Work Text:
She loses consciousness somewhere after she funnels barked instructions through Tavros to Terezi's stupid lusus. Her vision spots with black, tunnels closing in all around her, and Vriska slips into dead dreamland and collapses to the floor.
It doesn't hold her long. If she were any other troll it would hold her, but Vriska's not any troll. She's the best troll (the best); she's trained herself to sleep as little as possible, in as short increments as she can. Sleep is like clockwork for Vriska because sleeping is the one time she's not watching her back. The one time she's not safe.
Sleeping is when that monster that sits right outside her back door can creep about unnoticed, and Vriska can't even count the number of times she's woken to find herself halfway to that back door, dragged there by tiny mouthless spider minions.
Nice try, spidermom, she always snarks, laughing, but deep inside nothing else in the world sparks terror in her heart like those moments when she is completely and utterly helpless, the spider minions' hairs itching at her skin and her lusus' blue eyes blazing just outside the doorway. Hungry, and never satisfied.
She wakes with a start, face down in her own blue blood and it smells vile. It smells like death and Vriska knows that stink so well. She jerks upright, her head swimming with dizziness and her vision all wrong. Everything looks wrong; flat and lifeless and drained of color. She swallows and shakes her head to clear it, but that only makes the dizziness worse. When she clutches her temples to still the spinning, her palm sticks to the slick blood trailing from her eye and then she remembers—
The explosion of radium and ozone. The flash of blinding white light.
Half blind and bleeding, she sits there and shakes. She's missing an entire arm. She can see it there stiff and lifeless on the floor next to her, but even with cold white reality staring her in the face she has trouble convincing herself it's real. Part of her wonders why the pain isn't so bad but she's been just outside her lusus' jaws so many times, been grazed by the shooting fire venom that laces her fangs, that her nerve endings simply don't feel pain that much anymore.
Vriska makes herself breathe. She stares down at the blood all over her bedroom floor, thick and runny and sopping into the carpet, and she knows she can't stay here. If anyone can smell blood it's her lusus and Vriska knows she doesn't have the strength to fight off minions right now.
Part of her wants to laugh, to stay and watch them boil in through the doors and the windows and bury themselves in blood in a miniature conga line, carrying the arm back to her lusus as a prize. Maybe finally tasting some of her flesh will get the huge demanding spider to calm down with the kidnapping attempts for a while.
But she pushes herself to her feet and leaves her severed arm there. Her knees are trembling and ready to give and she knows she needs to go now if she wants to have enough energy left over to tackle the stairs. She leans hard into the wall, blood streaking along the paint behind her as she walks. Her shoulder is a dull burning sensation but she can't see it. The eye closest to it is lodged with white marble shrapnel and sees nothing, and she can only turn her head so far without sending hot fire through the torn flesh of her shoulder. So she ignores it instead and just walks, leaning against the wall and breathing, counting footstep after footstep as she makes her way slowly to her front door.
It's black with storm clouds outside. The wind is wet and sticky and tearing and Vriska winces at the fat raindrops that slice into her butchered shoulder. She holds her good arm out for balance and sets her feet into the thickening mud, and with the lightning flickering in the background she finds the road that leads toward the bridge over the chasm.
Toward her creepy neighbor's hive.
The last thing she wants is to owe that freak a favor, but maybe she can convince him to let her sleep on his entranceway floor for a few hours. She doesn't think she has the energy left to pull a manipulation whammy on him and his lusus so she'll have to settle for actual talking. Actual talking that takes so much more brain power than she has blood left to concentrate on, but Vriska is the best at persuasion (the best), and it'll have to do.
Her balance is on its teetering edge of collapse as she forces her legs over those last few yards. She leans hard on his doorframe, her vision swimming with black spots again, and she raises one shaking finger to press a smudge of blue blood into his doorbell.
It takes him forever to answer. Vriska wobbles there, her knees threatening to give and her world spinning. It feels like the entire cliff is moving beneath her feet and she rests her forehead against the frame to give her some semblance of stillness. She needs her head in the game here. She needs to be able to think straight and part of her is screaming with anger that her body has betrayed her so entirely.
Nothing is ever easy. Nothing. Why, why why?
The door cracks slowly, the lightning flashing behind her and glinting off his stupid broken glasses, and in the darkness Vriska feels her mouth pull up into a cruel smile. Yeah that's right, thanks for falling right into her web of plans, buddy.
