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Gamzee does not know why he’s here. He knows the vague reason, something about laying bear the breadth of his motherfucking soul, but he doesn’t understand why here, why with the Rose human’s scratch version, why now. He doesn’t understand why he should talk to anyone other than his moirail when Crocker mentioned feelings. It feels like he’s about to cheat and things are so delicate and fragile with Karkat that the very thought makes him want to vomit. He wouldn’t want to cheat at the best of times, much less now when he could lose his diamondbro with an off word if he isn’t careful. They’re probationary, that’s what Karkat said. Seeing if they ain’t right after all, less some miraculous fate bound meeting and more an expression of desperation.
He doesn’t want to do this and he would just walk the fuck home except then Crocker would give him that look, the one that makes his insides go all jelly and disgusting, the one that makes his overwhelming guilt that much worse. When Crocker looks at him like that, sometimes it’s even worse than the idea that Karkat will drop him again.
He still doesn’t know why he’s here. Humans are so motherfucking weird, getting all up in his business like they’ve got any idea how things should be, like they understand what he needs. They don’t (most times,he doesn’t either) and the sooner they figure that out, the sooner he can get back to looking after his own self and his palebro’s self and letting everything else fuck off around them.
He lets himself be led into Lalonde’s office and settles himself in a chair as Crocker tips his hat to her. He doesn’t linger, even though Gamzee wishes he had, and Gamzee becomes even more resolute to bear this and be done with it because there is no motherfucking place he’d rather be all up and not at.
Lalonde hasn’t stopped smiling since he first stepped foot into her office, not even in the face of his most reluctant, recalcitrant expression. She even politely waits until he’s seated before she speaks, looking for all the world like she finds nothing more interesting than Gamzee and whatever he has to say.
“Good afternoon. Would you prefer it if I called you Gamzee, or Mr. Makara? I wouldn’t want to make this anymore uncomfortable for you than it must already be.”
Uncomfortable. That’s a motherfucking word for it. Gamzee isn’t sure how he’s supposed to answer. Most of the time, if he just smiles like he’s got nothing going on in his pan, things smooth themselves out for him. And it’s not like he really cares what she calls him.He’s just let people call him what they want and there are plenty of names to motherfucking choose from; he’s heard so many.
“It doesn’t motherfucking matter much to me,” he says, watching her closely because she is running a game and he means to beat it. “Not one motherfucking bit. But as you’re wanting all up and in my thinksponge, KEEP YOUR MOTHERFUCKING FRONDS LOCKED ON MY MOTHERFUCKING SIGNNAME.”
“Of course, Mr. Makara.” She stays calm even in the face of his vehemence. She doesn’t flinch and she doesn’t break her gaze - she has the gall to actually look satisfied with his response.
He sits back in the chair, sprawls out like he doesn’t care even though he motherfucking does. Because this human motherfucker is looking all kinds of confident, like she’s got all the answers and she just wants him to confirm them. Like the Mirthful Messiahs have given unto her their wicked sermons, imparted within her all the knowledge of the miraculous. He doubts it, to be honest, and he shies a bit from thinking about them in the wake of all that’s gone on and all that he hasn’t quite made peace with yet. But looking at her, his muscles stay tense and his mind watchful. His instincts are screaming for him to run because he knows she has ways of getting into him that have nothing to do with flesh, which would be a lot less intimidating.
Gamzee is pretty sure the others would be unhappy if he took a club to her head. So he smiles instead, biggest he can with all his teeth. The way that makes all those human motherfuckers go on guard. “What are you wanting to motherfucking know?”
“What a broad, many-spectrumed question! There are many things I want to know, Mr. Makara, and not all of them with answers I intend to get from you, were you even capable of answering them to begin with. Really, I think that’s not the question we want to open with. I’d prefer something along the lines of: what would you least like to talk about?”
And isn’t that the most motherfucking stupid thing he’s ever been asked in his life. Gamzee narrows his eyes as he regards her but he can’t read the younger Rose; what makes him think he can get a fix on this motherfucker? He doesn’t like being this off base but instincts scream adult, capitulate and abscond, even though she don’t got the right pheromones to really sell it, those what get into a troll’s pan and make them motherfucking obey. His survival instinct has never been so loud, pounding at the fragile walls of his self control.
He hates the very idea she might get the answers she wants from someone else because the only one who might have answers to any important questions is the one person he would split the entire motherfucking universe for and if she dared-
Gamzee blinks and then breathes out slow and quiet to stop the low growl that had begun rumbling in his chest. Not yet. He’s not supposed to- He’s handling this. He’s motherfucking got this. He’s not going to kill this pale space monkey, play nice instead, the way he’s gotta so he’s got a place to sleep where he doesn’t have to fear someone’s going to take a crack at him (and pity the motherfucking fool that tries it.)
