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Your name is Gamzee Makara, and you have a fixation.
It's a 'problem'-- if you can really call it that-- that started before the game, before everything went to shit and the planet blew up and you singlehandedly wiped out an alarming percentage of the surviving population, with a boy with sunshine in his name and another with it in his veins and the girl who followed the former around like a ghost and the latter like a lusus. You, at first, can't think of a common denominator. Later, you figure out it has an awful lot to do with death.
Fast forward. You're a year and a half sober, and Mr. Sunshine's somewhere between life and death and not too keen on paying any visits to the present, Ms. Morbid's on her third spawn and holding onto her personal miracle for everything it's worth, and your boy Karkat's got his claws full with every bleeding heart he can get his warm little hands on what with the meteor and everyone on it falling apart the second he just barely loosens his grip. All things considered, you're not a terrible priority anymore, and you couldn't blame anyone for letting you be the second such a thing proved true. Karbro's put in more effort than you've ever assumed you were worth already, ten times over, and you wouldn't dream of asking for anything more. Your head's clear. Your voices aren't nonexistent but are quiet enough to ignore. Your hands don't stay idle, but not with any kind of nefarious work what be fitting of what you're kind of infamous over.
Shit, even Teresita's given up on noose-ing you by now.
That's a bit of a shame, too, because you're more than ever wanting for company. You're by nature a social guy, once probably the most amicable of the group, but when half the people in the vicinity aren't fond of you and the other half are too busy to be bothered, a motherfucker ends up bored. That's where that common denominator comes in.
No, you're not dealing death anymore, but you sure as shit are painting it. You see technicolour visions of an apocalypse that never was behind your eyelids and while you pointedly avoid sleep your fingers work at putting those images to wall in eclectic detail with every drop of paint (or whatever else) you can find. The empty room you chose to hide out in back when Kan was still keen on making literal the Me And Also Me prospect for you is more than big enough for a mural and then some-- by the first week you don't even have a fourth of the wall covered. You say that, because it's that point where you notice that you are being watched.
You're not stupid, you never have been, but she's sneaky as anything, quiet as death but for the faintest flutter of scarlet wings and the delicate glittered scales they leave behind. She doesn't say anything to you, like you expect, and you're at a loss for anything to say back at first. You keep right on keepin' on and slowly her presence stops raising the hairs on the back of your skull prop. But a week turns into a perigee of her on and off presence-but-not-quite-company and finally, you gotta ask.
"Sis, you'd be obliged to be havin' a motherfuckin' seat if you gonna keep watchin' like that."
As if to be contrary, she seems to take a seat right in the air, legs crossed, wings illogically keeping her afloat (honestly, you're beginning to suspect they're more decoration than actual mechanisms of flight). She rests her chin on her hand (not delicate, like you'd expect. Calloused. Archaeologist's hands) and resumes watching.
"Colour me curious," she jokes. Cheeky. You can't be upset. You're a clown, maybe a shitty one, you can sure appreciate a motherfuckin' pun, of all things.
"Your guess is as good as mine, sis," you reply. Noncommittal, but true. You paint what comes to mind-- you don't have an end to your means just yet. But she seems interested in what you've put down, fascinated, even.
"You don't sleep," she says, a statement rather than a question. You shrug.
"I ain't to be playin' with dead things no more,"
She nods, sagely, but she's not convinced. You wonder if she knows about the fridge.
You risk it, and turn to look at her-- you don't look people in the face much these days-- and in your glance you make a revelation in her small smile (not even a little smug, just enthused) and bright eyes (her irises are filling in a deep rust). She's no afraid of you. Not even a little.
With that in mind, you don't say anything else, and the two of you sit in silence again.
===>
Aradia becomes a near permanent fixture in your background, there more often than not (you aren't sure where she goes or what she does, and you don't see it your business to ask), but it's months before you speak again. It's not a bad thing-- you're not a guy to disrespect a comfortable silence. It's more like a mutual respect, of sorts-- she wont interrupt your work for hell or high water, and you just ain't got nothin' to say worth sayin'. It's for this reason it's a little interesting that she, while not the one to break the silence, facilitates it. Miss Muerte here is a doer, an instigator, a regular muddler of events, and expecting her to keep that soft nose of hers out of your business in the first place wasn't really a rational prayer to have.
You don't remember her producing anything sharp, or moving to prick her fingers, but you notice the smell of blood before you notice her moving. She's over your head (you, seated; her, floating) before you can think about it, and thoughtfully contributes a deep burgundy streak to a chunk of your mural you'd 'finished' days ago. You think the two of you must be on the same motherfuckin' wavelength, honestly, because you knew you were missin' something, and she seemed to have guessed just what. You make some sound somewhere between a grunt of surprise and a honk, and she gives you this mysterious sort of smile.
"I remember that meteor. I saw it in a dream."
You don't know why, but this chips down the last of any ice you were holding up.