But how does she play this? He's got his mind all twisted up in the blood castes and she can spin a plea off that. She can do that. But is that what will get what she needs right now?
Hey, hey Equius. Heeeeeeeey! Are you just going to stand there and watch me bleed all over your doorstep? Sorry about that by the way, but I need a favor right now. You're higher than me on the blood-totem and all, right? Can I throw myself on your meeeeeeeercies? The words come out all wrong though, none of the honey-smooth suggestion in her voice. Instead she sounds drunk and strangled. Her lips are bleeding, torn up by the explosion, and she can't get them around some of the words. Instead she spits little clouds of blood that shine in the lightning as they splatter against his door.
Oh god, what is wrong with her? Try again. Quick.
Let me in, okay? I'm not really feeling staying at home right now. I know I'm not exactly presentable for a houseguest, but you don't mind, right? Riiiiiiiight? You don't mind helping me out. No no no, she still sounds pathetic and dying, and then her knees do give out. She slides down the slick wood of his doorframe and slumps in a puddle of her useless bloody legs, and the last thing she sees before the black takes over her vision is him stepping outside and crouching down beside to her.
It crosses his mind that he could simply not help her. He has never been fond of his neighbor. It's not that she's a bad neighbor, she simply invites all these strange low-bloods over to play the crass, brutal games she's obsessed with—games that paint the hills around their hives with visceral reds and yellows and greens and fill the air with the sweet stink of rotting blood. It doesn't make for the proper upstanding blueblooded neighborhood he really desires.
Still, Equius supposes that if Authour was as ravenous as Vriska's lusus he would be obsessed with the games too. What a difference a few shades of blue to the right makes; a civilized lusus for a troll as civilized as he is.
Pondering the decision, he watches her for a moment. The blood drips steadily from her torn shoulder but it's not streaming as such an injury would at first. Her flesh is already attempting to put itself back together. Her eye is hollow and full of gore, and the skin across the left side of her face is scorched and still peppered with shrapnel. Part of him is truly disgusted by how her obsession with those games has reached around and utterly brutalized her. Disgusted enough that he almost wants to close the door and simply be done with it all.
He's not a monster though. He may be cripplingly STRONG but he would never hurt something on purpose. He goes out of his way to prevent that sort of thing. The thunder crashes in deafening booms and he stoops there next to her as rain splatters across his back and into her black hair.
The floorboards creak behind him and Equius looks over his shoulder to find Aurthour standing quietly in the doorway. The lusus arches an eyebrow, a silent, Well? that Equius knows he doesn't need to answer.
(And this is the scary part, because Nepeta has brought him small animals before, smiling and trusting and telling him he would never learn to control his strength if he didn't practice. He'd stood there next to her with hoprabbits milling around his ankles, quietly terrified, and he had wrung their necks by accident every time.)
He picks her up as if she's made of tissue paper, as if the slightest touch will rip her in two, and he stands again and follows his lusus back into the depths of his hive.
Vriska coughs and coughs and coughs and it feels like her lungs are full of tar. She's on her back in the darkness somewhere, on something hard, and her whole body aches. Oh, it aches. Feels like she's fallen down a cliff at a tumble and her eye is just burning with fire. She rolls to her right and curls her knees toward her chest, and after a few moments she finally gets her breath.
She looks up and there are robots everywhere, some finished, most in various states of disrepair or destruction. It stinks of motor oil and they're everywhere and that's not okay. That is so far from okay. Robots are things that creepy creepy creepoids like, creepoids that are not Vriska, and she is not okay with this. Dead glass eyes watch her from every corner of the room and she feels a frightened squeak rising up in her throat. She slips off the worktable she's been lying on and dashes for the door.
She only gets three steps before the vertigo closes in on her again. Black spots invade her tunnel vision and she crashes hard on her knees on the floor. Robot trash is everywhere beneath her one hand and she pushes her forehead into the ground in panicked hope that the dizziness with fade soon. That it will fade and she can get up and out and away from this all. But it doesn't. Even two minutes later she still feels it, and her fingertips are so cold. Her legs are cold and tingling and her eye is full of spinning black spots.
Strong hands are suddenly on her back and she hadn't even heard the footsteps. Vriska lurches away, the squeak finally bubbling out of her throat because there's no way she's letting her lusus get her. There's no way. Spook her with robots, yeah that's fucked up but fine. No eating though. No eating!