“How about we motherfucking talk about Lord English? Ain’t any motherfuckers as wanting to do that. Seems matching enough with the shitstain question out your painted face hole. Motherfucking good enough?”
Not once has she written anything on the clipboard she’s had in front of her since he walked in. She’s tapped her pen against it once or twice before she set that down, and now she place the clipboard down in her lap, where he can’t see it, and clasps her hands together on top of her desk. After a moment, she rests her chin on top of her clasped fingers with a blithe, unbothered smile.
“That’s quite a big subject, and one that I readily admit that I have very little information on. But if you’re ready to tackle that subject, then who am I to say no? What would you like to say about him?”
Not one motherfucking thing, actually, but she’s challenging him now. He can see it clear on her pale pink face. She wants him to lose it, to rile, to motherfucking jump at her maybe. She wants him to react and she’s going to press him for it. Gamzee shifts in the chair, pressing his back harder into the chair back as he picks at the fabric covered armrest.
He’s not supposed to kill these motherfucking humans, especially the adults, but he can practically taste her disgusting alien blood on his tongue. He wonders if she’s armed and waiting for him to slip.
“Motherfucker got what he all up and deserved,” he says because it’s true and he doesn’t think that much gives her a point against him. He doesn’t think he’s motherfucking given anything away. “Should have culled him young when I had the motherfucking chance.”
She watches him as he answers, face angled just subtly like she knows she has the higher ground here - it’s not quite judgemental, but it’s too calculating to be entirely neutral. It makes it more suspect as she lets the silence between them linger for moments longer than it should, drawn out until it’s nearly uncomfortable. Finally, though, she breaks her searching gaze and picks up her pen; it glides gracefully across the clipboard, even if Gamzee can’t see the result.
What the fuck is she writing. His eyes flicker to the clipboard, narrow and suspicious. He doesn’t know what power she might wield in their group dynamic but he knows the other adults at least listen to her and though Crocker assured him, unasked for, that all said between them would be all hush hush between them, she had extended no such motherfucking promise, nor was there any reason to think she might not still imply whatever it is she’s decided about him in such a way that they might figure it out.
He doesn’t want to be here. He doesn’t want to open his mouth but he can’t back down. He’s a motherfucking descendant of the motherfucking Subjuggulators (and no matter the fucked up shit he’s been through, the things he’s come to know about his faith, that heritage hasn’t been ruined for him) and there is no motherfucking way he’s going to let her win if he can help it.
She only looks up at him when she’s finished writing whatever hoofbeastshit she’d been writing, “I’m sure there are many who might agree with you. But there stands the point where you had that chance and you didn’t take it. Something must have stopped you - and if I understand your culture correctly, it wasn’t his infancy that factored into the decision.”
She pauses then and he can’t help but wonder about that himself. He isn’t sure what stopped him at first, since he hadn’t known what the cherub was at the time. It had been small and weak and alone, easy to step over or on, and he’d done neither. Like in the back of his mind, he’d known he couldn’t.
“What is it that stopped you then, that wouldn’t stop you now? Or, I wonder, would it still stop you, despite your best efforts?”
When he’d figured out what they were, that there was a they, not just an it, he’d already been dedicated to protecting them. At least a little. Enough to set up their hive and their chains and make sure they’d survive until they were bigger. And when he’d known what they would become, by then, he’d gotten used to listening to the raging voice in his pan.
His claws dig into the armrests, easily ripping into the fabric to the foam below. Gamzee doesn't like thinking about his choices (wrong, wrong, doubly wrong, but there had been nothing left for him except the horrorterrors and his god of double death, nothing that wanted him like they did) and he doesn’t like trying to figure out his own head. When he tries, he thinks about how he got to this, how so much of it doesn’t make sense through any motherfucking lens he can come up with.
His insides grind and sputter and he finds himself snarling out, “I DON’T MOTHERFUCKING NEED THAT MOTHERFUCKING BITCH ANYMORE. Never did, not a motherfucking day. I MOTHERFUCKING KNEW WHAT HE’D ALL UP AND DO. But the songs of the Mirthful Messiahs handed down the long motherfucking line of Subjuggulators had readied me to grant their miracles, THEIR MOTHERFUCKING MIRACLES-”
Gamzee stops and he’s panting, his pusher going mad in his chest. He blinks. Then he grins with all his teeth. “He’d been motherfucking all up and there the whole time. Didn’t motherfucking need me to save him. Just motherfucking let me do it.”
