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They landed on high ground: a flat, grassy plateau tangled with weeds. The farther down he travels, the thicker and wilder the plants get—but someone has cut a path through the brush, ripping apart vines and branches with unusual strength. He’s left splatters of indigo blood in his wake.
Karkat follows the path down to the place where the cliff edge drops off sharply. Below is a sliver of a beach, barely squeezing in between the cliff and the rocks and the sea. It’s this beach that Gamzee is staring at, as he swings his legs over the edge. He never looks away. “Well,” he says. “If it isn’t my motherfucking best bosom friend.”
God, but he’s so tired. “It’s your leader, that’s who it is. What the fuck did I tell you about wandering off?”
Gamzee just smiles. He looks younger, more vulnerable, without the face paint; it makes him seem almost pitiable, instead of absolutely fucking terrifying. “Didn’t we talk about this, best friend?” he says, calm. “I’m done letting you tell me what to do.”
Karkat reminds himself that he is not afraid, and takes a step closer. “We’ve talked about it. I’ve told you, it’s not about—looking down on you or whatever you think. You’re my team, and my responsibility, and I have to know you’re not getting yourself killed out there or whatever.”
“Ain’t a thing in here that can touch me.” There’s a kind of dark pleasure in the words—or is that—he has to be imagining it, right, he’s just still jumpy about Gamzee. “I’m the most high, don’t you know that, brother? The best.”
“Yeah, well,” he says desperately, “I’m not taking any more fucking chances. Humor me.”
But Gamzee either isn’t listening or doesn’t care. His eyes track the ebb and flow of the sea, and the smile slides off his face in time with the receding waves. “Used to think everything was a motherfuckin’ miracle, you know?”
His chest hurts. “I know.”
“But the whole world’s rotten.” Gamzee holds his palms up in the air, like a supplicant awaiting his miracle. “You peel back all those layers, only to see that there’s nothing at the core! It’s like the biggest motherfucking joke that’s ever been played.”
“No,” Karkat says.
Something in Gamzee’s expression smooths itself out, sharpens. “You getting all contradictory on me here, best friend?” asks the heir to the Subjugglators.
Don’t back down. Don’t back down. And whatever you do, don’t act unsure. “You don’t believe that.”
“Don’t I, my motherfucking bro?”
“No,” Karkat says, raising his chin.
“And what exactly makes you so sure about that?”
He curls his hands into fists, holds them straight by his sides. “You don’t believe it because it isn’t fucking true. Come back to camp with me.”
There’s no sound in the air, then, nothing except the distant cries of an alien beast, low and crooning and ominous. “Everything looked so ugly back in that lab. But I turned that motherfucker around, you know? I figured it out. Thought I knew exactly what I was all made out to be!” There’s a spark in his voice, a crackling joy—then it fades out. “I miss that,” he says, sober now.
What is he supposed to say? What is there to say to that? “I know,” Karkat manages, finally.
Gamzee skims a hand over the grass, and the dew wets his fingers. “It was a real bad thing I did, wasn’t it.” It’s not pitched like a question.
He looks out towards where the sea meets the sky. “Yeah. But it’s not your fault. You weren’t—you were sick,” he says stubbornly.
That seems to pacify Gamzee a bit. He turns his hands over and over, staring at them like he’s just realized they’re there. “Hasn’t changed what we are one bit, huh, best friend?” He says it like he’s asking for something.
“No.”
Sometimes a leader has to lie.
Karkat holds out his hand, and at last Gamzee takes it; his vice-grip is another reminder of how dangerous he once was—how dangerous he still might be. Karkat doesn’t let go, though. He can’t afford to.