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(MEAT)
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The messiah Gamzee served ate meat in squishy fistfuls, when he was young, so it smeared across the clattering green skull of him. So that it splattered down his shirt and left his gold tooth smeary wet with somebody else’s motherfucking life. Sometimes Caliborn... The Angel of Double-Death... Had Gamzee scrape off the scales or carapace pieces or whatever-the-fuck else of what he was eating. Gamzee hummed old clown hymns as he worked, then, feeling far away inside his head. Not swimming through a sticky sopor haze, anymore, like he used to. But faith — but mirthful, messiahs-blessed devotion — could swallow him deeper still. Deeper than anything, because it was truth and rage and the first love Gamzee’d ever fucking known not to get shoved right back in his fucking awestruck baffled face, somehow. It felt like lusus-love, flushed-love, pale-love, all of it just hadn’t stuck like faith, right?
Devotion tasted heavy and sharp inside Gamzee so much of the motherfucking time, now, tangy and rich as a bleeding thing. It was one half of his soul possessing the other, maybe; it would have to be enough.
Karkat — Gamzee’s first and only pale-love, don’t you fucking know it? — hadn’t thought Gamzee could be worth anything, really, in the scheme of their game. Thought even his Bard of Rage title was a snickering universal joke. But see how it goes, brothers and sisters: see how when it comes to the meat of things, to the hunger, Gamzee is right there at the edge of your eyes? He’s got blood on his claws, too. He’s smiling softly, but his face seems both knowing and empty at the same motherfucking time.
The air smells like finality, here, at the center of the story... Bloody-rich and salty like an ocean back on Alternia. Back along Gamzee’s childhood grey beach, where part of him will always be slumped in the sand, waiting for a family that never came true. If he couldn’t have family, at least Gamzee could have faith. If he couldn’t feel good and wanted, at least he could know he was part of grinning necessity, wasn’t he?
Gamzee cracked a fang, once, accidentally biting bone. Trying to eat the way his messiah did. There wasn’t much else around, see. He could’ve killed for any old pie, some nights, except not that thinkpan-melting sopor shit. But a flavor disc, or a weird Earth sandwich without any grubs in it... Nearly anything. It wasn’t so bad about his fang, though. It’d been one from the back. Gamzee had sacrificed far, far more than that, by this point — his body was full of stitches as a wiggler’s rag doll, to say nothing of his soul. Heh. Gamzee wondered if Karkat could’ve pitied him, seeing it all, knowing what it meant to die and die and die and heave himself back to his feet every time. Die for the cause that both ended paradox space and kept their game winnable; die for the gods that had needed to cut Gamzee’s soul in half the whole fucking time.
It’s that necessary, cackling half of Gamzee’s soul we’re talking about, now, oh brothers and sisters. That’s the one that wins out, that has another story told, if John Egbert makes it so. The cruel, desperate meat of Gamzee’s being, am I right? The half that everybody’s story needs, hatched to make a raging monster for the end of things. Hatched to shatter all that darkness between the stars like a skull slammed to a motherfucking mirthful pulp with a divine Subjugglator’s club.
If John Egbert chooses the meat of his motherfucking story to come — chooses to crunch his oh-so-snappable human teeth in deep enough to maybe crack ‘em all apart — Gamzee will play his role for everyone when the spotlight falls on him again. He will be there if John manages to scrape together a new crowd of heroes. It’s a holy prophesy, after all. It weighs Gamzee to that spot like rocks in his huge curled jester shoes.
Half of Gamzee’s soul is set — is prophesied, beyond all forces but righteous necessary truth — to stand with the god... As part of the god... At the center of the story up until he falls. The carnival music at the screaming heart of things.
This side of Gamzee could never choose anything but the wicked holy truth, not anymore; this side of Gamzee has traded everything, everything, for the story to play itself out the way it needs to be.
Gamzee made this aching choice long ago. He handed his mind over, because the human Dave said he should, because it was what his gods needed from him, because, because, because. And if sometimes Gamzee wants a pale-love that never understood him to maybe scoot in close, again... To reach up with soft, shaking hands and push back the hood of his false God Tier costume, so his curls could fall down his back again... Sweet and tender as the taste of candy and almost completely un-haunted...
Well then.
This half of Gamzee’s soul reminds the other half to stay quiet. To dream whatever saccharine, painful dreams he has left. It’s too late, isn’t it? The story is coming for them. The story has already both started and screeched to an end. Always.
