the initials JH carved into
it, on the heart. I’m not sure why she did it. But I was going to fix this
mess. Jade was going to die before she even—
Noir cut my life short in the cold of the Veil. Me alongside Aradia. She
probably went to distract him from us. I just got murdered… though me being
there probably helped Aradia hold back Noir for long enough for the four of us
to reach that asteroid.
***
I couldn’t go back further; I was an echo, a backup. My world pre-scratch
didn’t exist. Not that it couldn’t, but… if I’d tried to go back and make it
happen, we’d be in deep shit. Daves would pile up, dying left and right. And
for what? The chance to ruin this godforsaken game a second time? To fuck up so
horribly that our reset button wouldn’t function?
No. I had to face this on my own. Which meant I had to take on Jade. Rewind.
Five days. I can do this. I can take her life. I’ve died hundreds of times.
I’ll keep her from enacting her horrible plan. Her horrid tortures. I’ll stop
Gamzee’s death. Can’t stop Kanaya’s death. But I can stop Gamzee’s.
My blade is out before she can blink twice. She’s got Karkat chained to her
wall. I’ll kill her, free him… I’ll be the hero for once, instead of the
antihero. Instead of the one who has to go the roundabout way. The one in the
shadow of every other fucking man in paradox space. Bro, John, hell, even
Karkat. I’m going to one-up them all. I’m going to stop Harley’s reign of
terror.
The knife in my stomach feels cold, but it’s not as cold as Jade’s glare. She
presses the barrel of a revolver to my throat. “Stop trying to interfere,
Dave,” she whispers. “I don’t like having to kill you.”
***
Five more Daves have turned up, of course. I can’t help it. Something about
what Harley’s doing is just making me angrier than I’ve ever been. Probably
because she wasn’t like this back then. Back when we were playing Sburb. God,
that seems so long ago.
I mark them by time of death. There’s a strict one-a-day progression. Shot,
stabbed, acid, a “nothing” that’s probably poison, and a combination of
lashings and slices. I really don’t want to know what caused that one. By the
fifth corpse, I’m angry again. I set the timetables to rewind. Four days ago.
By mark, before that day’s death. I see John in the kitchen. He looks pale. I
wish I knew what happened to him. Once I’m done with this, I’ll get the full
story.
I know Jade’s door will electrocute me (three electrocuted Daves in a near-the-
door area tells me this) so I just slice it off its hinges. Three-days-ago-me
probably saw that. Jade isn’t in. Karkat is, and Rose is, and they’re both
looking horrible. Rose has more cuts and lacerations than the victim of a knife
maniac, and Karkat’s still got that freaky-ass white thing going on. I’m still
hesitant on asking why.
Not that I get to get the chance, apparently. This’ll be a new one. Will I find
my head, or just my body?
***
The count is up to thirty-seven. I’m determined to break through. I’m going to
stop Jade, kill her, make her pay for all the Daves she’s slaughtered, all the
wounds she’s inflicted on Terezi, and Rose, and John. And the others too, I
guess, but mostly those three. I will make her stop.
“Jade,” I say, my voice hard as steel. It’s four days before we returned. Jade
sighs. “I’m going to —”
“Kill you,” she says, stealing the end of my sentence. “Fucking hell, Strider.
I’ve heard you say that so many times I’ve lost track. And I’m running out of
new ways to kill you.” My sword is out and I’m dashing towards her. She’s not
fast enough to dodge my flash steps. I’m the master of motherfucking time. I
have that shit on lockdown. It’s not going anywhere.
Well, at least I was partly right. I’m not going anywhere with this gaping
hammer wound in my gut. Where the hell did she get such a gaudy piece of shit?
Most beautiful fucking thing I’ve ever seen, even as it condenses my skull. I
think there’s actually a tear in my eye before I shove it.
***
Forty-eight. I’m going to correct this timeline and stop this from happening no
matter what. I found a note from Rose, practically begging for us to stop the
madness. Operation Godhead can wait until Jade’s kicked the bucket. Right now,
we can’t have her messing up things with her torture machines. No, we’re going
to need something different. Something like… Like a complete and total timeline
revision. All the way back to the beginning. But I can’t do that from here.
Another me, a future me, is going to have to do that.
From here, I’ll stop Jade’s machinations. I’ll shut her down in the present,
and maybe past me can get Equius to make some robot duplicates before clown-
face chokes him to death. That should be possible. And then we can get rid of
clown-face too, probably, and then we can get back on track for defeating Noir.
It’ll be simple. All I have to do is find her. Find her, and kill her.
Finding her is the easy part. The tallest tower, the closed door, the broken
window (something happened to that window two days ago from this point in
time). She’s in there now, probably doing some sort of horrible experiment. Or
going slowly mad. Or…
Or she’s asleep. Perfect timing. I can finish her in one quick blow of the
sword. No pressure, Dave. Just kill a sleeping murderess. A sleeping girl.
Lying peacefully in her bed. Looking so innocent in that veil of sleep. Looking
so forlorn, so sad, so lonely. I’m still not sure what she brought with her,
but the book she brought and then read… that’s no good book, of that I’m now
sure. Maybe I could take it from her… maybe I could stick it somewhere far
away. Yeah. But first, I’d have to kill this Jade. And do it quickly.
…All it takes is for my blade to falter, my muscles to relax, and my weight to
shift enough that the floor creaks. Jade bolts up, and for once in my life, I’m
disappointed to find out that a girl sleeps naked. Not because I don’t like
Jade — I still find her kind of attractive, even if she is off the deep end.
No, it’s because seeing her naked kind of blanks out my mind… long enough for
her to club me to death with a fucking pool cue. I’m actually kind of
embarrassed that my last thought is “titties”.
***
Fifty-nine Daves. That is a ridiculous amount of good-looking corpses. The
sixtieth corpse turns up from an hour ago. I think I finally get it. I’ve been
trying to change the past, and the dead Daves are really piling up… because I
can’t accept the fact that Jade has to do this. That she has to torture and
maim and murder. But I won’t let her kill me again. That ship has sailed. No…
I’ll find Aradia, find Terezi, and figure out how to implement our plan.
When I found her, Aradia was sitting in a corner, looking winded and
disheveled. “Hey, ram’s horns,” I said quietly. Even though she had no clue
what our earth animals were she really liked the nickname I’d given her. She
gently kissed my cheek and stood up. “We’ve got to find Rez.” Aradia nodded at
me. I decided I’d have to let her know about the dead Daves. That pile of
Aradia blood on the floor was a bit disconcerting, and I knew she’d tell me
when I was good and ready for it.
“I know. I sacrificed other me’s in order to…” She shrugged. “My best guess is
we have to find John. He was rescuing the others. He knows exactly what’s been
going on.” I nodded, taking her hand. “Unless you managed to go back into the
past and see it all?”
“Nah… I figured out the gist of it from the dead Daves, and then built up a lot
more of them trying to fight it.” I sighed. “We’re going to have to fight her
in the end. It’s going to be so fucking hard. For John it might even be
impossible.” Aradia shrugged.
“Either way… I say we leave Jade out of Operation Godhead.” I nodded. That
much, at least, was a given. I sighed, turning to a note Rose had left behind
for us. I read it over again.
“Dave, please help us. Jade has gone psychotic with no explanation that I can
understand, and her behavior has become most gruesome. Please help us as best
you can. I am off to challenge her; I pray my allies can help me eke out
victory against her.
-Rose”
I sighed. “Sorry, Rose,” I muttered at the screen. “We can’t change it. We can
only help keep it from getting worse.”
Chapter End Notes
     Say you'll be alright come tomorrow
     But tomorrow might not be here for you
***** Sacrifice *****
Chapter Summary
     Martyr: n, one who undergoes death on behalf of any religious or
     other belief or cause, or as a consequence of his devotion to some
     object. (OED)
Chapter Notes
     This chapter took a while to write because I had to show every single
     death. At least, that was how I thought. Also, it has my
     interpretation of what happens when a Time Player who's reached
     Godhood creates a branch timeline. As a side note, Aradia does a lot
     of branch timelines in canon alone, and this adds ten more.