“I think… perhaps you misunderstood the question. I’m not accusing you. I’m not implying you needed him in the first place.” For once, for barely a second, the Lalonde actually looks off-balance; she rearranges her expression quickly, though, sets it back on barely neutral and plows right on, “Neither am I implying that he ever needed you to save him. I’m merely asking you why you did.”
Whatever she says about him misunderstanding, though, and however quickly she straightened herself out again, he does seem to have successfully distracted her, because she’s quick to switch tracks after that.
“It’s correct that you were raised by your Lusii and distanced by several years - sweeps, I apologize - from your direct genetic donors, yes? Then who was it, exactly, that ‘passed’ these songs of Mirthful Messiahs down your ‘line’?”
And Gamzee just stares at her as he realizes that he doesn’t, actually, know the answer. He tries to think back but his memories of the last few years are fuzzy at best, much less ones so early in his wigglerhood. There’s nothing before the Mirthful Messiahs. He doesn’t remember a time when they weren’t known to him, when he didn’t have knowledge of their songs (even if he ignored them for so many sweeps, sang the words but took no step to live the life). He always assumed it had been part of his early schoolfeeding and he’d never really cared to examine it any further.
He goes back to picking at the armrest, drawing out weak, tiny threads of color. “I always motherfucking knew them, since the miraculous beginning of my being.”
He knows he doesn’t sound as convinced as he wants to be. He feels brittle instead.
She takes the time to give those words a good, long ponderance, like they mean more than they are, before giving just the smallest shake of her head.
“I imagine ‘wigglers’ must be very cognitively advanced, then, to be able to fully grasp and understand so vague and mysterious a subject as miracles and messiahs. So, having this knowledge imparted to you so early is what led you to make the decision to… ’save’ the young Lord English? Were you influenced by what you were… taught… were your spiritual beliefs, or was it a decision you came to through your own reasoning?”
She’s so careful with the words she lets spill. He doesn’t like it. Feels like there’s more there but he’s got no notion as to what.
“I knew of the motherfucking Lord of Double Death,” Gamzee mutters absently. “Distant and motherfucking absent but always there. He was already there and he would always come. When my thinkpan cleared of the sopor rot that had quieted the songs of those beyond the motherfucking world, I knew what I was supposed to be and what I had to do.”
He hadn’t even needed Kurloz to confirm it for him. Everything became clear as crystal and a hundred times closer to shattering through the rage he’d found himself all filled true with.
“He didn’t need me to motherfucking save him.” The repetition sounds truer, feels truer. Safer. “WOULD HAVE ALL UP AND MOTHERFUCKING SURVIVED EITHER MOTHERFUCKING WAY. But I didn’t have another motherfucking thing to do anyway. Ain’t no one needing motherfucking me. NOT ONE MOTHERFUCKER.”
Rose goes quiet again as he pants for breath, all shaky and rage filled. He’s almost surprised the chair arms haven’t splintered in his grip. There’s just the slightest furrow to her brow, and a crease at one corner of her lips. He doesn’t know how to read humans at the best of times and he’s in no shape to do it now.
“Lucky, then, that you knew so early what your purpose was,” she says finally. “So many people struggle with that until they’re well on in their years. But I have to disagree - I don’t think you had to do anything. If he didn’t need you to save him, then it doesn’t make any sense that it was your job to do it anyway. I’m curious, though - you don’t think your friends needed you? You don’t think that maybe you needed them?”
His friends? That...
Gamzee doesn’t look at her. Pointedly does not look at her because she’s seeing things he didn’t mean for her to see. He doesn’t want to hear her. Doesn’t want to think about it.
“Don’t need a motherfucking thing. Not one motherfucking thing.”
Except he does. He does, he just doesn’t want to because he’d already ruined that. He’d already terrified Karkat and broke the trust they’d had so long. And Karkat still reached out, still pacified but everything is different now. Gamzee is different after that. No calm, no care; he’d broken to bits and been put together wrong. He drags up one leg, looping his arms around it, and rests his head on his knee as he stares at the destroyed mess he’s made of an armrest.
“Is that so?” Her voice sounds unintentionally soft - she clears her throat after she speaks again, but she’s lost that faintly superior edge to her expression.
“There’s some people who say there’s a difference between ‘needing’ something and ‘wanting’ something, but I’ve always wondered how true that really is.” He has no idea what that means. She shifts again as she speaks; her hands unclasp and she crosses her arms on the desk and leans forward just a little. “You say you didn’t need your friends, but I wonder if you wanted them, all the same? And if you wanted them, I wonder if that doesn’t also mean that you needed them.”