It's not her lusus though. She notices it after she's crawled halfway across the room, and what is that thing? It's got a face almost like a troll but all wrong and why is this happening to her? It holds its hands out to calm her down, and when it advances again Vriska doesn't really have the strength to run a second time. It hooks one hand under her knees, one against the small of her back, and it sets her gingerly back on the worktable. And then it doesn't move.
You are going to injure yourself further, he says, not the lusus but a voice she recognizes. Fucking Equius, Vriska realizes as she remembers the slow painful climb up to his hive. Oh. She'd asked him for help. Right.
Why am I so dizzy? What did you doooooooo to me, you creep? What are you doing to me with all these robots? She barks questions and they still sound slurred and broken despite how full of venom they are. Ugh. What is wrong with her?
He doesn't talk at first, coming around to the opposite side of the table as his creepy lusus, and then he bends slightly to look at her shoulder. You've lost an excessive amount of blood. Standing at this time would be in very poor judgment.
Yeah, well fuck you too, she mutters, not caring if she offends him at this point. Her tongue feels like it's twice as big as it should be. And then he touches her shoulder. (Touches her!) She jerks her head over to see what he's doing but she still can't see her shoulder. She can't see it with her eye all ruined like it is. She scowls at his face instead, reaching up with her good hand to slap him away as hard as she can—
But then she sees it in the reflection of his stupid broken glasses. The tangled gore of her shoulder is wrapped up in a clot-cloth, the flesh around it still burnt an ugly blue. It looks like it hurts. It looks like it really hurts, and even looking at it makes Vriska feel a bit sick as she turns away. She's seen worse injuries on the trolls she's fed her lusus, but never in that intimate shade of blue before.
Don't touch me, she says around her swollen tongue and shredded lips. I'm broken up enough, I don't need your stupid hands snapping any more bones.
It's almost funny how quickly his hands fall away, knotting themselves together nervously on the table next to her. He's terrified of hurting her. He frowns down at her with a weird determined guilt in his eyes and Vriska has no idea what he's planning, but something in her knows that she can trust him for at least another night or so. He's obviously taking care of her. Making sure she doesn't bleed out from the gaping wound in her shoulder.
Yeah he's a creep, but she feels a certain cruel pride in knowing she'd picked the right mark, played her cards perfectly, and now she's getting the medical attention she needs. Even half dead she's still the best (the best). Her mouth pulls up into that venomous smile again and she has to drag her gaze away from his eyes before he notices it.
Thanks Equius. Thaaaaaaaanks.
These robots, she mutters, her throat full of gravel. I'm not okay with these robots. Isn't there some other place you can put me?
No. There's no argument in his voice.
Augh, whatever. She wants to plead the point, put some needling whine into her words and lead him around on a leash, but she doesn't trust her mouth to do it right. She doesn't trust it and her head feels so empty, like it's full of radium and ozone and her thoughts are falling apart again. What's the matter with her? Blood loss sucks. She feels all wrong and that creepy lusus is still staring down at her, and Vriska closes her eye and throws her one hand over it, trying to block everything out.
Equius brings her food; cans of some foul sugary beverage Nepeta had brought him one time to keep her energy up, dried meats for protein and bitter vegetables for other vitamins. He's been injured before and he knows what the body needs to reknit itself. In truth, milk is the best for that, but he only shares that with guests, not neighbors who barge in unannounced demanding insane things.
Had she gone to any other hive she would have been culled on the spot. Equius considers himself noble and exceptionally generous for doing otherwise, and he fights against the anger that rises up in him when she curses, the disgust he feels when her head lolls back in that vulnerable way and he does nothing but watch her. (It would be so easy to simply snap her neck—)
She makes a fuss about it but she does eat, even the bitterest of vegetables. She seems to be ravenous, her body telling her what she needs to replenish the pints of lost blood. In between she sleeps and in those times Equius often stands quietly in the doorway to his workroom, squinting through the cracked lenses of his glasses and wondering how she never wakes up screaming.
He requires the sopor slime to sleep. It's a necessity. Otherwise his dreams are plagued with visions of himself bathed in every color of the rainbow (even purple), wading through an endless army of enemy trolls and swinging the massive white jawbone of some long-dead animal. Their skulls explode and their limbs rupture and he is the STRONG rampaging tyrant that never stops murdering.