See the end of the chapter for more notes
Being a Time God doesn’t give you immunity to Paradox Space’s ridiculous hoop-
jumping game. In fact, the situation is quite unusual, because not only do you
die from a malformed loop, but you also remember the branch timeline you
created. Fortunately it isn’t retroactive… but it does mean that you don’t
leave a corpse behind. I could probably sit here and talk about that forever,
but dwelling on it is a waste of time… and even for a god, time isn’t something
you can just waste.
We arrived at John’s room without incident. John had told me, before I’d died
keeping Jade from following him and Vriska, that they’d be there. I’d led her
on a wild goose chase across several meteors, and when she finally caught up to
me… well… Poolcuekind was a brutal strife specibus.
I opened the door cautiously. Some blindingly white thing — Karkat, I
remembered — was looking at me from the other side. “Fucking hell, Aradia. You
scared us.” I sighed. “Come in quick, you two. No idea how long it’ll be until
Psycho Bitch catches up to us.”
“She’s got two more hours of chasing me to go,” I muttered. “Anyway. We’ve got
six hours or so to set the plan in motion. Our plan,” I added, looking at Dave.
Karkat nodded. I swallowed. “So… what did she do to you?”
“Long-ass story. We’ll explain after the plan’s gone through. And after
Harley’s been killed. Rose got the cause… she’ll be examining it later.” Karkat
looked at her. “How the hell do you know that Jade’s going to be gone for six
hours? I shrugged uncomfortably. “C’mon, Aradia. Spill.” I looked at Dave, who
nodded. And after a deep breath, I began to tell them about all my various
deaths since I became a god.
***
My first death was the one I did to distract Jack Noir. He was incredibly easy
to deflect. I went back in time, back to a few moments before everyone arrived.
Distracted him to the other side of the Veil. I heard the Horrorterrors asking
why I was risking myself, why I would throw my life away. I couldn’t tell them.
I couldn’t let them know that I was sacrificing some of their lives so that
Jack could be destroyed.
And I held him. I held him for hours, until the spell broke and I was too tired
to continue, until I couldn’t even move. Everyone was safe, I figured, and I’d
saved people from him, so this me could die. It wasn’t that I wasn’t afraid of
death — I still kind of was. I just knew that it wouldn’t be as bad as letting
Noir have run of everything.
The irony of comparing Noir to Jade is that Jade is sadistic. Picking at people
and tearing them apart slowly and delicately. Noir is all about satisfactory
murder, quick death. He just beheaded me. That was it. Life over. Game over.
And I snapped back to right before I’d gone back in time. Didn’t have to go
now. A dead Aradia had accomplished what the living Aradia had set out to do.
Then we skip ahead a few weeks. Dave and I just finished what we were planning
for Operation Godhead. It was time to return to the meteor, and as we’re headed
back here, we pass under a glittering red trail… my glittering red trail. That
was my first sign that I’d be doing some backtracking. Then came the trips down
the hallways… and this strange sort of déjà vu feeling.
The first time I aimed for was the day that Rose wrote the note on the
computer. It was easy enough. Four days ago. Rose didn’t notice me behind her.
I snuck behind her, and pretty soon we were at a diverging path. Rose went one
way… and I spotted Jade coming around the other way. If I didn’t distract her,
she’d get Rose before… or after… Rose wrote that note. I drew on my time powers
to halt her. It froze her for a few minutes, enough time for Rose to turn
around the corner, but then somehow she snapped out of it.
I didn’t recognize the power she used. It was like mine, but different. No
longer a God of Time’s power, though at one point it could’ve been. It was
different. Green, with an aura of smoky fumes. Though I’d never felt it before,
it was strangely familiar, and I tried to think of why I might remember it so
well. But I had no time to reminisce. Jade had already made her next move.
One of my old whips, a favorite of mine from my adventuring days, wrapped
around my throat. Jade dragged me closer, enclosing my neck in tighter and
tighter loops. Air was being kept out of my lungs. I could feel my heart
pounding. That was when she released me, only to grab my neck and lift me up
off the ground. “Something I want to tell you before you die,” she whispered.
“You need to stop disappearing on me.” She slammed me into the ground, hand on
my throat, crushing it. “It’s incredibly rude to not even leave a corpse for
poor little Jade.”
I disappeared, of course. But when I got back, my throat was hurting. Something
else had gone down. I jumped back three weeks. Was she like this back then? I
had no idea. I was going to find out. And maybe… Well, I knew I couldn’t save
people from her, no matter what she’d done. Time must go on. What’s done must
remain done. Stable loops are the only way to save the past. And my loops were
going to be necessarily unstable. Even this one.
I approached Jade’s room. I could hear John screaming, could hear Jade crying
out in joy. I wasn’t sure what was going on in there, but it was probably
something horrifying. But if I burst in right then… well, he’d be done for. Or
I’d be done for. Or I’d be an experiment. I waited, frightened by the noises,
until I heard glass breaking. At that point I moved to open the door… when Jade
opened the door herself. She was naked, dripping with some liquid that I
presumed to be sweat. She wasn’t about to let me get away with what I’d heard
fresh in my mind.
Almost immediately, Eridan’s blue rifle was in her hands. She fired a shot that
I easily dodged. I was, after all, a Time God. I sensed the same power in her
that I’d seen the first time (from my perspective) we’d fought. I didn’t want
to risk having that power deplete me again. So I flitted around, cracking my
whip at her, attempting to scar her or hit her face. A dull thud echoed through
the room, and Jade pulled out a thin, long rod. I grabbed onto it with my whip,
but she yanked on the stick and pulled the whip from my hands before hitting me
across the head with the stick. I lost consciousness.
When I woke up, I was in her room again, stripped naked, with my abdomen sliced
open. Jade was looking over me. “You know,” she said, “there are so many
interesting things about you. These ovaries, for instance! Do they actually
work? And why do you have breasts? It’s not like you give live birth and nurse
your young.” She prodded at various internal organs, listing what they should
do. It was distractingly painful; not only was I having trouble concentrating
on my time powers, I didn’t hear most of what she was saying. I did, however,
feel her taking something out — something painful — with a mention that she
would “run a test”. She grinned at me. “I’m glad you survived! Dave didn’t say
before the jump if you’d survived, Kanaya’s no longer functional, Terezi’s not
letting me anywhere near her, and John would kill me if I studied Vriska!”
“W-what?” I tried to focus. I could easily slip the bonds if I just used the
least of my… A jolt of electricity flowed through my body. “Ergh… what are you
doing, you festering nookstain…?” Jade turned the electricity up again. I
didn’t make out her reply. It was agonizing, the pain… but not enough to kill
me. It was something I could probably eventually get used to. It was straining
me.
I was left there for three hours, four minutes, and nineteen seconds before
Jade came back, clapping like a giddy grubling. “Oh, how excellent! So much
research I’ll be able to conduct on you! …except you have that pesky habit of
dodging and ducking and escaping. Regrettably, I guess I’ll have to kill you.”
A scalpel cut my blood pump out of my chest. When I came back to myself, I
placed a hand over where it had been to make sure it was still there. I felt it
beating. Never have I felt so relieved.
I saw a note on Sollux’s old computer. It was written to me, by me. The content
was surprising. It was a set of four temporal coordinates in quick succession.
I hadn’t written it yet, but it was signed “doomed you #10.” I wondered how
many doomed selves I would have to go through to get to that.
Another rewind. Two and a half weeks ago. I was outside a room with a closed
door. Jade was glowering at me. She smelled horrible, like onions and garlic
and blood, mixed together and blended with the residual smell of a used load
gaper. And she was glaring at me. “You. You did this to him.” I backed off;
Jade was advancing slowly. “I’ll kill you for what you’ve done to john, you
sick, perverted, evil alien being.”
“What do you mean?” I asked quietly. “I haven’t seen John in… in over five
weeks.” Jade snarled, drawing two scalpels. Her eyes were filled with a malice
I’d never seen, and pulsed a brilliant green.
“It’s something your kind did to him.” She lunged at me; it was so easy to
dodge I didn’t even need to dip into my time powers. “Something your little
planet-abandoning kind did to him…” I blinked, confused. As far as I knew,
nobody had told Jade about how the Alternian military (which basically meant
the entire adult population) was off-planet all the time.
“Jade, where did you learn that?”