“Bitch, I was a motherfucking useless piece of shit before. Ain’t no reason they as had to have me hanging them,” Gamzee mutters but he hadn’t minded at the time and his friends hadn’t minded enough to count, either. Problem is, he doesn’t know how to be that troll anymore (even though he did try to be for a little while before the voices as told him what to do got too loud, but he is still so very messed up inside). He can’t be that. He feels it too keenly now, the rolling rage within him, the echoes of horrors and melodic threat. And even if he could, the damage is done. He’d never get back what he’d ruined. “Doesn’t matter anymore. Not a motherfucking bit.”
His gaze slants down to the floor and he starts tracing the designs in it.
“They don’t want me all up and in their space.” He understands it now, when the rage is low and quiet, a constant rumble rather than a scream. “Killed a couple shitblood motherfuckers what all had the motherfucking misfortune of crossing my way. Had myself a motherfucking good time painting all the colors. No more rotting thinksponge to hold back the real me. THE REAL MOTHERFUCKING ME.”
He smiles, bitter and broken and hateful. “Welcome to the Dark Carnival, bro.”
Karkat would look at him now, would talk to him, would pretend everything was okay, but Gamzee knows it’s not (not really) because Karkat is always watchful now and he always will be (he should be.)
“The ‘real you’. What was so disagreeable about the person you were before? What made you think you needed to be someone different? Forgive me if I doubt that coming down off the Sopor made you any more ‘real’ than being on it did. I’m not precisely an expert, but it’s not how drugs tend to work.” Her voice has gone sharp and the lines of her face seem more tense; it’s at least obvious now that she’s not as unaffected by this conversation as she would like the both of them to believe.
He wishes he could lose himself in the oblivious stupidity of his former self. He can’t. It hurts to think about it and he is tired of feeling pain. Sometimes, he almost envies how resolute Kurloz is. Was. He’s not sure where his motherfucking dancendant fits anymore.
It’s easier to think of the sopor and what it did to him, rather than what he did without it, so he focuses there. He’d been so content, slow as motherfucking anything, but he hadn’t needed to be quick. He’d just let his life pass him by and let himself love his friends and love his lusus. He hadn’t cared about what he’d become, what would happen when he’d molted the final time and been conscripted (if he’d be conscripted, pan fried as he was.)
And when he’d run out, when the soothing calm had gone from his system, he remembers the aching through his entire body. The way every sense he had crossed every other and jumped about, making him ache inside and out. He remembers the way that, for a while, time had seemed so completely elastic and swung from long to short and back again at utter random, sometimes skipping hours between completely.
“I kept all up and waking weird places after I ran out of sopor pie,” he muses, caught in his memories more than anything. “Got my slumber on any motherfucking spot any motherfucking time. Environment controls kept going on the fritz, freezing us motherfuckers and then burning us alive. Ain’t doing good by a motherfucker to go one way and another so fast, but no one else complained so I kept it to my own self. They was all busy anyway.”
He pauses a moment or two, then mutters, “Shoulda brought more motherfucking pies.”
Lalonde hums in her throat, a long noise that seems heavy with thought that brings him out of his head again. She taps her nails in staccato against the back of her clipboard, briefly, and finally tilts her head in curiosity.
“Do you think things would be better, if you had? Or do you think they would be just as bad? Do you wish you had more because you think having it would make everything else easier to deal with?”
Gamzee looks at her and his gaze is sharp as a blade. He didn’t come here for a feelings jam and this is already too pale but he’s nearing his limit for this bullshit. He’d come here to satisfy Crocker and because Karkat had told him to try, not to let some motherfucker pick at his half healed scars.
“Maybe if there’d been more, I’da waited a motherfucking bit before GETTING MY MOTHERFUCKING CULL ON,” he snarls. “Time enough for them to handle that fishbait motherfucker Ampora first, after he all up and killed the fishqueen. SO MUCH MOTHERFUCKING KILLING GOING ON, like every motherfucker got all up in the rage at once with no palebro to stop them, NOT A MOTHERFUCKING ONE.”
Except his, who went above and beyond the motherfucking call of duty in shooshing him down and taking his place as moirail. Gamzee’s not sure he’d have stopped until all of them were nothing but cooling paint receptacles. It had felt so motherfucking good to subjuggulate those upstarts, those what doubted the validity of his calling, the Messiahs he was to be. SO MOTHERFUCKING GOOD. Like for a few hours, for a little while as he hunted, he’d felt alive and powerful and purposeful.