It's most uncivilized. It leaves him terrified and shaking, and even Aurthour's warm hands on his shoulders cannot still him after those dreams.
Vriska sleeps soundly, though, her broken body somehow suppressing the nightmares and holding her in an odd healing torpor. She wakes when she's ravenous and sleeps the rest of the time.
"Your arm," he asks her eventually, averting his eyes as she chews like a disgusting peasant. "It is unfortunate that you lost it."
She doesn't talk, curled up as she is on her side. Thankfully she swallows before she answers him. "Stupid lousy white text guy," she mutters through her bleeding lips, more to herself than anything.
Equius ignores her rambling for the most part. He assumes that it all has to do with her games and how she got the injury in the first place. He tries again. "I understand that you have voiced your dislike for my fondness for robotics. But you are crippled, and as a fellow blueblood I feel compelled to help you in some way."
"What?" Vriska slurs, actually looking up at him and he can tell even through the bandages pressed into her ruined eye that she's confused.
"I can craft you a new arm. A robotic one, yes, but it will reduce your disability."
Her face bends into confusion again, but he can tell that this time she's thinking, weighing his offer as genuine or not. Equius would never offer something falsely just to snatch it back again. He has more honor than that. But he understands that someone in her position—entirely helpless and reliant on him in this time of need—would be wary. He is a blueblood after all and bluebloods betray. Part of him is disgusted with his behavior, his utter subjugation of the culling laws and his own nature, but her eye is unfocused and her reaction times slow and the more pathetic she is, the more he feels like this whole ordeal is some debauch charity through which he will only venerate himself.
"It won't be, like, creepy and stuff?" she asks, squinting warily at him.
He doesn't intend anything he does to be creepy, but people seem to think it is anyway. "No," he says, because he means nothing depraved with the offer. He simply wants to help her. He speaks in words he knows she will understand: "Consider it an extra favor on top of the one you already owe me."
Vriska stares him down, the confusion gone and her face cast in frustrated anger instead. Another favor, favor piled on top of favor, and she is not happy about the thought of being at his beck and call. She's not really different enough on the blood spectrum from him to consider taking advantage of that in any way other than helps, but he can tell she doesn't see it that way. He met Aradia through her after all, and she must know the kinds of things he asks of the redblood, though she always refuses him.
"Would you submit to this offer?" he asks, hoping to lead her thoughts to less private things.
"You want me to ask, don't you? To beeeeeeeeg."
He pauses, and in the silence he realizes he does. He wants her to ask him, to indulge him in the hierarchy, though as close as their blood colors are this is as far as he can twist it.
Her face contorts in disgust, a slip of blue blood running from her eye, and she turns away from him. "Fine, you creepy creep. Build me an arm, please. I have a life to live and things to do and it'll all be easier with two arms instead of one."
That's not precisely what he wanted, but with his perversion of the hemospectrum hanging in the air like this, exposed for all to see, he shies away from pressing the point.
"Very well."
A few days have passed or something. Vriska isn't really sure because she wakes and sleeps and wakes and every time she never remembers a single dream. She's not used to that. She's used to dreaming of spiders and blood and the crashing ocean, Eridan's over-practiced orphaner's laugh echoing over it and the searing eyes of her lusus in the sky like eight blue moons. She wakes again, hungry but not as ravenous as before. She fumbles for the food he keeps putting on the table just within her reach.
There's a quiet pounding off to the side, the sizzle of something burning and the stink of ionized metal in the air. It reminds her of the explosion for a second and she winces in phantom pain at the memory of scorching plasma rushing down her lungs again. Ow, it had hurt. It's over though, it's done and she makes herself not think about it, pushing it away as she recovers and turns her head to squint at the source of that sound.
Equius is bent over another work table, this one cleared of the robot junk that's littered all over the rest of the room. (Eyes, glass eyes everywhere watching her, reflecting that blue glow like a thousand tiny moons.) He's welding something, his black glasses protecting his vision, and she squints harder into the light thrown off by the welding torch, trying to see what the hell he's doing that he has to be so noisy and bright and wake her up.
"What is that?" she asks, and for once she doesn't sound drunk and stupid, her lips still torn to pieces but her voice solid at least. She tries to sit up, pushes her palm into the smooth metal of the table and swings her legs over the side. She still feels lightheaded but her vision doesn't swim this time. "You woke me up, dumbfuck."