“I read a book,” she said, feinting with one scalpel while the other tried
clumsily to hamstring me. “It told me all sorts of things…. my real friend
showed me all the lies, all of them. Exposed all the truths, all of them. Do
you know what he said? All universes have to eventually be killed. Such is the
way of the world.” With a flick, the scalpel was thrown. Although the range was
short, I was able to dodge, so instead of a scalpel in the middle of my
forehead, it merely flew past uneventfully.
Amend that. It nicked a horn. She was apparently still able to keep an air of
competence. “Your friend?” Jade laughed. “Who is this friend of yours?”
“Oh, I can’t say his name,” she said, grinning. “There’s no sound in any
language that could represent his true name. But… He’s a close friend.” She
grinned. “And he’s told me all about your time dodging.” I blanched. “Then
again, he’s let me watch how to fight you. Over and over.” A stab with her
scalpel that I realized too late was a feint as she used another one to pin my
foot to the ground. Well, try to pin my foot to the ground. I could still shift
away. All I’d have to do was…
It wasn’t working. Why couldn’t my teleport work? I wouldn’t have time to come
up with the answer. The gun rifle nestled under my chin. Jade growled at me. “I
hope your corpse stays this time, you cunt,” she whispered. “I really want to
mutilate it.” Bang. Off went my head. Down went my body. Snap went my mind,
back to the present. To the actual me. That made four dead Aradias. I needed
two more before I went to those coordinates.
I returned to the day after she’d cut out my blood pump. My chest was still
hurting, almost as much as my throat. The wounds weren’t there, but the pain of
dying was. I saw Jade walking down a hallway, and against my better judgment, I
tailed her.
She went down into the meteor’s depths, through Equius’s portal. The walk was
long, but eventually we reached some sort of arena, hidden deep within the
confines of the asteroid. The stench of death was heavy in this place, and
blood coated the floor. Blood in all sorts of different colors, ranging from
Tavros’s to Feferi’s (mine apparently had yet to be spilled there). And on a
nearby table… I realized before I’d approached it was someone’s body. And in
this case… it was Equius. The month I’d spent with him rushed into my mind. I
wanted for it to be a nightmare, but the dream bubbles didn’t allow for
nightmares. And besides, when would I have fallen asleep?
I felt something heavy, wet, and sticky hit me on the back of the head. I
dropped to the floor and turned to see what it was. There stood Jade, holding a
severed arm. Judging by the color of the blood on the arm, it was Eridan’s.
“Jade. I see you’re doing well.”
“And I see you’re still alive,” she said. She sounded disappointed. “I was
wondering why you’d disappeared.” She swung again, but I could dodge this time.
And I even avoided her hitting my horn this time. Some of Eridan’s blood
splattered on Equius’s corpse. “Then again… you dodge admirably.” She threw the
arm at me. It was an easy side-step.
I’m still not sure how she got so close to me so quickly. After all, Kanaya had
told me that manipulating space wasn’t her quest. Several times, in fact. She’d
mentioned the frogs over and over again, mentioned how hard it was to clone
them, how difficult it had been to breed the Genesis Frog. Bilious Slick, as
we’d called him. It was a cute name, and I still don’t think he minded.
That didn’t alter the fact that very soon one of her scalpels was in my side,
then withdrawn as she pulled out a weapon that was almost certainly too big for
her to hold. It was twice as tall as she was, and then twice that long again.
And yet… I saw green envelop her arm. And as it did, she smirked and pointed
that monstrosity at me. I dodged the first shot, or would have if it had been a
slug. But the fire spread, as if this were some sort of massive shotgun. My arm
was torn to shreds by the shrapnel, and when she fired again, faster than she
should have been able to, I wasn’t able to doge out of sheer shock.
I remembered snapping back and feeling like half my face had been torn off, as
well as a good portion of my insides being perforated. I turned to look at
Dave. “Aradia, are you ready?” he asked. I shook my head. I still had work to
do. Five more trips. I winced slightly as I pulled out the timeboxes again.
Back again. I would go back to those four points, but first I would need to put
myself somewhere else. Somewhere where I could keep Jade from… from what? From
traumatizing John? From killing Kanaya? I couldn’t keep her from anything. It
would be another pointless battle where I’d lose.
Not that I could let that stop me. Just because I was doomed didn’t mean I
didn’t have a role to play. And that role was… was… I wasn’t sure. The time I
landed at was random, until I realized that it was shortly before Dave and I
left. About twenty minutes to departure. Jade’s nose was in a book, and I saw
her walking over to where we were. I recognized the cover. It had been in the
library of Derse when we were still playing the game. And she was almost done
reading it. I had to do something to prevent her from killing us. We were
supposed to survive. “Hello, Jade.”
Jade looked up at me. Her eyes were filled with an obsessive light I’d never
seen before she’d entered our session. She grinned. It seemed eerie. “Aradia!
Aradia, I’ve just read the most wonderful book! It… It explains so much!” She
grinned. “Oh, it’s so beautiful! John would love to read this! He’d understand
so much! And… I can almost feel a new friend, waiting to meet up with m—”
I put her under a time freeze. Holding her there would be necessary until Dave
and I had left. We would be traveling the conventional way, of course, by
flying through the space. But I’d have to hold her for another eighteen
minutes. That was all the time she had to be held. It was nothing.
Eighteen minutes passed, but I kept the time stop on her. After all, I had to
keep her from breaking free and killing me. I had to put up some kind of fight.
But as I watched her, her arm began moving. It shouldn’t have been possible.
This had been enough power to hold back Jack Noir for almost an hour. I amped
up the power behind the spell. It stopped her cold. Still, I wasn’t sure how
long I could hold this level of power before I broke. I’d have to try, though.
Try and keep her from breaking through.
It was half an hour later when I finally released her. I don’t think she was
too happy with me when she was finally freed. She stumbled forward before
pulling out Ahab’s Crosshairs. That stupid gun of Eridan’s had been replicated.
And now she was aiming it at me. I dove backwards as she fired; I could feel
the searing beam pass over my nose. It smelled like burning death and
electrical murder. My whip wrapped around the gun and I yanked it out of her
hands, smashing the godforsaken thing against a wall. And then…
I still don’t know where she got the pool cue from. I remember, though, that it
was the weapon she would later use to steal my whip. I put the whip back in my
Strife Specibus. I wasn’t about to give it to her early. She’d have to pry it
from my surprised grip later on. No, this was a time for fists and teeth and
telekinesis. I was surprised when Jade put the pool cue away and met me head
on. I’m glad I could say the fight wasn’t fair. By the time I was done with
her, she was hanging on to life by a thread. Her glasses had snapped. Her teeth
were red with her blood, and a fair amount of the stuff was leaking from cuts,
gashes, and puncture wounds. Sure, she’d gotten a couple hits in on me — a
couple bullets to the gut, a punch in the trachea, nothing I couldn’t deal
with.
What I hadn’t expected was the hammer crushing my chest in from behind, or John
shouting “Jade! Jade, are you all right?!” I wanted to shout at him, tell him
that no, he was making a mistake, but my lungs had been pierced by bones and my
windpipe was suffering from Jade’s earlier lucky shot. She got up and looked at
him.
“She tried to kill me! Just… out of the blue!” John looked at me. I looked at
him. My eyes pleaded with him. They begged him not to kill me. And I think, for
a few moments, he actually hesitated. But it was enough time for Jade to steady
herself, draw a pistol, and put a bullet in my think pan. My sixth death since
becoming a god, and it was as ignoble a death as I’d ever suffered.
I looked at Dave. He seemed impatient. “I have to do four more trips,” I said.
He nodded. I looked at the list. Someone had edited it. “after you do these, go
back in time and help john.” It listed different coordinates, and was signed,
“aradia, after we’ve dealt with jade.” I nodded, committing the times to
memory. Out came the timeboxes. Back I went to earlier today.
I was outside a room. I could see John and Sollux inside. Coming up on the room
was Jade, a fierce look in her eye. “I’m so excited, and I just can’t hide it,”
she sang. She was about to pass by the room where Sollux was. I had to distract
her. “I’m about to lose control and I think I like it!”