He hasn’t felt good since, but he’d found another purpose, even if it was a motherfucking stupid one. The others hadn’t wanted him after that, anyway.
At least he’s getting familiar reactions out of Lalonde, now, if the way she goes tense and still or the wary note in her gaze says anything. Even if she doesn’t seem so much scared of him as she just seems to be acknowledging that he is approaching a dangerous mood. It doesn’t go away as she purses her lips.
“That’s putting quite a bit of responsibility on your own shoulders - not that I’m telling you to shirk responsibility, of course, but I was not aware that you, too, were a Seer. Could you have known that Mr. Ampora would do what he did, when he did, and that it would coincide with your… withdrawal, we’ll call it?” She leans back in her own chair, much more calmly, and waits for the answer to that.
Gamzee stiffens, even though even he can tell that the rebuke is gentle. Maybe because it is. He doesn’t know what to think of that. Humans are so motherfucking weird the way they have lusii of the same species and disgusting mammalian habits and these adults that just... act like they’re supposed to be pale slutting with every thinking being that comes their way. He’s not desperate for it-
She’s not offering. Gamzee looks away. He presses his cheek harder against his bony knee, claws digging in to skin that’s so much thicker than hers. The pinpricks of pain, faint but real, help him focus.
“Invertesister,” he murmurs, lips quirking as he gives a rusty sounding chuckle, “you sound like the motherfucking prosecutioners from one of Terezi’s motherfucking dramas.”
It’s nonsensical, he knows that, and now he’s thinking about her. And that is not a motherfucking option right now. That’s worse than thinking about Tavros and finding his body some other motherfucker had seen fit to break. Gamzee remembers that keenly and he... No. He wants to ride whatever tiny grasp of mirth he can motherfucking muster.
Rose considers him as he hunches in on himself, and doesn’t try and stop him from the way he ducks against his knees or digs his fingers into his skin. Like she gets he needs it.
“A prosecutor, really?” It finally seems like someone around here can gracefully accept a subject change when it’s presented. Rose plays along with a strange willingless, considering how she’s pushed and nudged this conversation along so far.
“Strange, that, but I can see why you might think so. I was actually an author, briefly, in the life I had before this. You could say I eventually developed a taste for discovering the truth, rather than writing the fiction. But, how about we move on to some newer questions for now? I’ve been told you enjoy baking. Is there anything else you like to do, to help occupy your time?”
Dark eyes flicker over to observe her, a little curious himself why she’s letting things rest. Doesn’t seem like her, little he’s seen so far. He’s grateful for it, though, because he feels motherfucking cut up inside. Like he’s swallowed Nepeta’s claws. But still, he lifts his head to answer even as he’s trying to figure out the new game.
“Slam poetry,” he says, and this time, Lalonde doesn’t even bother hiding the genuine surprise that has her eyebrows inching up under her bangs. “Couple motherfuckers around here know how to get all up in the rhythm and rhyme without embarrassing their fool selves. Unless they’re motherfucking fronting pieces of hoofbeast shit what can’t use a beat.”
His thoughts flash to Dave Strider and he lets the slow burning furnace of hated for him stoke and burn anew for a moment or two, warming him even if it pisses him off further. That just makes him hate Strider more, the hatebaiting bastard. One day, he’s going to knock that motherfucker down and just stuff his bulge down his throat. See Strider try to motherfucking bitch around that. The thought brings a genuine grin to his face.
“Got a bitch tits class, too,” he remembers idly. “Human schoolfeeding’s still motherfucking weird, but at least some of those motherfuckers know how to paint. And your human paint ain’t too motherfucking bad. Dries all manner of motherfucking weird ways, but ain’t bad.”
“That sounds fascinating; I’m not entirely sure how passionate you are about these hobbies, but if you’d like to expand yourself a bit, you have a few options. There are quite a few stores that dedicate themselves to selling a wide spectrum of paint colors, with different textures and viscosities. Sometimes art galleries will have competitions or showings for amateurs, too, that you can submit your work to. And there are competitions held for slam poets that I’m sure you could look into, if you were interested. I’m not quite the expert, though, so you may have to do some of the research on these things yourself.”
He’s a little surprised about that, and more surprised when he realizes he might actually look into her recommendations. She leans to the side and opens her desk drawer, rustling through a messy pile of papers that can clearly be seen even from his side of the desk; when she closes it again, she’s collected a handful that she passes across the desk to him - flyers, it looks like, for some of the things she’s telling him about. He eyes them and leaves them there for now.
