Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Your name is Colomb Servit. You are a Blue Blood.

You are flushed for a Purple Blooded woman.

In all honesty, you didn't intend for this sort of thing to happen. You consider yourself a serious and strong-headed individual. You don't allow business to mix with pleasure. No matter who the business is being done with.

However, all of that changed, when you met Her.

The red of your heart. The glimmer in your eye. The flush of your life.

One Quinne Pierot.

In all considerations of the word, she was absolutely perfect. Intelligent, beautiful, full of grace and poise, wealthy. And so high up on the hemospectrum. She even disregarded the usual terrifically ridiculous cult worship that seemed to pervade the majority of her caste. Sure she wore a touch of face paint, but she never spoke of it. Nor did she outwardly worship in any way you could see it, or talk about it. If she ever did any at all aside from her paints, you never saw it.

She's ever so considerate you that way. Keeping away the things you wouldn't care to see so you could focus on her and only on her. You really do have the perfect matesprit, you would tell anyone you met about it. You adore her, you want to show all of Beforus and beyond just how much you revere her. How lucky a soul you are that someone of such status and such perfect flushed qualities would ever deign to look at you as you have come to look at her. Even with the intimacies aside, she has every bit the amount of etiquette that would make her the perfect matesprit.

Wealth. Status. Power. Connections. You boost her up the ladder as she does you, and you share your victories apart or together as often as you can.

Why, she's even a culler.

Imagine, such a perfect woman, to do all she does, and still have the time and desire to care for the needy lowbloods who could never hope to take care of themselves. You might have thought of such a thing, of course, but your work keeps you too busy and all. You would feel bad about it.

Quinne, on the other hand, perfect Troll that she is, is determined to do absolutely everything that she possibly can in order to contribute to Beforus society. Even if it strains her. She works from her hive, looks after the Trolls she takes in. The needy, the weak, those who need attention which no one else can give. But she does. She gives all she can give and never asks for a word of praise or any sort of attention that she should so rightfully deserve for her utter selflessness.

And never have you seen such proof of her determination than you have in her care for her latest cullee.

Poor thing, such an unfortunate mutation. Not even just of the body, but of the blood no less. Not even caste to his name. Just a scrawny slip of a thing too young and too stupid to even know how pitiful it truly is. Surely he should easily have found anything in the quadrants of pity, were it smart to allow him to form any of those sorts of quadrants to take up those of other, more able and better suited Trolls who would do better to be with someone just as able and better suited.

But she takes the challenge of him with such stride. How you adore your matesprit when she holds her head up high and dotes on the little thing with all she's worth. Feeding him. Dressing him. Caring for him with all of her learned and proud tenderness. How well behaved he is. The moment your Quinne rings her bell, he remembers his place, no matter how fidgety he gets. So soft and easy to prod and poke at. Fascinating like a bug under a glass. One you'd like to examine.

Cute in a way that's almost hideous in how it offends your sensibilities. He is an affront to everything Beforus and the noble and fine hemospectrum stands for with how his blood dares to be so bright and just red . Something almost loathsome in its ability to be a pitiful thing.

You know that your matesprit is doing her best. Even at her own expense. Yet still, she always has the time for you.

You're so lucky, to have a matesprit like her.

Chapter Text

Your name is Pantai Bloomi. You are a Cerulean Blood.

You absolutely loathe a woman of Purple Blood.

And you aren't entirely sure that half of it isn't just platonic.

You were almost culled by her, not several decades ago, almost a century. One stupid fall taken because of a faulty balcony railing, and you almost weren't able to walk anymore. You thankfully managed to fight off all of the medicullers and actual potential cullers, citing your resilience and your progress with your physical therapy. Who the hell cared if you'd almost broken your back and gotten paralyzed? You got better, that was that.

Quinne was the most persistent of potential cullers. Using her sweetly sugary tones and her smooth pushes to try to convince you it would be for the best.