“Jade!” She looked at me, puzzled. “Hello, Jade. You want a piece of me?” She
grinned, pulling out that ridiculously-sized shotgun again. “You’re going to
have to do better than that,” I said. She fired. But I knew how it spread now.
I knew which pellets to stop when so that I could dodge through them. Sollux
had had a term for games like this, where you had to dodge a hail of bullets.
He’d called it “Don Maku” or something. And here I was, putting it to practical
use.
A second thundering, and a third, and a fourth followed. I saw John drag Sollux
out of the room and run down the hallway with him. I grinned. Jade had just
lost one of her hostages. I let my guard down, which was a mistake, because
she’d switched to Ahab’s crosshairs. That gun burned a hole in my stomach.
Out came the timeboxes again as soon as I’d snapped back to my body. Shortly
thereafter. Jade was walking down the hall to the kitchen. Probably heading to
John’s room. “Hey! Crazy lady!” Jade turned. “Want to know why I keep
disappearing? Come on! I’ll tell you if you can catch me!” And I began running,
hoping and praying that Jade would follow me.
I stopped outside the room where Jade had been keeping Terezi hostage. “You
must really want to know,” I said. “I must be getting on your nerves so bad.”
Out came the pool cue. “You’re not going to get the answer out of me with
that.” She charged me, swinging the cue. I ducked, sidestepped, and dodged, not
wanting to waste any more time power. I was fairly certain I was only draining
the actual Aradia’s reserves.
She growled as she shoved the cue in a more complex feint than I could have
imagined. I didn’t quite dodge it in time, and the cue’s butt snagged on my
horns, allowing Jade to slam me into a wall. I pushed myself off the floor
andleapt at her, but it was too late. A pistol of some kind was in her hand
now, and it went off, hitting me square in the chest. “You know,” she growled,
“I’m not sure I care anymore, so long as you stay dead!” The beating was
savage, confined to fists, elbows, knees, feet, and the butts of several
rifles. By the end of it, I was bleeding profusely. She looked down at me. “Now
stay.” The rifle fired. My think pan spilled onto the floor, staining it with
juices for a few brief moments before again I winked out of existence.
I was a mass of pain without the injuries to explain it, but that didn’t
— couldn’t — stop me from using the timeboxes a ninth time. Back I went, to a
room I recognized as Jade’s. She was humming to herself as she presumably went
to check on something. As she saw me, she scowled. “My luck just keeps on
getting worse. Why won’t you die, Aradia?” I laughed.
“But Jade,” I said, “I do die! I’ve died eight times already! You just never
get a body, do you?” Taunting her probably wasn’t the best option, but I had to
do something to make her give chase, and that was the easiest thing I could
think of. And chase she did. It wasn’t a fun chase, like I’d had with Sollux
several times before we’d both turned six, or an erotic chase, like I’d done
with Equius once or twice during our quest. I was running for my life this
time, trying to keep from outpacing her. And it was working. I was faster, as
well, so I could give John enough time to get two rescues in.
John saw me outside a laboratory — the same one where she was keeping Vriska.
“Vriska’s in there,” I said. “Get her out. I’m going to face down Jade.” As
John closed the room’s door behind him, hell-bent on rescuing his matesprit, I
charged Jade head-on. “We’re not going to take any more of this bullshit! For
freedom!”
The Green Sun Streetsweeper opened fire on me. White hot, possibly radioactive
god-bullets pierced my carapace in several hundred places. Still, I had to
fight her. And that meant a suicidal charge at the last minute. A suicidal
charge through a hail of burning lead and acrid smoke. By the time I reached
her, my left hand was torn up, my right arm was ripped off entirely, and my
beautiful horns were spilling blood despite being cauterized. “RAAAAARGH!” My
battle cry was ferocious, and even though the butt of the Streetsweeper knocked
out several of my teeth, I leapt onto her, shoving the remains of my left hand
into her right eye. It made a squelching noise as it went in, crushing the
human organ.
“Fuck you, you parasite-ridden grayskin,” she growled as she rolled on top of
me, shoving a smaller pool cue, almost like a dagger, into my chest. “I’m going
to cut you open until you bleed out, and then when you come back again, I’m
going to finish the fucking job I fucking started!” The cue began frenzied
stabbing; I’m not sure how long I lasted, but it wasn’t more than ten stabs.
When I snapped back, I vomited blood. It wasn’t pretty, and I’m fairly certain
Dave tried to stop me, but I pushed him away. Dave didn’t need to deal with a
vomiting matesprit (a part of me choked on that; he was a human, he didn’t even
know what a bucket was for, and we’d lost our Mother Grub). I pulled out the
timeboxes and shifted back to the final one. This one would be easy. All I had
to do was distract Jade one last time. Get everyone to a place where we could
set up.
Jade saw me and whipped out the Streetsweeper again. I disappeared to right
behind her, tapped her on the shoulder, and then began to fly off… off away
from the meteor. I knew she was furious about a lack of my corpse. I just had
to fly away three hours. Three hours out, and she could kill me, and it still
wouldn’t stick.
Off I flew. Away into the sky, off near where the Land of Quartz and Melody had
once stood. Back where I had once been a ghost frog in a robot shell. I made
sure to make it a three hour trip. That turned out to be fairly easy, as my
trajectory would take me all the way across Skaia from where I had been. I
stopped in the rubble of my former world. Jade arrived there, growling. “It
ends now, Aradia. You are going to stay put.” I grinned. She pulled out the
Streetsweeper again. But I was ready.
The bullets flashed past, whizzing by with the power of the green sun. But out
here, I could move in three dimensions. I could move up and stay up. And I
could move all around and stay there while I wrapped my whip around the god-gun
and threw it away. Out came that ridiculous oversized shotgun again. My whip
went around that and pulled it away as well. Then came the pool cue. I grabbed
onto it with my whip, and when Jade tried to yank the whip from my hands, I
kept my grip, flying up close to her. I put the whip away. Jade grabbed onto
one of my horns, and I grinned. “Go ahead,” I said. “Kill me. I know you want
to.”
She dragged me to the Battlefield, to the place where we had confronted, and
ultimately defeated, the Black King. It was me against her, the god-girl
against the demon-lass. I knew now that a familiar demon had her in his grip.
“You know… you just had to do it, didn’t you. You just had to provoke me.” The
pool cue was out again, and it slammed against my head. I grinned as it caught
on my horns. Her eye socket was still bleeding. She would be easy to hurt now.
She slammed me to the ground, but I still swept with a leg, bringing her down
with me. As we both got up, I threw the pool cue aside and rushed her. While
she managed to catch me before I could tackle her, I responded with a headbutt.
I could see her forehead bleeding. Her knee rose sharply, hitting me in my
breathing catch.
A foot to my instep, then up to my groin. She was fighting dirty, and combined
with the pains I’d already been feeling from my deaths, it was overwhelming.
“Aradia… stay.” A rifle nestled against my forehead as I panted, still feeling
the pain in every part of my body. The gunshot, mercifully, wasn’t painful in
the slightest.
***
“So… an hour from now, Jade beats the tar out of you and shoots you,” said
Karkat. I nodded. “And then, she fucking comes back here, missing an eye and
bleeding from the forehead, and we’re supposed to kill her.” I nodded again.
“What the fuck book did she read?” I swallowed slightly.
“Secrets of the Damnéd One’s Existence,” I said. The pain was more bearable
now. “All about an entity… well, I only know of the demon from secondhand
accounts. I have only the word of a mysterious man who types in white to go
on.” Rose and Vriska gasped slightly. “This demon… is his master.” I looked at
all of them. “Now then. Let’s begin Operation Godhead.”
Chapter End Notes
     You were bold and strong and ready to begin your life
     All for nothing were you sacrificed
     You began alone and so it will be when you die
     All for nothing, will you be remembered?
     You did decide...
***** Collapse *****
Chapter Summary
     Justice: n, The quality of being morally just or righteous; the
     principle of just dealing; the exhibition of this quality or
     principle in action; just conduct; integrity, rectitude. One of the
     four cardinal virtues. (OED)
Chapter Notes
     It ends here. It ends now.
     And then afterwards, who will pick up the pieces?