He doesn't move, his attention still focused on the welding and Vriska thinks of how easy it would be to scoop up one of the jagged scraps of metal on the floor and simply stab him in the back. So simple. No more owed favors. But no arm either.
"My apologies," he says, not looking up and she grinds her teeth together as he keeps ignoring her.
"You can't do that somewhere else? You probably have other rooms."
He looks back over a shoulder with his face shaded dark with frustration, his mouth in a furious curve as he growls, "You make endless demands for someone in such a vulnerable position."
Whoa. Bad mood.
He actually sounds like he's got plans to hurt something and it's the first time she's heard any kind of murderous tilt to his voice. It's a bit shocking. The muscles in his back are knotted, tense and angry, and his arms are stiff and ready for pain, his fingers clamped like vicegrips over that welding torch. Holding it like it's a weapon. And Vriska's seen him destroy a lot of things, robots and inanimate objects pulled apart that the seams, but she's never seen his scary violent strength wrapped around a weapon before. A weapon the uncivilized fury in his eyes obviously has intent to use on another troll.
On Vriska.
Equius? Dangerous? It sends a chill down her spine and how had she never seen that coming?
The torch glows hot and he turns toward her, his mouth pulled into a snarl, and for a wide-eyed second all Vriska can imagine is that fire lancing into her belly and burning her black inside.
"I am serving you. I am serving you and that is all backward," he snaps, spitting with rage. "You should be begging me to heal you and instead all you do is moan and complain and ask for things! Do you realize how many rules we are breaking with this arrangement? How we are entirely disregarding the culling laws? I should crush your skull with my bare hands!"
"Then why don't you?" she snaps back, still perched on the edge of the table. Her own limbs are tensed, ready to throw herself away from him if he lunges at her with that torch, and despite the venom in her words she feels panic rising in her throat.
"I am not sure," he murmurs, his voice suddenly quiet and dangerous. His eyes are dark and angry, barely visible above his glasses. The torch spits blue sparks at the floor, sizzling and burning, and Vriska twitches her toes back away from it.
"Don't touch me," she hisses, her voice level and dripping threat. Because she'd love to gut him and leave; one less favor she owes, one more body for her lusus' endless fire. She'd love that, but she still feels lightheaded, still feels the tingling in her fingertips and toes from the bloodloss, and she doesn't trust her body to do that yet. Not just yet. Instead she slips to stand on the floor, bending in one smooth motion and scooping up the jagged piece of metal lying at her feet. Maybe she'll get to use it after all.
She holds the scrap dagger toward him, her own back to the table and her legs bent, ready to move. Her head is throbbing but she can run at least. She can get out if she tries and Vriska will always try (always).
Equius looms there watching her and she knows he can see the fear on her face. She's too transparent right now to hide it well, still healing like this. He doesn't move though and Vriska holds her ground, and the standoff drags out silent and long before he turns on his heel, his jaw still set with anger, and goes back to work.
"You're turning your back on me after that? What, are you the stupidest troll ever?"
"We are not the same," he snaps, not turning around, the torch hefted and held back to the robotic arm he's crafting. It stinks of ozone again.
"Noooooooo, not the same at all. No backstabbing murder plots in here, nevermind that you almost just attacked me!"
"But I did not!" His hand smashes down on the tabletop, sparks shooting everywhere. "That is how we are different. I can control myself whereas you are entirely unrestrained!"
"What?! You think I did this to myself on purpose? That almost bleeding out and almost being lusus lunch is how I get my kicks? Sorry to disappoint you, dumbass, but this accident was pretty much completely not my fault!"
"Shut up!" he snaps, and the words kick Vriska with surprise because that's harsh language for Equius. "Just shut up. You are not making this easy for me."
She can hear the shame dripping from those words, and maybe a bit of guilt too. It shocks her again. Vriska isn't used to that kind of emotional honesty. She's used to scathing banter and thinly veiled threats, and Equius being candid and genuine to her without fearing what she'll use that display of weakness for later catches her off guard. Someone who actually trusts her that much? She wants to laugh in his face at how stupid that is, but it's more than even her close friends give her, and the truth in that stings.
Something in her deflates and she drops the obnoxious banter and actually asks him something plainly for once. "Making what easy?"
"Caring for you like this," he says quietly. He must notice her change in tone because he sits back, his shoulders relaxing as he tips his jaw to stare at the wall. "You are a fellow blueblood and I wish to help you, but you also know what it's like to be a blueblood. The instinct to backstab, to thin the herd, is exquisitely powerful."