“I’m glad you enjoy one of your classes, though - do you like any of the others, or are you having any difficulties? The three trolls under my care sometimes comment that it’s very different than how schooling worked on Alternia.”
“Ain’t all bad,” Gamzee supposes, shrugging a thin shoulder. Motherfucking boring as hell with the strangest rules and customs, but not all bad. “Kept telling me to motherfucking watch my motherfucking speech, like some kinda motherfucking talking legislacerators but all followers of the Mirthful Messiahs gotta be up with their sacred motherfucking words.”
Lalonde visibly stifles a smile at that, but for once doesn’t hand over any commentary to accompany it.
He reaches up, rubs his thumb against the edge of his jaw where the white paint is just a little gummy. Human paint doesn’t dry quite the way his old paint did but he’s gotten used to the feeling and a motherfucker gets used to things he can’t change. There’s a lot of his life like that.
“Tried to get me to wash my motherfucking mask off. I nearly gutted that stupid motherfucker. The insult, THE PURE MOTHERFUCKING INSULT, to ask a descendant of the motherfucking Subjuggulators to wash his paint, BE MOTHERFUCKING UP AND SHOWING OFF HIS NAKED MOTHERFUCKING FACE. Honk.”
They had been lucky they’d asked him in front of his moirail. Even Gamzee doesn’t know what might have happened otherwise. He drags up his other leg, relaxing a little now that they’re talking about stupid human behavior instead of his own. He doesn’t mind this because humans are the weirdest motherfuckers bar none.
“We don’t have subjugglators on Earth, but I’ll see what can be done about it. The system is quite easy to manipulate, once you know how.” She doesn’t stifle this smile, though it’s turned wry.
“Motherfuckers be all kinds of disrespectful. Won’t even let us motherfucking defend our motherfucking selves. Keep my clubs through the hours like it’ll make me motherfucking defenseless as a motherfucking wiggler, but joke’s on motherfucking them because I DON’T ALL UP AND NEED A MOTHERFUCKING CLUB TO END A MOTHERFUCKER. Said there’s no need. Like they gonna get their protection on- MOTHERFUCKER I DON’T NEED TO BE MOTHERFUCKING PROTECTED.”
And the potential to be is daunting because trolls don’t do that motherfucking shit outside quadrants and his are right where he wants them (barring Strider, but he doesn’t really motherfucking want him anyway (fucking bulgetease)) and it’s weird enough having Crocker and Jane as some weird quadrant points that make no motherfucking sense but that Gamzee will be the first to admit that he’s hanging the motherfuck onto.
“I assure you, after all the group of you have been through, no one is questioning your ability to protect yourself.” She’s taken aback by his reaction, but she doesn’t hesitate with her words. Usually that might imply honesty in anyone not as inscrutable as Rose Lalonde, but she does follow up with an explanation.
“Human children don’t come equipped with claws or sharp teeth, and it gives them quite the disadvantage, survival wise. I understand how strange and off-putting it must seem to you, but children are our future, the inheritors of our properties and our nations and our work - it’s programmed into most of us to protect them, whether we are parents or not. You and your friends aren’t our children, but you are our charges and wards until you are prepared to strike out on your own. It’s much the same in cases like that.” She pauses, then, and gives one of her too-calm smiles - this one is accompanied by an open handed shrug.
“Of course, there might be ‘no need’ simply because most school institutions have a zero tolerance policy regarding weapons.”
Gamzee stares Lalonde down like he’s trying to force her to reveal the joke, but he’s seen the way John is with his parent-lusus. He’s seen first hand the bond he can only equate to an unequal moirailagence, even if that’s not what it really is. But the bond doesn’t make sense. The protectiveness of this species for its young is a motherfucking travesty against nature. He doesn’t understand how a species this invested in coddling its young could have survived this long without their unreleased weakness taking them the fuck out.
A troll’s lusii kept the grub fed until it could feed its own damn self. Then it just protected the territory while the wriggler returned the favor until conscription age. The relationship is one born of need and fulfillment and it makes perfect sense. It is symbiotic, betters both individuals, but if a wiggler is stupid enough to get itself killed then it’s too stupid to survive. Better that slurry stay out of the Mother Grub.
Still, he supposes if humans are born so weak, the only way they could survive would be the ever present eyes of an adult looking out for them, keeping their weak asses healthy. Still seems incredibly stupid to him.
“Motherfucking miracle you even survived,” he muses, scratching a hand through the messy rat nest of his hair. “No claws, no teeth. Makes a motherfucker want to pity the shit out of you but I ain’t that desperate for some motherfucker what can’t even protect itself.”