The choice is out of their claws, brothers and sisters. Those claws are opened wide in supplication, of course, held up high as if in prayer. That’s how it’s got to motherfucking be.
Gamzee and Gamzee; the gods are me and also motherfucking me; meat and candy.
Amen, motherfuckers. Canon will play out how it must —
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(candy)
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— won’t it?
It has to. It’s bound to. That’s the motherfucking point of everything, right? The point of Gamzee’s punchline of a destiny... The point of Paradox Space and SGRUB and possibly even life itself.
But there’s another half of Gamzee’s soul, too, and that half never learned what it fucking felt like to be called “necessary” just for his own life. Outside of gods; outside of stories; outside of being a vessel for something more. Gamzee was drowned inside his head after choosing to let his other godly self in — that puppet, that monster, that motherfucking Lord of Time — and maybe nobody completely asked him whether faith was worth a family. Maybe he went into the dark still scraping at truth, still pounding at the doors and screaming for it. Doubting his religion; doubting everything one piece at a time. Maybe, if John chooses another way — a sweeter, useless way — someone will open that door. Someone will draw this half of Gamzee back into the light and scold him into scrubbing blood from Caliborn’s meat meals off his clown-paint cheek. Someone will take him down to Earth C and tell him: “Our destinies are bullshit, now. We’re retired. You can be done, too.”
It’s time to be done. The universe will fade, soon enough, maybe, but at least it will fade away like a sweet taste on everybody’s tongue. It may be difficult to drag this less-necessary, unchosen half of Gamzee’s soul away from things. It might be almost impossible. But if the former heroes care... If the former heroes try...
The Messiah Gamzee served ate candy, too, so syrupy and sweet it would rot your insides to sugary grey paste in no time at all if you weren't careful. Gamzee won’t be able to eat candy ever again without thinking about him, and about all the fillings that had to get worked into his fangs after he left the story he was hatched for behind. That story had been left to rot, and so had Gamzee’s teeth for a long time. His old pale-love — who hadn’t truly seen him until it was too late, who hadn’t realized Gamzee’s possibilities until he became tied to a monster — might buy a toothbrush for him. Might slip that toothbrush into a cup by the sink in the hive he shared with his human matesprit, too, even. Toothbrushes for Karkat and Dave and Jade, and a toothbrush for Gamzee, now. Maybe it’ll have a cartoon character on it from some old slaughter show Gamzee’d liked when they were wigglers, to show how Karkat remembered him.
Maybe... Even now... Karkat will be able to remember Gamzee how he had been, before destiny, before rage enough to remake a clown with a slow drawling voice into godly terrifying purpose. If John Egbert chooses a sweeter, purposeless story, maybe Gamzee will still know deep inside himself that he is supposed to be somewhere else. That he is supposed to be playing his part; that he’s supposed to be swallowed up and gone, letting his other self perform his sacred ruinous act.
But maybe, after all of this, Gamzee won’t believe that’s the truth his heart speaks in him anymore. Maybe he will decide it doesn’t have to be. How awful, right? How blasphemous.
Maybe Gamzee couldn’t bear something like that... But then, the world is full of miracles. Who even actually motherfucking knows?
Maybe Gamzee can be done. Maybe he’ll be surprised that Dave let Karkat bring in a pile of old Alternian honk-horns for their hive’s basement... (And bring them there for him, is the motherfucking truth of it...) but he’ll go sort of sweetly quiet when he sees them all the same. He’ll play with a hard candy Caliborn would have liked, swishing it around in the back of his mouth. So close to being swallowed. So close to being wasted, the way their world was wasting away, too.
The last time this side of Gamzee spoke to anyone in canon, he was shaky and desperate and begging Terezi to explain why she was motherfucking hurting him. He had been allowed to bob up to the surface of his own self for just a second, then, reaching through the version of his own soul that was possessing him like the answer emerging out of murky blue water in a magic eight ball. It will feel like another life, here in this sweet useless world. He’ll grin at Karkat and say something new. Something he shouldn’t have gotten the chance to say.
Something so far from prophesy, but possibly at least a little tied to the ironic rap album Dave’s working on a room or so away.
Meat or candy.
Smiling soul or screaming soul, both halves of a whole bound for prophesy and pain, for divinity and sacrifice.
The chance to matter, or the chance to live. Faith or family; purpose or hope.
The answer will come, just the way it has to. Every choice is made somehow. Every prayer stumbles to an end, oh my brothers and sisters.
Every sweet-bleeding prayer just motherfucking has to.