Chapter Text
5. terezi pyrope
You run away.
It's Jade's idea, and you think it's the best she's ever come up with--counting the one that saved your lives and a universe, even. If there are people out there, she says, we should find them. The world is our oyster! Hee. She doesn't want to live her life alone any more than you do.
There is a boat--you hover over her shoulder as she makes design sketches--and there is food and navigation (and weaponry, she says breathlessly) to think about. It takes months. You bring in Feferi as your last co-conspirator, and the three of you call in every favor imaginable while revealing as little as possible. It kills you not to tell Dave, but you can keep a secret when you have to.
You don't want to tell Karkat at all.
"No. No, no, fuck no, you are not skipping out on me."
"That's not what this is," Jade says, off to the side. "Terezi's doing something important, geez--you were the one saying we had to figure out where all the people were on this 'godforsaken planet' just yesterday."
"I didn't mean like this," he growls.
You fold your arms. "And why not?"
"Why not? Why not? We haven't even been here a full sweep and already you want to leave, that's why not! I need every hand I can spare to build this place up. We have to fucking survive."
"You said it yourself. I'm not doing anything anyway."
"We can spare three people." Jade talks very fast. "And she wants to go--they all want to go, Dave's been miserable since we got here! You're being stupid, Karkat."
"Strider can go fuck himself. No one is going." But he looks at you with no small amount of desperation, and you feel your temper flare.
You take off your glasses, make him stare right into your eyes. (The ones he always said were creepy.) "You haven't given me a reason, Karkat. Why. Not."
He lifts his chin stubbornly. "Do I need a reason? I'm your fucking leader. What I say goes."
"That's not an answer," you say, at the same time that Jade rolls her eyes and mutters, "Karkat, you're a jerk."
A jerk of the head. "What was your first clue, Harley?"
You are tired of this. So, so tired of this. "You're lying." You say it flatly. "You lie and hide and run--you won't even tell me the real reason you don't want me to go! You know--and I know--and you won't even say it! I'm leaving, Karkat. I'm taking Dave and Feferi and I am getting on that boat, and there is nothing you can do to stop me."
You won't face him a second longer. You turn on your heel, towards the distant shore, towards the waves.
"Terezi, wait--"
"You're really dumb," Jade tells him. You keep walking, heading away from the compound; you'll have to come back to collect your things but this isn't about that, this is about making a point--
"I need you here, okay?"
You stop. Karkat breathes out, ragged. "Don't. Don't leave, Terezi, we just fucking got here, you can't go--"
The air here smells like flowers, flowers that clog your nose and blur your vision. "I can't stay here."
He falls silent at that: maybe he's remembering you up in the tree, him down on the ground. These days he and you fight at every turn. The story that was the two of you--the story you wrote for him--is over now. But still, still--
"I'll come back," you promise, and you mean it as much as anything you've said in your life.
(Later Jade will lean against the wall of your respiteblock, watching you pack up the last of your things. The two of you chatter about Equius and Sollux and Vriska and Tavros. You tell her everything you can think of, everything you know, and then you tell her, Take care of him.
She doesn't have to ask who. Oh, I'll take care of him all right, she says, wrinkling her nose, and both of you laugh.)
You lean over the railing, taking in the ebb and flow of the sea and the sharp salt air: in time you're sure you'll grow sick of it, but now it clears your head and makes you feel alive all over again. Feferi swims beside the boat, paddling in the water, smelling as almost as gleeful as you are. Dave is at your side, and trying his damnedest not to throw up into the ocean. He has some sort of complex about going down below deck, thinks it makes him look like a 'pussy.' You think it's hilarious.
"Ever going to forgive me, coolkid?" you say idly, as the breeze blows through your hair.
"Never." He rolls his shoulders. "I never want to see another piece of seaweed again, and I know you're just waiting for your chance to lick my eyeballs. Not cool, TZ. I thought you really cared."
"I care! I care a lot. About your eyeballs."
The ensuing silence is a comfort: it's not that you have nothing to say to each other, it's that nothing needs to be said. You begin to think--one day, you think, things will be all right.
"So," Dave says, at last, "do you actually know what we're doing out here, or are we just fucking around on a boat?"
You grin up at him. "It's a work in progress."
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