She inclines her head, accepting that. “Humans are pervasive. Most people have no reason to prepare their children to live survivalist lives, when we’re the top of the food chain. There’s only other humans and tragic accidents to worry about, here.”
He thinks idly about the way the humans had separated his kind into their own physical education class but that was one of the most useless hours of his day to be sure. Motherfuckers pitting them up, playing useless games, like that’s some way to prepare a wiggler for the motherfucking outside world! Gamzee has choice things to say about what these humans see as important. He didn’t need them trying to raise him up to their human ways.
“Don’t need a new lusus,” he murmured more quietly, scuffing the heel of his shoe against the edge of his chair. “Didn’t motherfucking ask for one. Goatdad was enough for me.”
That murmur is enough to catch her attention all over again. His outburst has stirred a curiosity in her gaze, and that half-creased frown is back again. Her fingers twitch, but her hands stay still and she lets out a slow breath of air - her gaze flickers for half-a-second before she focuses back on him.
“No one’s trying to give you a new lusus, Mr. Makara. Not in the sense that they’re trying to replace your original, in any case. Do you miss him?”
Gamzee’s just soothed enough by the contemplation of how weird humans are that he doesn’t mind this brushing close to a feelings jam. At least not yet. It seems an innocent enough question. He shrugs a little.
“Miss knowing he was motherfucking out there somewhere,” he says thoughtfully, resting his head back and giving the ceiling a look over. He starts tracing the edges of panels and idly counting along them. He doesn’t really want to think about Goatdad because then he thinks about the day he died. At least Goatdad came back in the end so Gamzee could say good bye. “Knew if any of the motherfucking seadwellers started shit, he’d get his appearance on. Goatdad was an awesome motherfucker.”
He didn’t really need more from Goatdad, not after he was old enough to find his own food and wield a club. He’d done well enough for himself. Well enough that’s he’s uncomfortable every time Crocker or Egbert make motions to look after him. But he supposes after Lalonde’s explanation that he knows where it’s coming from, even if it’s still motherfucking weird.
That frown of hers deepens as he speaks, though, and she’s tilting her head like there’s something there that she’s not quite grasping; some mysterious component hidden in Gamzee’s words that she can’t just fish out for herself. She doesn’t let herself get distracted by her curiosity like she did earlier, though, even if her follow-up questions are decidedly tame compared to her first questions..
“A giant, white sea-dwelling goat does indeed sound quite ‘awesome’,” she says, instead, and something shifts in her voice that sounds oddly grateful. Gamzee actually brightens. His lips curve into a pleased smile and he relaxes in the chair, more present than he had been. Goatdad had been the best and Gamzee had always privately thought he was the best lusus. “Do you mind telling me more about your old hive? did you do? What sort of things did you eat? Were there many other troll children around?”
“It was motherfucking awesome, my hive. Had the best motherucking horn collection,” he murmurs, thinking back. The memories are clearer then, even if they’re all fuzzy at the edges, like an old film. “Highbloods get whatever they motherfucking want. I liked grubloaf. Sweet, perfect grubloaf. But the motherfucking pies were better. Always had a motherfucking sopor pie cooling and ready. Sometimes I skipped the loaf.”
When he felt worse, he tended to. There were weeks he’d laid in bed, clutching his husktop like a lifeline. It let him know he could reach out and connect with one of his friends if he wanted to, but he rarely did during those times. The sopor always made him feel better. He decides not to think about that and instead studies Lalonde’s face. It does not convey that she fully understands the draw of these food items despite how enthusiastic Gamzee is to explain them. He goes on, shrugging it off.
“Shitty motherfucking neighbors, though. Highbloods never know how to motherfucking relax and then there were the seadwellers. S’cool though. Met Karkat and Tavbro on a motherfucing school feeding forum. Enough for me.”
He’d been so amused by the both of them and they were more fun than defending his territory from upstart blues and rude seadwellers. The few purples around him had been annoying and none of them could look at his paint without sneering at his smiles. He’d never seen the point to give them much attention.
“Trolls ain’t like humans,” he says as he gives her a glance. “You motherfuckers live too close together. Makes a troll lose his motherfucking cool being all up and closed in. And we never motherfucking share hives until conscription and the last motherfucking molt. Then we’re too motherfucking busy to get our motherfucking killing on our motherfucking bunk mates.”