See the end of the chapter for more notes
I looked at everyone. “Now… the Green Sun is going to explode soon, relative to
our time. This helmet will channel the energy from the explosion and use it to
recreate your quest cocoon or bed and your dreamself, should yours no longer
exist, or should you currently be using it as your extra life, and send you
straight to God Tier. That way, we can all defeat Bec Noir. And after that,
we’ll find a new universe. I imagine we’ll be able to get to one whose creators
either died or don’t care about it anymore. Everyone clear?” They all nodded. I
grinned. “All right. Sollux, you’re first. You might feel a slight… sting.”
***
Her corpse had disappeared again — AGAIN — again she was gone — GONE — and that
made me so angry — SO ANGRY — and she had no idea and I was this close to
calling Noir but no don’t because if you do then John and Karkat and Dave will
die and then you won’t be able to take them into a dying universe and create
new life throughout time and duplicate him — HIM — your new friend — FOREVER
— and jade — JADE — poor little Jade lonely little Jade friends all completed
their quests and left you behind and Rose was so dangerous with the
horrorterrors and John was a god and Dave was well Dave was Dave and everything
was wrong because you were the best you were the one whose grandfather found
the code that became sburb and you were supposed to be the one who
And John — BROtheR — john i love you I LOVE YOU SO fucking much AND THEY HURT
YOU and i won’t let them I WON’t lET THEm they can’t CAN’T DO IT to hurt you
EVEN MORE and ROSE you like rose but ROSE IS EXTRANEOUS even though she could
have use but no NO no sharing john NEVER sharing john maybe sharing dave YES
DAVE HER BROTHER share him with her if she’s good but she’s bad so very bad I
can’t let you have him if you’re a bad girl and Rose you’re a bad girl and I
will kill you I will kill you like your mother was killed by noir and at least
it was something familiar I KILLED MY GRANDFATHER because a TROLL an EVIL TROLL
they conTROLLED BECQUERel and thaT CAUsED me sO MUCHPAIN so much pain and it
hurts it hurts help me HELP ME take away the pain
***
Aradia said something about feeling a sharp sting. I didn’t expect for the
helmet to blow my fucking head off. But then again, I didn’t have the lisp when
it stopped, so I guess I’d gotten used to not having it. It was strange. I was
standing there, with fairy wings, in a black outfit with my planet’s symbol on
it. The Symbol of Doom, emblazoned in white. It looked a bit like an eye. My
eyes weren’t really restored, but my nose was going crazy. I guess that’s
better than nothing. And I was the first one. I almost wonder if my old corpse
was there.
***
my new friend is so considerate
he doesn’t care that i love my brother
or that i want his babies
or that i think rose is a mean person
my new friend is nice like that
who is my new friend
well i would tell you but he says you’d go insane if you heard his name
***
Sollux’s mustardy blood was all over the floor, right next to a Sollux corpse.
The Sollux that was standing there next to the corpse was wearing black, and
smelled like licorice and lusus skin. It was a comforting smell. That was when
they fitted me with the strange helmet. I smelled burning smoke, I felt
electricity pulsing through my body, I felt myself dying. It hurt.
But when the pain stopped, I smelled myself lying slumped on the ground,
singed… and I could feel wings growing out of my back.
***
you all lied to me — ME — and you used me and you made me do such HORRIBLE
THINGS horrible things horrible horrible you made me clone frogs with NO
PURPOSE and no goal and no purpose and when we finally finished did i have a
god frog NO I DIDN’T AND IT WAS aLL Your fAULt ALL OF IT and i was going to be
SO ANGRY but i kept it in because i am a good friend not like you lalonde or
you strider or even you john but john i love you even if you are a bad friend
you are the best lover a girl could ask for
karkat i forgive you too for being such a rAGING JACKass because i was hardLY
ANY BETTER when i was making the goddamn GOD FROG and the frog GOD THE FROG I
HATE THESE FUCKING FROGS i was going to cram it down your throat but i came up
with a better idea CALL PRINCE CHARMING TELL HIM TO CRAM A TOAD UP HIS DICK
that ought to make me feel better all these tadpoles sitting in water and
here’s prince dave with a case of frog groin i’m gonna murder you aradia you
and your time traveling corpse i am going to kill your corpse and keep it from
moving YOU WILL DIE i will kill you
***
I don’t remember being fitted with the fucking thing. I remember it being
activated, and feeling my blood pump stop, though. Shit was fucked up.
Especially since after I collapsed I was back and good as new. Although did the
Blood uniform really have to be that nauseating shade of green? Really? I mean,
hell, even my mutant blood is better than this shitty-ass neon lime green
whatever the hell it is.
***
i want to sing a song to everyone
let them know that i forgive them
for all their selfishness
even if they can’t hear me
because i cut off their ears
and used their skins for drumheads
***
I can’t say I was surprised at Strider volunteering me to go before him. He
always did have a rather endearing fear of death, even temporary death. I think
it would be looking at his own corpse that would frighten him the most. Then
again, I had seen dead Dave clones pop up throughout our stay here.
The device was fitted easily, and the next thing I knew, I was burning, turning
to ash, and then next to the pile of ashes that had once been Rose Lalonde
stood a beautiful goddess. Me. Two of light love one of breath. I suppose it’s
not that hard to understand. After all… as dorky as he is, John has a certain…
something about him.
***
this is taking forever FOREVER can’t you speed up time friend i mean what good
are you as a friend if you can’t speed up time TIME IS IMPORTANT every second
counts they’re planning something plotting something plotting to take john away
from me TAKE HIM AWAY FOREVER and the trolls are there so they can do it THEY
CAN DO IT why can they do it why am i here — HERE — here we go just around
skaia and then two more hours and i’ll be safe at the lab and then — THEN
— then THEN we can kill them all and it’ll be good and decent and safe and john
will love me HE WILL LOVE ME I WILL MAKE him loVE ME
you cannOT STOP HIM from loving me i am his SISTER and his WIFE And that iS HOW
IT SHOULD WORK isis loved osiris and she was his sister and wife and THAT WAS
GOOD and now we are here and I LOVE JOHN I LOVE YOU even if you don’t love me I
WILL MAKE YOU LOVE ME and then i will be happy and you will LEARN how to be
happy — HAPPY LIKE ME — and our happiness will spread and you will be one of my
ETERNAL SERVANTS and i will have all the power of my friend because he will
make me HIS EQUAL that is why he left me with some of his power TO TEST ME and
i won’t fail i WON’T FAIL NEVER never fail
***
Coolkids don’t die. That was the first rule Rez and I had come up with. So the
fact that I had to die was pretty much the kicker. And I was nervous as fuck. I
mean, three bodies, one headless, and a pile of ash. What was gonna happen to
me? Still, I couldn’t let that fear show. I strapped on the helmet like a
motherfucker and waited for death.
Next thing I know my throat’s slit somehow and I’m bleeding out and my leg has
this deep-ass cut in it and I’m bleeding even more and then everything stops.
Everything stops and I’m good. I’m wearing a red hood like Aradia. And then we
all look at John. And I step up to him, and I say “John? John… you gotta do
this.” And he nods. I don’t think he realized quite what he had to do until
now. We were all gods now, sure. But Jade was able to take on gods. We just had
to make sure that John got to her in time to strike the killing blow.
***
my friends all died once because i couldn’t save them
it was because a troll killed john
but he forgave her
i never did
***
I shifted my weight uncomfortably. Zillyhoo was in my hand, and I was waiting
for Jade to return. She’d done so much wrong. She’d even violated me horribly.
But… she was still my sister. Could I really kill her? Would I hesitate? I had
hesitated with Aradia. And Aradia had wound up dead. But Jade was still my
sister, no matter what Karkat said. She was my sister, and family sticks
together.
Still, I stepped forward. Jade was tinted slightly green, but it wasn’t like
when she’d hefted the punt gun one-handed, or tied Gamzee to the wall. Back
then, she’d been glowing. Now, she was just… green. I could see her eye socket
bleeding, could see reddish-green blood flowing from her forehead. It
frightened me. “John?” She grinned at me. “John! Oh, John, I knew it! You love
me! You abandoned them to join with me! Oh, John, I love you!” I steeled
myself. She ran towards me. I had to say something. I had to tell her…
“No.” Jade skidded to a halt. “No, Jade. I… I don’t. You… you hurt me. You… you
did something I can’t forgive. And you hurt our friends.” I lifted the hammer.