"So why put up with it?" If their positions had been reversed she would have ended him without hesitation.
He sets the still smoldering torch aside on the table. He spreads his hands in front of himself, staring at his gloved palms, and even from across the room Vriska notices how tired he looks. "It's easy to destroy."
He's not exactly gentle with things. His robots are smashed and snapped to bits by his own hands. She's seen him take out entire walls before just by leaning against them, and the table in front of him is dented where he'd slammed his fist into it. Vriska has laughed at him for it many times. She's teased him mercilessly that he would be such an amazing warrior if he'd just get over his stupid blood hierarchy and let loose for a while. Breaking heads would be nothing for him. He'd bathe in the blood without even trying and what high troll empress wouldn't love that?
Wouldn't that just be the perfect way to fit into his beloved rainbow aristocracy?
But he says, "I'm tired of destroying things," instead, and that's so backward it's like troll society blasphemy coming out of someone with beliefs like Equius. He turns and looks at Vriska standing there leaning against the table with only one arm. The girl he's helping even though he shouldn't. "If just this once I can create something that will truly last, something that will help someone instead of hurting, I am happy to embrace that."
It sounds like a stupid reason but the way he says it, his voice full of sad frustrated exhaustion like he's a prisoner trapped in a box and this is the crack in the wall, the tiny slice of the world he can see beyond—and for some reason that punches Vriska in the heart.
Destruction is what trolls do and being weak is worthless. Vriska has fought tooth and nail to get where she is, to her fifth sweep still alive, not lusus food and her own lusus still kicking. She is fearless and she can do anything. But even though she'd never say it, Vriska does feel weak sometimes; when her lusus needs food and she's too tired to play a FLARP campaign without wounding herself, when she stumbles back bleeding and sick and it's all she can do to drag herself to her recuperacoon and not collapse on the floor for the minions to find her. Sometimes feeding her lusus feels like drowning and the small times she spends away, laughing with Kanaya (and Terezi and Aradia before it all went to hell), help buoy her up.
As much as it feels like she should laugh at him, laugh at how ridiculous wanting to be weak is, she doesn't. Because she knows that sometimes being strong is what's hard, impossibly heartbreakingly hard. So instead she drops the shard of metal and sits back on the table, saying nothing and finally eating her food.
The arm is a work of art. It's finer than the arms he grafts to his robots, this circuitry more complex and elegant. The fingertips transmit the slightest touch. The joints are delicate but durable, articulate and in near-perfect likeness of her own missing arm. It twitches to life and he smiles. She's silent when he asks her to sit up, to pull aside the tattered shoulder of her shirt so he can splice the metal into her healing flesh—so it can be her own.
It works. They run it through some tests but it works perfectly, responding readily to the pulses of her nervous system. Vriska flexes the arm, grinning, and she punches him in the shoulder so hard that he feels it, that it stings even his STRONG unfeeling flesh. As uncivilized as that gesture is, Equius can't help but be a little grateful to her for that. She's not afraid to touch him and with that arm he can't break her, and that isn't something he experiences with most people.
She's more or less healed. When she stands the vertigo doesn't plague her. She takes confident steps over his workroom floor, striding out into the hallway with Equius on her heels. She looks ecstatic to be back in working order again, to be able to trust herself and move under her own power, and Equius is a bit envious of her for that. For that trust in her own body. He walks her to the door.
"Thanks," she says, hesitating in his doorway and turning back, and her voice has that strange honest color to it.
Aurthour is hovering behind him, more than ready for this intruder to leave their home, but Equius nods to her, ever polite. "Of course."
"You ever figure out something that isn't creepy for me to repay that favor with, just yell across the chasm."
He raises an eyebrow because that wasn't exactly how he had tallied up the favors. "Only one favor?"
"Only one. I already let the arm thing slide since you needed something helpful to do so baaaaaaaadly." Vriska grins, all fangs and cleverness. "I really am so nice, aren't I? I have all the niceness, all of it!"
Equius watches her for a moment and honestly he's not surprised. A blueblood is a blueblood after all, and he had always expected her to try to spin her way out of it. But he doesn't feel cheated this time. He actually got what he wanted and that's different. That's nearly considerate, coming from Vriska. So he smiles and he nods, and he says, "Deal."