This time, when she frowns, it’s almost violently deep and quick, and her gaze skips away from him until she flattens the expression out again into something even and open and inviting. It’s not the usual reaction to mentions of conscription, but then again, she is human and humans never react the way he thinks they’re going to.
“Perhaps, but I find I like living in closer proximity with those I care for. It makes it easier to keep track of them, and it’s less time spent worrying or wondering about them. Karkat and Tavros were the first of the friends you met, then? Did you enjoy having people you could talk to about your interests, or when you got lonely?”
Gamzee muses over how strange humans/. He supposed he can understand that, wanting to be close. Make sure no one got their culling on with his trolls. And they are his, even if most of them still don’t really care to be. He’d even get motherfucking upset if someone outside their crew went after Eridan and he doesn’t even like him.
“Mm, was motherfucking sweet. Tavbro’d drop a sick motherfucking beat when he got all up and around to talking straight,” he says with a grin, showing off a mouthful of sharp teeth. “And Karkat, oh that motherfucker cared so motherfucking much it just makes a bloodpusher clench. I read his motherfucking posts double just to make sure I was gettin’ my understanding on. Had to wade through motherfucking hoofbeast shit to get to the motherfucking point sometimes but it was worth it. Motherfucker had some good points.”
He goes back to picking at the armrest, but it’s idle more than anything else. Bored, or maybe absent mindedly needing something to do with his hands. “First time Karkat came over to my hive was a motherfucking riot. Motherfucker threw down a rant like you wouldn’t up and believe. Never figured out what he was getting his rant on about though. Motherfucker loves getting his rant on.”
All the tenseness seemed to drain out of Lalonde’s shoulders, suddenly, her posture relaxing and a faint smile working it’s way back on her face. She looks ready to comment on anything from his anecdotes to his friends, but the pauses when she glances to the side where she keeps her clock.
“It sounds like you’ve been good friends for a long time, then. I’m glad for you.” She shifts and puts her clipboard and pen back on the desk, letting him know that the restlessness isn’t only his, and she levels him with a smile. “It’s been a pleasure talking to you today, Mr. Makara, but you needn’t worry - our time’s almost up, for now. I hope it wasn’t as much of an imposition as it looked like you assumed it would be, when you came in. Would you mind talking to me again, sometime?”
Gamzee looks up with a blink, slightly startled that it’s been so long. He hadn’t really noticed the time much - not that he tended to anyway. He gave the clock a deep look, just to make sure... Huh. Timely miracles. After a nod, Gamzee unfolds his gangly limbs from the chair and gets up, and then he pauses at that smile because... Well, it’s nice enough but he got used to the kid Rose’s more sardonic ones.
“I guess it wasn’t so motherfucking bad,” he’s willing to admit, scratching through his messy hair. He has to also admit that it was kind of nice to just talk a while, even if not all of it was stuff he’d really wanted to talk about... Still. The fact that she was so interested in listening to him instead of just waving him off, dismissing what he might say...
Lalonde’s smile doesn’t leave her face or get any more sardonic - actually, when Gamzee admits that talking hadn’t been so bad, it softens a little.
“...Maybe I could be getting my visiting on again.” He shrugs a shoulder, uncomfortable with the offer, but he doesn’t really want to give up the chance. Maybe after the next time he’ll decide he doesn’t want it after all but he’ll give her a chance.
“Excellent. I’ll talk to Jedd and let him know when my schedule is clear, but if you want to drop by again before that, it’s perfectly acceptable as well. It really has been a pleasure - I hope you get to feeling better, soon.”
He doesn’t know what to think of her words, but most of this hour has baffled him. So, instead of answering, Gamzee just grins back at her and he lets it stay nice without all his teeth. It had always been a good strategy before, smiling. Made people underestimate him or just lose interest. And maybe she might just like it when he’s not being fierce.
Just drop in? Maybe. If he up and feels like it, but he really only likes showing up unannounced with motherfuckers that get bothered by it and somehow, he’s pretty sure she would just roll with anything he threw her way. Which, to be honest, he kind of likes. Actual most unbothered motherfucker, Rose Lalonde. He’ll talk to Crocker about seeing her again. Not today, but maybe tomorrow, after he’s had time to decide what he wants to motherfucking do.
“Hope you get your motherfucking chillaxation on, invertesis,” he says for now, then ducks on out of her office before she can decide to keep him and he can decide he’ll let her.
Crocker waiting outside and asks him how it goes. Gamzee shrugs because it’s none of his motherfucking business. Then they go home and Gamzee finds Karkat and tells him about the whole thing as he slumps against Karkat’s back.
Karkat’s nice enough to only roll his eyes a couple times.