I could feel the others walking up behind me. “You hurt our friends! You said
that was something no friend should ever do!” I pointed my hammer at her. “So…
I’m going to kill you.” Her eyes widened. A pool cue appeared in her hands.
“Kill me? John wants to… kill me?” She stared at me like I was some kind of
animal. I didn’t know how to respond, except to move to fight her.
***
no it can’t be the trolls corrupted you JOHN YOU ARE A HUMAN and i am a human
but i am also a girl a GIRL JOHN and i love you it is LOVE it is purer than
ANYTHING ANYTHING IN THE WORLD and you throw it aside like garbage well i will
KILL YOU FOR THAT but no john i love you i can’t kill you no don’t make me kill
you john i won’t like to kill you i can see the real you on the inside you love
me you know i love you and you love me WHY WON’T YOU LOVE ME please john love
me i don’t want to hurt you i don’t want to hurt you and they’re lying THEY ARE
LIARS JOHN snap out of it snap out of it remember we were in love we brought
heaven and earth together for a brief moment and it was bliss it was BLISS AND
WONDER AND BEAUTY
no i can’t kill you i can’t this is all THEIR FAULT i will show them the power
of the green sun once more i am going to pull out the streetsweeper and it will
kill them all YOU INTERLOPERS WILL DIE and then i’ll take john and i will show
him that I LOVE YOU JOHN MORE THAN ANYONE ELSE COULD and i love you and love
LOVE love LOVE FLOWS FURTHER AND FASTER AND WHY why why isn’t this gun working
it’s not firing it’s not working WHY
***
The green gun she’d pulled out upon leaping backwards and putting away the pool
cue didn’t fire. I saw a white, sun-like insignia on the side of it. Perhaps it
had taken power from the Green Sun? That would explain why it didn’t work. I
rushed her. Zillyhoo was in my hand. I had to do it. I had to kill her. As I
rushed her, I closed my eyes and swung.
When I opened them again, I saw Jade smashed against a wall, her skin back to
its usual color. She was bleeding heavily. Heavily enough that she was about to
die. I dashed over to her. “Jade…”
“John…” she whispered. “I… I still… love… you…”
***
death wasn’t something i wanted
or was supposed to do
i’m sorry my friend
i wasn’t ready for your power
***
I looked at John. My mind hurt. I loved him still, even though he’d killed me.
Killed me for the trolls, and for Rose. Why did he love Rose, but not me? What
was wrong with me? I wanted to ask him. I wanted to cry into his shirt. I
wanted to kill all of them. But in the end, all I could do was look at him.
What wrong had I done in his eyes? I pushed out one last word. “Why?”
***
I knelt behind John as he began crying. My hand never touched his shoulder,
never even tried. She’d brought up memories painful to him. A woman’s touch was
the opposite of what he needed. Noir could wait. He’d probably seek us out. I
would talk to John afterwards. Help him, if he needed it. He probably would. I
looked over at Rose, who nodded. Good. I wasn’t used to helping people. But
this time around, Vriska Serket wasn’t going to hurt her matesprit. I promised
myself, and then did something that I’d honestly never thought of before. I
challenged myself to keep that promise until the day I died.
I hope I keep it.
Chapter End Notes
     This is the way the world ends
     This is the way the world ends
     This is the way the world ends
     Not with a bang, but a whimper
***** Profile *****
Chapter Summary
     Psychosis: n, Any kind of mental affection or derangement; esp. one
     which cannot be ascribed to organic lesion or neurosis. (OED)
Chapter Notes
     This chapter's a bit different from the others. However, the
     beginning of it was a bit difficult to write. I'm not normally one to
     write psychiatric diagnoses and such, and so it took a little bit of
     effort to really get it. And even then I'm not really confident how
     well that part turned out. Most of the chapter is really the notes...
     which is also a bit lighter than the rest of the story. Enjoy.
See the end of the chapter for more notes
Subject: Jade Harley
Report Filed By: Rose Lalonde
Report Filed On: June 12, 2009 or equivalent.
Subject’s Previous Mental History: Jade Harley seems to have had a well-
adjusted childhood, considering the following facts: She was raised by a
canine, her grandfather died when she was a young child, and she had been
receiving dreams of Skaia for most of her life (speculation: since age six?)
Most recent psychotic episode began upon reading of a book pilfered from Derse
library entitled “Secrets of the Damnéd One’s Existence”, which if the first
page is to be believed is a tome concerning the summoning and history of a
great and powerful demon. While I have had the book burned, I will note that I
felt a very strong compulsion to keep reading until I felt the familiar
presence of the Horrorterrors push against it, allowing me to place the book
aside.
Symptom 1: Subject has, for the past five weeks, exhibited an intense and
unrelenting obsession with one John Egbert, demonstrating an extreme desire to
engage in an incestuous relationship with him.
Symptom 2: Subject has, for the past five weeks, shown an extreme disregard for
sapient life and/or the health of others.
Symptom 3: Subject has admitted to certain delusions of being, for instance,
the only sane or sapient being, or the idea that others were animals.
Symptom 4: According to an interview with one Karkat Vantas, she regarded the
others as furniture or, in the case of Dave Strider, John Egbert, and possibly
Karkat Vantas, breeding stock. The interview will not be released due to Mr.
Vantas’s request, although he has allowed for this piece of information to be
released.
Symptom 5: The subject has committed at least one cold-blooded murder; it is
unknown whether other murders of doomed time-clones were similarly cold-
blooded.
Symptom 6: John Egbert has personally testified to the subject’s violent sexual
assault. Said testimony will not be released due to emotional distress.
Conclusion: Due to the subject’s callous nature to her criminal activities and
her disconnect from the entire world, it is the opinion of this expert that
reading said book caused the subject to become overwhelmed by psychosis,
including but not limited to narcissistic personality disorder and paranoid
schizophrenia. While these diagnoses are normally reserved for adults and the
expert does not, in fact, have a copy of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual
on hand, and the expert may, in fact, have been a victim of hers, this expert
is still confident in her diagnosis.
Other Notes:
12.6.2009: I am fully aware that this is short. I’m not sure any of us can bear
to spend much time on the events of the past five weeks. I had a difficult time
writing as little as I did.
JUN3 TW3LFTH: I C4N S33 TH4T, L4LOND3. W3’LL T4LK 4BOUT TH1S DUR1NG YOUR
S3SS1ON W1TH M3. FOR NOW, THOUGH, 1’LL JUST S4Y 1 4GR33 W1TH YOUR D14GNOS1S.
june 14: finally something of yours thats not a fucking epic romance or some
shit like that. and yeah gotta agree with hella rez there you sound spot fuckin
on. speaking of which i think im supposed to meet up with her for counseling.
nothing personal rose but id rather not have my sister doing my psychiatric
bullshit.
15.6.2009: It’s not a problem, Strider. In fact, I’m somewhat glad that I don’t
have to bear the responsibility of healing everyone. I have the utmost
confidence in her psychiatric ability, given her knowledge of the inner
workings of the mind. I wish you well in your session.
JUNE 16: STRIDER YOU GODDAMN DICK STAY THE HELL AWAY FROM MY MATESPRIT. SHE’S
MINE, NOT YOURS.
june 16: oh sorry i wasnt aware it was national listen to tools day. oh wait
its not. what rez and me do behind closed doors is none of your business you
dumb fuck. wait a minute are you coming on to me with your weird hate sex
thing.
June 18: He pro8a8ly is! ::::O
june 18: yeah, that’s what it looks like.
june 19: i gotta agree.
june 19: son of a bitch. even you egbro. not cool man not cool. although i
suppose i could go ironic and be all troll hate sex up in this bitch.
JUNE 20: STRIDER WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU GOING ON ABOUT? …OH GOD. YOU GUYS
HONESTLY THINK I THINK THIS RETARDED ALIEN TOOL IS MY FATED KISMESIS?
june 21: kind 0f, yeah, kk. it’s n0t like he’s all that unwilling t0
recipr0cate and y0ur jeal0usy 0ver tz’s redr0m w0uld be a nice p0int 0f
rivalry. s0 yeah, i can definitely see it.
