Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

=You have been connected to a secure network=
=██████████ started trolling carcinoGeneticist!=
69: We can’t force you to join us, it would be against His word.
69: But we would advise, milord, that you make your decision promptly.
69: Ascension is less than a sweep away and our protection will be of no use to you unless you choose to join us.
69: Might I remind you that without us your culling order is at the highest level.
69: You could say it was off spectrum.
CG: ARE YOU FUCKING SERIOUS?!? CLEARLY MY FRAGILE SAINTLY PAN HAS FINALLY TIPPED ITSELF OVER THE EDGE AND INTO THE CAVERNOUS DEPTHS OF BULLSHIT HAVE ACTUALLY GONE MUST BECAUSE KNOW THAT THERE IS NO FUCKING WAY YOU MADE HEMOSPECTRUM JOKE AT ME JUST THEN
69: Milord if you do not join us I can assure you your death will not be pleasant.
CG: CALL ME MILORD ONE MORE TIME MOTHERFUCKER I DARE YOU
=Secure network has disconnected=
CG: AAAAARRGHGHAKDGHSGKJSHKSLAFALSJDFASjladfks

Your name is Karkat Vantas, ascension is in less than a sweep and you are royally, righteously screwed.

---

They contacted you first when you were barely two. You were sat in front of your kiddie husktop, the best your moderate allowance could buy, ready to get good and schoolfed for one of the first times EVER and you were excited. Crabdad had proudly hooked up the grub you’d been sent and you vibrated with excitement as it squirmed into action and then... died. Right there and then as if it had been struck by lightning. The screen of your husktop lit up with your mutated blood colour and flooded your block with it, lighting up the walls until you could have sworn they dripped red, and a gentle voice told you to hush. Do not be afraid. We are the cult of the Sufferer and you are --

But you don’t remember that.

It wasn’t until you hit 6 sweeps that they started to contact you for real. The first time that little red symbol showed up on your husktop screen you threw up. By then you knew what you didn’t know at 2, about the hemospectrum and the abhorrent colour of your blood and what that meant for you and you kept thinking, ‘This is it,’ you kept thinking, ‘they know, oh god they know, they know and I’m going to die. I’m going to die. I’m going to fucking die.’

When you dragged yourself back to your chair on shaking legs, resigned to finding a warning, a threat, or maybe even blackmail, you were greeted by a wall of candy red text that threatened to bring up what was left of your internal organs. You swallowed it down and you forced yourself to read it, oh, you forced yourself to read it and you almost wish you hadn’t.

They told you that the were from a cult. Sufferists, they called themselves, and they followed the teachings of a man from long ago called the Signless Sufferer who dreamt of a world where trolls lived in peace together regardless of the the colour of their blood. He preached his radical doctrine of hemoequality all across Alternia. He inspired the masses with his candy red blood, just like yours, and even years later when his body was in ashes and his story had been erased from the Empire he inspired the revolution of the Summoner. His teachings, kept safe and spread underground by his loyal Disciple, lived on, giving hope to those who Suffer under the Empire as he did.

As they spun the story of him and his clade and the sacrifice they gave they spoke with pride and religious fervor but all you felt was horror. They had been the ones who had rescued you from the caverns when your mutant birthright should have been an early death. They got you a hive and a real (-genetically modified, jesus you were going to throw up again-) lusus, set you up to live a relatively normal life as a hemoanon where you could be safe (-normal?? SAFE?!-) instead of living the life of the pariah as your ancestor did. They’d been watching you, tracking what little they could get from your computer although it was well protected (-praise be to Sollux Captor-) and even checking up on you personally as a wriggler just to make sure that your secret was still safe. Your “coming”, they said like you were some kind of fucked up deity (-oh god, oh god the bile was coming back-) was prophesied and he believed, they believed, that with your coming would come the end of times. The Empire would fall at your word and the lowblood rebellion would rise. The hemocaste would be abolished! You and your lowblood friends would be saved. All for the low, low price of your freedom.

After you’d screamed yourself hoarse, wearing your typing fingers to the bone with pure, gut tearing rage the first thing you did was throw up again.

The second thing you did was contact Sollux.