Fuck all of that noise. You had pushed through on mostly willpower and encouragement from your moirail, but you got out of culling recommendations. You got mostly better. You still take medications and have your physical therapy, but it's all pretty much better now. You're still a normal Troll. Not a helpless cullee

The first thing you did after you got better, and she 'swung by to congratulate you', you had spit in her face. Then one thing led to another, and another led to some pretty intense hatesnogging. And basically you two had become kismesis pretty closely behind that. You're still not sure how much of it is actual black loathing, as opposed to the regular kind.

Something about her just totally unnerves you. Not even just a mild case of the heebie jeebies.

She's just... too perfect. Her clothes, her face, her unshakeable demeanor. Her stone cold sense of control over the people she met and the way she just absolutely didn't let anyone tell her what she could or couldn't do. Perfect house. Perfectly filled quadrants. Perfect manners. Perfect nails. Perfect Troll who could never be anything but that and it just made your skin crawl.

Even in the midst of all the usual black passions, you never really felt totally comfortable with your kismesis. Especially not since you knew she tended to share her hive with another Troll pretty much all the time.

A routine and constantly returning culler. A serial culler, almost. Every time one cullee died of medical complications or old age, she almost immediately went out and got a new one. Since you became her kismesis, she went through no less than three lowbloods whose lives passed so quickly compared to your own. Right after you became kismesis and she failed to cull you, she went and got herself some poor sap of a Gold who had lost an arm, poor kid. She took good care of him, for sure, but you saw how fast he wilted and just lost the spunk you saw in him when he first came into her hive.

She cited depression. You objected on account of clear hoofbeastshit. But of course, no one listens to you compared to her. Besides, you never had any real proof. Maybe it was just depression. Or maybe you suddenly grew a third horn. Regardless, you could do nothing with your suspicions.

Her matesprit wouldn't hear a word against her. Her moirail was another weird clown who bailed because of some claim of pale infidelity (you almost wished you could have talked to him after the fact to get some more info on that, at least to find a crack in her perfect facade).

Just you and him, and your kismesis with her no longer perfect trio of quadrants...

Plus the cullee kid. He was a cute little thing, pretty tiny and soft. But always too quiet for your liking. The brats who lived near you were loud and rambunctious and were always outside playing. But then, that's what wigglers were supposed to do. Run and be noisy, no matter how annoying it was. This kid you didn't think ever left the hive unless he was holding his culler's hand. Super skittish and too tense, didn't say much. Always the perfect cullee for her (perfect everything only for her).

You didn't like it, really. But what could you say unless you had proof?

Jack shit, that's what. So you bite your tongue on that one, and what you're really thinking of your hated kismesis.

For the moment, at least.

Chapter Text

Your name is Piitre Lefouu. You are a Purple Blood.

Your diamond and your blood pusher have been broken by a woman of your caste.

Quinne Pierot, the maker and breaker of your oh so precious diamond.

You've known her ever since the two of you were little wigglers. You were neighbors, even. Your great, chaotic, towering manor full of buttresses and winding halls all splashed up with your colors stood next to her simpler, more elegant thing that was impressive in just how meticulous the whole thing was. Not a thing out of place, like her.

The two of you got your schoolfeeding on together. Learning about basic things and all about the scriptures and the rites of the Mirthful Messiahs at the same time so often that the two of you were constantly in contact. She dedicated all of it to memory, she was always so smart. If the Messiahs blessed anyone with a head on their shoulders who could really understand the intricate nuances of their works and words, it would be her. There were folks who were certain that their dedication to the mischievous prophets and worshippers of the Dark Carnival were purer and truer than anything else.

But you would always swear to yourself that, given the opportunity, you would trumpet to those great figures of mirth that it was she who stood above all others.

There was just... always something else about her.

She had that mirth in her face and in her words. She hailed rowdier and laughed with more harshwhimsy than anyone you knew.

But past that... you didn't think you felt any of that mirth up in her soul. As a wiggler, you looked into her eyes while she was cackling up a storm fit enough to blow away Trolls twice your age... and there was nothing there. You felt bad for her, for that. She was sure as hell trying to keep up that spirit of the Dark Carnival in her. Yet she didn't really seem to feel any of that where it counted. How sad that was, that she want so desperately to make her love of the Messiahs and the Carnival known that she would fake it till she made it til he could nearly see the cracks in her greasepaints.