22.6.2009: Can we please stop using my notes on Harley’s insanity as a romantic
exploration forum? These notes are beginning to take away from the gravity of
the report. Karkat, Dave, whatever you two decide, please keep it out of my
notes. This has gone on long enough.
23.6.2009: This includes writing on the folder itself, everyone. We have
functioning vocal cords. Let’s use them.
june 24: ok one last thing ive gotta add. and this is i still think its
bullshit that a book could cause all this to happen. i mean i dont read books
but honestly its fucking paper with words printed on it. what really happened.
june 25: dave, that book was in derse’s library. and apparently told about the
summoning of vriska’s adversary’s master. mere knowledge of whom can drive
someone insane. i know. i’ve spoken to the man about it. he seemed rather eager
to speak with me. his master is apparently some time-traveling demon who feasts
upon dead universes. i suppose an entity with power like that could quite
easily reach into a finished sgrub session and reach into the mind of an
insecure human child.
june 25: yeah, i’d suggest y0u listen t0 y0ur matesprit, dave. she kn0ws what
she’s talking ab0ut. 0h wait s0rry rs.
25.6.2009: Dave, Aradia’s assumptions regarding the book seem to be accurate. I
recently decided to enquire this informant regarding said tome and he agreed
that his master probably could reach out through it into the mind of another
if, somehow, it contained a reproduction of his true name. I am unsure how the
author would have found this information out, but I suspect it is encoded into
every session influenced by a universe where he has dominion. At any rate, I
kindly insist that everyone please stop writing in my notes. Thank you, good
day.
June 26: Lalonde, I thought we agreed not to talk to him 8ecause it’s him that
started all this muscle8eastshit. Why are you talking to him????????
26.6.2009: Vriska, it was merely one question. I was not going to contact him
again. In fact, I will smash my white oracle this afternoon.
June 26: I’ll 8e coming over to see if you did. And now I’ll stop writing.
JUN3 30: OH MY GOD ROS3 SM4SH TH3 D4MN OR4CL3 4LR34DY. 1T’S NOT TH4T H4RD.
July 1: Success!!!!!!!! Rose just 8roke it. Finally. I think we can finally put
all this 8ehind us.
Chapter End Notes
     I remember when
     I remember, I remember when I lost my mind
     There was something so pleasant about that place
     Even your emotions have an echo in so much space
***** After *****
Chapter Summary
     Heal: v, To make whole or sound in bodily condition; to free from
     disease or ailment, restore to health or soundness; to cure (of a
     disease or wound). (OED)
Chapter Notes
     It never really goes away, when you're wounded that deeply. You can
     move forward, and the wounds will heal, but you're always changed in
     some way.
See the end of the chapter for more notes
Dave
You never really lose the terror that comes from seeing your dead body. Dave
knew it, Aradia knew it, and he was willing to bet that everyone else knew it
by now. True, it had probably hurt his mind slightly, seeing the pile of dead
Daves, almost sixty of them. But… they were gone now. Off in a world left
behind. And he and Aradia had figured out how to get into a new universe… one
whose creators had abandoned it. They’d be able to live on a planet as long as
they wanted. All eight of them, the survivors. He wasn’t about to let Gamzee’s
death go by without an ironic 40.
The new world was nice. One sun, beautiful enough to rise above the horizon and
dim enough that the trolls could stand its light. Two moons, shining blue and
red in the heavens. Dave guessed that there had been a Breath god and a Time
god in this session. And in a world like this, you could probably live forever
if you wanted. And Dave definitely wanted.
Dave figured he could live with the developments. Things were going all weird
human-troll hybrid, what with the multiple girlfriends-boyfriends thing and the
whole lack of buckets being apparently an issue for the trolls. But… Dave could
handle it. He could handle a lot of things.
The shocks and horrors were still there, of course. The dream bubbles had all
popped, and they’d begun having “normal” dreams. Dave had been plagued by
nightmares for a while. Nightmares of dying, of Jade standing over him and
saying “I love you” before impaling him on some rusty meathook, of Noir’s blade
flashing through him over and over again until he was nothing but a skeleton
and a scalp. That hadn’t happened, of course, and once the Green Sun had blown
up Jack was so easy to take it was hard to believe they’d ever been afraid of
him.
Still, he’d been getting better about it. A year had passed, and the traumas
had faded. The nightmares were less frequent now. The world was full of hope
and beauty. Dave smiled as he sat on the hillside, watching their town take
shape. They’d begin growing food eventually… but for now, they didn’t care if
they ate, now did they? They were gods. Hunger wasn’t going to kill them.
Aradia
If seeing your own corpse is horrifying, living through your own death is a
nightmare few can comprehend. And Aradia did it willingly. The pain from her
encounters with Jade never fully went away. True, it had subsided after she’d
died, but sometimes her throat would start hurting for no reason, or she would
get a sudden headache where, in a doomed Aradia’s time, Jade had fired a
killing blow. The times the remembered pains came were random.
She could live with it. She had Dave, and she had Sollux. And those two could
see her through anything. After all, half a sweep healed a lot of wounds, even
the psychic wounds. True, she would remember seeing the eerie green glow in
Jade’s eyes for the rest of her life, but that hardly mattered now. After all…
the demon wasn’t coming to their world. Not so long as she and Dave stood
sentinel.
Sollux
Brain injuries usually take a long time to heal. And even if Sollux’s injuries
didn’t heal as slowly as other brain injuries normally do, he still had to go
through a readjustment phase to re-learn language he’d forgotten, or skills
she’d cut out. The psionics were a bitch to re-master, because the only one who
could help him with them was Aradia.
But he had her, and he’d grown close to Rose through her therapy. It had been
odd, having her teaching him how to speak, and their first kiss had reminded
him of his flushed feelings for Aradia. Feelings that he was now acting on
again. A second red relationship was, admittedly, no replacement for blackrom,
but it was something to start with.
Even so. Terezi’s lessons about blindness had helped, as his sense of smell
could now rival hers. And that was important when you were helping to exercise
your psionic powers by building. True, he couldn’t lift the really heavy cross-
beams quite yet, but he was gaining progress rapidly. Rose liked to speculate
it was something trying to blot out the trauma in what she called a
“stereotypical masculine power identity” something something blah blah blah.
Sollux didn’t really care. If his psionics recovering meant he’d stop having
the nightmares sooner, that was all the better.
Sopor slime didn’t exist anymore. But the horrors of old Alternia hadn’t
plagued his dreams in a long while. The nightmares that had sapped his energy,
and possibly everyone else’s (he was no mind-reader) were of Jade, with her
scalpels and her bone saws and the impromptu surgery. The charnel smell that
she sometimes had entered with. Fright was something he’d have to live with.
But it had been a solid sweep. He shouldn’t have to worry about things like
that anymore. And, truth be told, he probably wouldn’t. After all, he had two
red sweethearts who didn’t mind him being double-red (and he had a feeling
Aradia was actually more comfortable with it than him or Rose). He smiled as he
looked up at the sky, smelling the brilliant moons. For once, everything was
beautiful again.
Terezi
Sensory deprivation can mess a person up horribly, even if they’re prepared for
it. Terezi was unprepared, and even with the ascension to Godhead and the power
of Mind that came with it, she was still unable to get things quite as right as
possible for a while.
The slime had kept the evils away. The nightmares, the racial heritage of
horror and mayhem and disruption that had plagued their race back in their old
universe. Back when she was still young. Now there was no slime, and although
the horrors of old Alternia were no more, the horrors of losing her mind, of
slipping into oblivion, of the green burns of Jade’s mind… those stalked her
nightmares. The green light was worst of all. She still didn’t know what it
was. Vriska and Rose were frustratingly tight-lipped on the matter.
But she had a matesprit and a kismesis to help her work through things. True,
the rivalry she shared with Vriska was tempered by a caution to avoid losing
her. That same caution should have been applied more carefully when she had
left to face Jade. She should have stopped her, should have been able to stop
her… but in the end, Serket does as she pleases. And Terezi knew that.
And her matesprit… She held him close when he woke up sweating, dreaming that
his horns had been lopped off, or that he had been bleached, or whipped, or
mutilated, or killed. Karkat needed to know she was there. That she would
always be there. And she would reassure him. It had been a sweep and a half
now, since the nightmare ended. And she would help make sure that nothing like
it arose again.