=carcinoGeneticist started trolling twinArmageddons!=
CG: OH GOD. OH GOD OH GOD OH GOD
CG: OH GOD OH FUCK OH FUCK SOLLUX HELP
CG: I’M SO SCREWED. I’M SO SCREWED. GOOD BYE SOLLUX, I’D SAY YOU CAN HAVE MY HUSKTOP WHEN I DIE BUT I AM GOING TO EMPTY MY INSIDES ALL OVER IT
TA: wouldn’t want your 2hiitty hu2ktop anyway.
CG: OH, OH I SEE HOW IT IS
CG: I’M GLAD YOU FIND MY MORTAL DISTRESS HUMOUROUS CAPTOR
CG: UGH. NEVERMIND. SEE YOU IN HELL SHITBREATH
=carcinoGeneticist stopped trolling twinArmageddons=
=twinArmageddons started trolling carcinoGeneticist!=
TA: no waiit come back
TA: 2hiit ii’m 2orry you’re actually 2eriiou2 aren’t you?
CG: OH GOD OH GOD YES I’M SERIOUS YOU PANDEAD FAITHLESS SHITHEAP.
TA: what2 happeniing?
CG: I’M GOING TO FUCKING DIE IS WHAT IS HAPPENING!!!!!
TA: calm down.
TA: what do you need me two do?
CG: OK. OK. CALMING DOWN.
CG: I NEED YOU TO COME TRACE THIS FOR ME.

And he did. Good friend. Good nerd. He managed to trace the network off planet, but he was promptly locked out of all channels before he could get any real information. You watched as he struggled to keep his excitement under control and failed spectacularly, spitting and swearing and chasing the elusive, anonymous, 69 like a rabid barkbeast on the hunt. At one point you leant past him to drop coffee onto the desk and he was grinning so wide it was scary. Finally after hours of watching him from a safe distance as the sun slowly rose behind the curtains he spun round in your chair, a little frown marring his otherwise triumphant face. That little frown worried you more than any headache fueled crease on his stupid scrawny face had ever worried you before. You frowned back.

“So? What’s the damage, hotshot. Are the culling drones about to swoop down in all their glory and ride my ass from here to the green moon? Who the fuck are these people, if they are even actual people and not the hallucinogenic manifestation of every daymare I’ve ever had finally come to taunt me though my computer. Please, fucking enlighten me because I would love to know.”

“They’re an ancient cult, called the Sufferists.” He spat back, parroting the lines they fed you.

“...Oh.”

“It’s 200% legit KK, it’s coming from off planet and everything, but they’ve got half their power thrown into rerouting the damn thing so I can’t get hold of the ship. Their helmsman must be running--”

You held up a finger to stop him and shook your head. No. No fucking way. You weren’t letting this grubfucker get distracted running loops around engines again, that never ended well. It wasn’t that you didn’t get it, you did, okay you got it. You couldn’t even imagine what that did to a troll, knowing that since you hatched you’d been signed up for a life of dribbling on yourself from the centre of a thick net of biowire and all the brutal implications of that, but you hated watching what it did to Sollux. He’d go rabid with it, sometimes, huffing down every leaked infobyte he could find, cross referencing the rumors with the rampant propaganda. You’d been subjected to more than a few rants on the matter when Sollux was at his least lucid. When Terezi went through her fucking hideous Helmsman romance novel phase and they all started disappearing out of her hive you were pretty sure you knew exactly where they were going. Hell you were pretty sure you knew where he was hiding them. If there was anyone who hated and feared the empire as much as you did it was Sollux and you’d happily hash that shit out with him any time but not now. There was no time for that shit right now.

“...Sorry.” Said Sollux.

“It’s fine.” You said.

“Seriously though you’re in deep shit. What are you going to do?”

Long seconds ticked by as you leant back against the desk, claw tapping against your lip. Sollux watched, hunched over in your chair, his head propped up on one elbow. For a moment everything was weirdly relaxed. It was just two bros huddled round a computer and quietly thinking, like the problem was a bug in some shitty code not a life or death situation. The computer whirred and the blinding alternian sun shone through shitty worn blinds. Sollux’s breath whistled between his oversized fangs and you frowned, face settling into something closer to determination than fear. They wanted resistance? Oh they would get fucking resistance.

“Dig up every festering crumb of information about these assholes from the Imperial Network. Key players, where they come from, who the fuck this Sufferer guy was, shit, get me their fucking shopping list for all I care. I want to know everything.”

---

Boy, did he deliver. Except suddenly you were almost eight sweeps, ascension was fast approaching and you still didn’t have a plan.

That’s not true, you had a plan. You actually had several plans, each one just that little bit more soul crushing and awful than the last. Currently it seemed like the world and his hoofbeast was pestering you incessantly about what was quickly becoming plan A. You didn’t fucking want it to be plan A. You were still staring longingly at plan V for “Vantas that is never going two fucking work” with the light of hope convulsing in it’s death throes in your damningly red eyes. Sollux had set up what he’d lovingly (obnoxiously) nicknamed the ‘2ecure’ network precisely so that this pestering could occur. Sometimes you were even the one initiating the pestering. One by one you and your small team of assholes had been approaching people you wanted or needed to join you and, well, pestering them about the plan. It was a downright fucking pester party up in here.

This last one was apparently on you, because while him and your shit brained second in command apparently bickered enough that he didn’t want to have the conversation himself, they were still close enough that Sollux didn’t want him to die. Figures.