How pitiful.

At that tender age you two shared, you tried your absolute best to get her to really get up and feeling of what mirth could be in her. You told all your jokes, showed her your best worship, gave her all you could to see a real smile in her. Not that fake-ass grin she plastered on her face with her paints.

… You never did accomplish that.

No matter what you did, or how hard you tried, you never got the sense of that real Mirth in her. Not once. And you pitied her all the more for it. And, somehow, she pitied you, for all the trying you were doing to get that spirit lifted with the force she put to the corners of her lips. Even when she smeared on a grin while she painted on her smile, she cared for you. You're sure she really did.

You shared your deepest secrets with her, bared out your soul to her so much that you were sure the Messiahs would find it blasphemous how you sought her approval and smile with all the scoff and vigor you gave in your worship. You painted each others faces, letting each other see your true faces (such an honor, such an intimate gesture). You tended to each other's bodies to make sure you were both of the best health. You even helped each other mark up your bodies to show your devotion to the Messiahs (no one else would you have trusted to mark up your throat with a tattoo like you trusted her, and you would be loathe to think of any other set of hands she would let carve the intricate symbols of what she held precious into the hard keratin of her horns).

Faithful and loyal you were to her as you were to the jesters of the Dark Carnival, you were, even when she finally declared her up and leaving the official worship through the Church. A version of pilgrimage, she said. Finding her own sense of mirth away from that which the Church declared most humorous.

Even when others questioned and mocked her in the non whimsical ways, you defended her. Because you knew she did what was right. Even when she scoured the paints from her face, leaving only the diamonds over her eyes that you wanted to feel were a connection to you. Even when saw and ignored the way the dust settled over so many of her books of worship while you curled up with her in your pile. Even when she started taking other Trolls of all ages into her home (lowbloods, she'd always say with that humorless ease of hers, the weak things).

Until you finally felt that change. And something in you just snapped. You didn't even know how you knew it, but deep down in you, you knew it to be true.

She was cheating on you.

It was in such subtle hints. The new spring in her step, or the way she seemed so much more relaxed lately. She even seemed to be smiling. Really really smiling, and not just those fake-ass grins she always wore. The changes were subtle in a way only you could really pick up on.

And they pissed you the fuck off.

Oh what? After centuries ( fucking centuries ) of trying your hardest to make her happy and show her your pity, she's up and going for another Troll. Who the hell, you don't know. But all you know is, you weren't going to fucking stand for it.

The last few times you were in her hive, you were screaming at her. That stoic calm she always had that made you once pity her only pissed you the hell off. You would leave her hive in a huff after each confrontation. Each time storming on out past the most recent little cullee of hers, the mutant one. You maybe felt a bit bad for the little guy, how he had to hear you screaming at the top of your lungs about shit that was nothing of his to be concerned about (going to fucking murder the one who thought they were good enough to weasel in and take your place in her quadrant, you screamed, going to rip their fucking heads off and throw their body in the sea). Kid didn't need to hear shit not concerning him, but you were pissed at the time.

Finally... you couldn't take it anymore. Much as it broke your heart, you cut your losses and broke your diamond. If she was going to be unfaithful and not own up to it, no fucking point in sticking around. You left her hive after that last argument, scooping up everything that was yours so you'd never have to go back to see her ever again. Apologized real quick to the kid for all the trouble. Bitch though she was, she was at least a decent culler, so you'd seen. Still gave the kid one past pat on the head while he stared at you with those big old eyes before you left for the last time. That pleading look and asking why you had to go. All you could do was shrug, and tell him he'd get it when he got older.

You never looked back. Not once. The last image in your mind was her in that doorway, hands on the little mutie's shoulders as she kept on smiling her fake-ass smile, while the kid stared at you like a kicked barkbeast. Not your fault, though, it was never yours.

If either of you broke your diamond, it was her.