===>
The two of you talk, and you talk a lot, about everything and sometimes about nothing at all. She tells you how things are, how everyone's doing, both alive and dead. She knows the details of thousands of lives through hundreds of timelines and between updating you on the goings on of the meteor itself and where it's going she likes to sprinkle in stories of memories she's seen and people the two of you both know and some that you don't with an enthusiasm so strong it draws a long-missing smile back to your face-- it's a catching kind of happiness, this girl, she's totally lost that depressing streak. Shit, you'd say it's like when you were both kids (before she died, anyway), but really, it's something warmer than that. It's like she's got some kind of ever-burning sunshine in her heart keeping her hopeful in the piss-poor conditions the universe has set fourth. She's confident everything will be okay, she's got some divine miraculous knowledge tellin' her so.
You find out that as hardcore as she's all digging the whole life business, death doesn't scare her, she doesn't think it should scare anyone. Says Karbro still cries when someone drops dead, but she's got this bitchtits wicked idea for what to do with the bodies. This and that and something about a party for corpses-- you're digging it. You're really digging it. She's a little crazy, you think, but you kind of dig that, too. Alternia never really had much of a custom for corpses, but a party sounds like a hell of a way to go out. The two of you end up discussing the kind of parties you'd wanna have for your own corpses, provided either of you ever actually die, and kind of laugh at the irony of that, like a little inside joke.
Your paintings become more colourful with her there, and it's eventually a straight up collaborative effort. Your hands-- long, nimble-but-bony fingers laying down hardline foundations and her soft-shaped rough-edged ones blurring things and adding details that just complete the pieces in ways you hadn't considered, ways you couldn't quite open your mind to reach. The girl's got creativity in her bones, miracles in her blood, and inspiration in her aura. She's like hope incarnate, a holy lady of death, and before you know it, your clandestine glances at her (quick ones-- you'd never looked at her that closely before, but you like to memorise her features) turn into something a bit how you used to look at the sea. Something between admiration, longing, and a kind of nostalgic contentment.
Your mural of apocalyptic doom becomes one of healing salvation, and her smile is a tiny 'o' of surprise as you stand up to paint at the top an angel in red.
===>
It's year 2 and the two of you are something you can't make up a word for-- she didn't stop turning up when the mural was finished, and instead the two of you spent your time on other things. Talking, warm silences. She patches the tears in your hands and cleans the blood from your nails, and laughs when you make your best attempt at finessing the tangles out of her hair and damn near end up lost in it (the brush, not so lucky). She never flinches when your movements go from sluggish to jerky and nigh lightening fast. She doesn't look in the fridge but you both know she knows and she's cool with that, but then, you don't go digging around with a court of heads when you've got warmer company. She's a hard girl to phase, and even the weirdest of shit you get up to isn't something to bat a red-mascara'd eyelash at.
It's studying those very lashes that gives you the idea you got in mind. You're up and digging through a chest within seconds of the idea, before the warmth of her hands can even fade off your palms, and you toss her a fresh top with straps instead of sleeves-- you know those god tiers ain't much for changing out of their magic pjs, but you got a reason, and she don't even question it (not that you're peeking, you just Know). By the time you've got your brushes and jars of paint dug out and gathered up, she's seated cross-legged in her new garb, giving you a look between curiousity and excitement.
"New inspiration?" she asks, probably thinking the paint is for the walls. But no, it's skin safe, the good shit, and your lanky ass just sits itself right down in front of her, hunched over just a bit to match face to face.
"Somethin' like that. You trust me?"
Like always, on the same wavelength, she smiles and closes her eyes.
You've got something like serenity on your face as you pop open the jars, a familiar scent of pigments wafting up as you dip your brush in, laying down a delicate white foundation over her skin. It's starker on her than it is on you, somehow-- you're a dude of sharp features and edges that would almost look regal if they weren't perpetually marred with clawed in scars and comical paint. Hers are softer, with her round face, full lips and flatter nose. You'd been working out what kind of design would suit her for ages, just as a hypothetical, but now you've figured it out. You follow the lines of her skull, around her orbitals and cheekbones right on down to tracing teeth (blunter than you're shark-sharp set) into the sides of her cheeks and jaw. You have just enough space to paint in her vertebrae and clavicle before you reach uncharted territory and work back up, adding details, shading-- more effort than you'd ever put into your daily face, but this is a special occasion.
You lose track of time. She doesn't. She's a good sport, still as can be save for breathing, and you're just almost done, just examining things, evaluating when her warm hands capture your icy wrists.
"It's missing just a little something," she says, like always, and she's right, like always.
She doesn't look, she doesn't have to, but she adds her own burgundy smears in just the right places and your grin could just about split your face in half.
"You're a motherfuckin' miracle, sis. You want a peek?"
She takes this as permission, and the spirits controlling her sylladex summon fourth a mirror for her. She does look rather pleased with herself, this time, and takes a glance at the mural the two of you had finished together.
Naturally, she's the spitting image of your angel. But she knew that. You can tell.
You two just have a common denominator that way.