Rose
The first thing she had done once they'd gotten to their new world was smashed
her Magic Cue Ball. True, it was a wondrous mystical object, powerful and able
to predict anything the future told her. But it reminded her of Scratch, and
thanks to what Aradia said, he was now a reminder of Jade. She hadn’t really
liked him, to be honest… but he had been, for better or worse, a confidante.
Someone she could trust her problems to.
Learning to rely on other actual, fallible people to fill that role — learning
to trust those who weren’t omniscient, didn’t know her inside and out — had
been difficult. Sollux was of great intellect, and that helped tremendously,
and John… somehow she always had an easier time coping with everything while he
was around. Even the deaths of their parents and her subsequent death had been
easier to deal with when that lovable goof had been at her side.
Trust issues aside, the nightmares had plagued her for a long time. Too long,
she’d say. She was almost seventeen now. They were supposed to be gone by now.
Or, at the very least, less frequent. And yet, the nightmares were unrelenting.
The knives, the scalpels, the removal of her organs. It was better when a lover
shared her bed. But that had been a recent development, and it had mostly been
Sollux — John still slept alone, for the most part.
Rose supposed that this was part of growing up. Learning how to heal properly
was still something she was trying to do. And when John was ready… until then,
she’d wait for him. She’d waited seventeen years. She could stand to wait a
little longer.
Karkat
Until we’re put in the situation ourselves, we never really know how far we can
go to protect the ones we love. Whenever the memory arose, Karkat reminded
himself that Terezi had been in danger. It didn’t excuse what Jade had done to
him, or lessen the pain, but it gave him the strength to carry on while he was
awake.
But even two and a half sweeps later, the nightmares kept waking him up in the
middle of the night in a cold sweat. When he was awake, the lash and the file
were only memories, horrible things that were gone forever. But in the world of
dreams, the knife’s bite and the lye’s burn were real, and more exaggerated.
The lye seeped into his blood, and it burned; the lash cut through his flesh
and plucked out his bones.
It was on those nights he was thankful for his matesprit. She was beautiful, a
perfect catch, both in terms of beauty and in terms of brains, even if her eyes
didn’t work anymore. And having a kismesis helped; shitty Dave may have been as
one, but at least he seemed to take it seriously enough when the mood struck
him. And he was willing to be sexual, something Karkat appreciated.
He was eight and a half now, or so. The nightmares were growing less frequent
as he slept close to Terezi, even if when he awoke she wasn’t lying beside him,
but playing some futile dice game against Vriska. But at least she would always
be there for him. That was a gift he would probably be trying to repay for the
rest of his life. However long immortality lasted. It would probably be a
while. But he didn’t care if he was in her debt forever, if it meant he could
be with her.
Vriska
In the end, luck doesn’t matter. We act along our flaws and our virtues. And
pride, in the end, is always the hardest flaw to control. Vriska learned that
when she tried to take on Jade. Her death wasn’t Just. It wasn’t Heroic. It was
Foolish, which was one of the deaths she was protected against. And it was why
she was still here at nine sweeps.
She had settled into the familiar pattern of being Terezi’s kismesis, and kept
up her assistance of John. Rose was helpful in that regard, and the two of them
bonded over their mutual care for him. Not that they consummated red passions;
Vriska was, unlike John, flushedly monogamous, and Rose had something going on
with Sollux anyway.
She had been spending more nights in John’s bed. He didn’t seem to mind as
much, now, and when she woke up with phantom pains and the vision of those
white-hot lead bullets striking her body over and over again, there was John,
lying beside her, comforting her. She wondered what was in his nightmares, and
would go to sleep holding him tightly, or watching him hold Rose close, or
sometimes there with the both of them. It felt good to be pressed so close
against her matesprit.
It had been three sweeps since she had promised herself to take care of him.
She had kept that promise for three more sweeps than she’d ever kept any
promise in her life. And yet, somehow, it felt rewarding to know that she was
protecting her protege, keeping him safe from a horrible memory. It filled her
with hope. And that was more powerful than all the luck she’d ever had. All of
it.
John
It’s an incredibly traumatizing thing, to take a life. This is doubly true when
the life you take is one of your closest friends. And it becomes almost
unbearable when you break the bonds of family. At least, it does if you’re
sane. John would never have wished what he went through upon anyone. It hurt,
even ten years after it had finished. He looked out at the sunrise, thinking
about the reasons why he wasn’t an empty shell by now.
The first was Rose. He’d known her for a long time, compared to the trolls. She
was the first one Jade had introduced him to, and the memory of it brought an
ache to his heart. Jade was his friend back then. A goofy girl who’d been quite
energetic and helpful. A good person. Even when playing Sburb she’d been happy
and upbeat. Well, all right, perhaps there were instances of rancor, but that
was due to her getting stressed out by Karkat or by Bec Noir or by some other
force. It wasn’t her fault.
John stopped focusing on Jade and started thinking about Rose again. She was
smart, and funny, and witty, even if her taste in movies was a bit weird. And
when he held her in his arms, which he did more frequently now (Rose wasn’t
going to do that to him, Rose would ask if he would be all right with it
beforehand) he could feel the tensions of the day melt away. And when he kissed
her, there was always the barest hint of desire, mixed in with love and
understanding. He loved her. He knew that now.
But he loved Vriska as well. She had been there for him. He had protected her
when the others were in danger. He had stopped her from flying off to face Jack
Noir. He had helped her try to live a more human life, without all the need for
death and killing. And she’d been willing to learn, more willing than the
others. And her gray carapace felt more like skin. Her gray skin, her gentle
lips, her right eye with its seven pupils. Her horns, so wonderfully smooth and
beautifully colored, felt right when he ran his hands along them.
And when she slept alongside him, when they finally fell asleep together… John
felt comforted that his mentor was alongside him, and that his friend was with
them. Both Rose and Vriska deserved better than him, he firmly believed, but
both of them loved him. And that, in the end, was all he wanted. It was all he
needed. The two of them loved him, and in his heart, he knew: that was all he
needed.
The scars still hurt. The pain never really went away. But with those two by
his side, and his friends supporting him, he would be able to endure. He would
be able to be strong, to survive. To thrive on this new world they’d created.
Child
Anna Egbert looked at the photo book her Daddy had. There was Mr. Dave and Miss
Aradia and Mr. Karkat and Miss Terezi and Mr. Sollux and Also-Mommy, and there,
in the center photo, were Mommy and Daddy and Also-Mommy, standing there in a
lovely suit and two lovely dresses. And Also-Mommy had a beautiful hairband,
while Mommy’s hair was so long. She reached up into her own hair; Mommy had
said she might not grow horns, even though she really wanted a pair. But she
had Mommy’s hair, and Daddy’s eyes, and beautiful purple blood.
And she flipped through more pages, saw her first birthday, saw her little
brother’s birthday (Daddy called him a half-brother, but there was a whole
Mikey there, so he couldn’t be a half a brother)… and she saw other pictures.
Mr. Dave with a lady who looked like Daddy, only she couldn’t be. She was a
girl, and her glasses were wrong. But she had Daddy’s smile, and his overbite,
and she seemed so nice.
The photo had tear stains on it, and something was written on the back, but
whenever she asked Mommy or Also-Mommy about it, they just said it was an old
friend who was gone, and Daddy got scary quiet when she asked him. Someday,
though, she’d learn to read, and learn what Daddy had written on the back. Or
maybe it was Mommy or Also-Mommy.
She flipped further through the photo album. Daddy with someone who he called
Grandpa, who wasn’t around anymore, and Also-Mommy with someone called Grandma,
and pictures of other trolls like Mommy who weren’t around anymore. Anna
wondered what had happened to them, but everybody refused to answer. Maybe
she’d learn when she got older. But for now, curiosity could wait. After all,
this afternoon was baking with Daddy. And no four-year-old could ask for
anything more.
Chapter End Notes
     A long, long time ago
     I can still remember how that music used to make me smile.
     And I knew if I had my chance, that I could make those people dance
     And maybe they'd be happy... for a while...
End Notes
     And a further I'm Sorry, because this has led me to write even more
     Sadist Jade stuff. Which will be condensed into this one story.
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