You sighed and flicked open the little black window.

This was one of the tasks you’d been putting off for a while.

=You have been connected to the 2ECURE network=
=carcinoGeneticist started trolling adiosToreador!=
CG: ALRIGHT ASSHOLE GET YOUR OCULARS IN GEAR, SLAM THE BRAKES ON YOUR FOUR WHEELED DEVICE, CRAM YOUR RIDICULOUS GIRLY GAMES BACK UP YOUR WASTE CHUTE AND PAY FUCKING ATTENTION. YOU ARE NOW ABOARD THE SERIOUS BUSINESS 9000. THIS RIDE IS ABOUT TO DEPART PLEASE KEEP ALL USELESS LIMBS AND STUTTERING RESPONSES INSIDE THE CART
AT: tHAT IS NOT, i GUESS, mY FAVOURITE GREETING?
AT: i AM NOT CONVINCED, fOR EXAMPLE, tHAT I SHOULD STAY, oR LISTEN TO YOUR NONSENSE AT ALL,
AT: aLSO, uHH,
AT: yOU HAVE, kIND OF OBVIOUSLY HACKED MY COMPUTER? wHICH I’M NOT SUPER COMFORTABLE WITH,
CG: WOW I DON’T CARE
CG: I REALLY, REALLY DO NOT CARE
CG: SERIOUSLY THE PART OF ME THAT REGULATES HOW MUCH I CARE ABOUT YOUR COMFORT LEVELS MUST HAVE SHRIVELLED UP AND DIED
CG: BESIDES YOU CAN BLAME SOLLUX SHITLORD CAPTOR FOR THIS PRIMITIVE COMMUNICATION METHOD EXCEPT DON’T BLAME HIM, THANK HIM, BECAUSE THIS CONVOLUTED TRASH SYSTEM IS GOING TO SAVE YOU FROM GETTING CULLED
AT: uHHH,,,
CG: DO YOU HAVE A MOMENT TO TALK ABOUT YOUR LORD AND SAVIOUR KARKAT VANTAS?
AT: uH, wHAT?
CG: OKAY HERE’S THE DEAL.
CG: THE EMPIRE IS SHIT. THE EMPRESS IS SHIT. ASCENSION IS SHIT
CG: I DON’T WANT TO GET CULLED AND NEITHER DOES SOLLUX
CG: SO WE’RE NOT GOING TO
AT: uHH??
AT: tHAT IS A GOOD THING, aBOUT NOT GETTING CULLED, i MEAN, bUT I DON’T UNDERSTAND WHY YOU ARE TELLING ME THIS,
AT: eSPECIALLY THE PART, wHERE YOU SAID SOME THINGS THAT ARE, uH,,, pRETTY ILLEGAL??
CG: YEAH IT TURNS OUT “PRETTY ILLEGAL” SUMS UP A VAST MAJORITY OF MY LIFE

For a moment the overwhelming stupidity of the situation hit you like a truck. Deep breaths, in through the nose and out through the gills or whatever the fuck it was. When you finally peeled your hands away from a spectacular facepalm x2 combo the little grey line was still blinking damningly at you from the end of the line. Okay. Okay. Time to pony up and make this happen. You could do this.

CG: BEFORE YOU START HYPERVENTILATING DON’T SWEAT, CAPTOR HAS MADE DAMN SURE NO ONE ELSE IS READING THIS
ii’m readiing thii2
CG: JESUS FUCKING SHITFISTING CHRIST ON A TWO WHEELED DEVICE CAPTOR I AM GOING TO FLAY YOU. I THOUGHT THE WHOLE POINT OF ME RIDING THIS BULLSHIT-RODEO WAS THAT YOU DIDN’T HAVE TO DEAL WITH WHATEVER THE FUCK BULLSHIT ISSUES YOU TWO HAD
AT: i WAS NOT AWARE, uHH, tHAT YOU HAD AN ISSUE WITH ME, sOLLUX?
you were takiing two long 2o ii’m hiijackiing thii2 expo2iitiion traiin. choo choo motherfucker2 lii2ten up.
turn2 out kk ii2 de2tiined two be pathetiic cullbaiit forever by 2hiitty made up diiviine riight. my hatchriight ba2ically 2uck2 hoofbea2t dong two 2o ii’ve deciided we’re goiing two run away like grub2, and by run away liike grub2 ii obviiou2ly mean 2tart a bada22 2uiiciidal terrorii2t movement. 2iince you’re a liifetiime card holder of the pathetiic cullbaiit club ii told kk two iinviite you along.
and hone2tly we could u2e 2ome brute force liike you. between your 2iick gun2 and your top tiier ph2yciic abiiliity we could really u2e your help.
AT: tHAT IS, aLL VERY NICE OF YOU TO SAY, aBOUT ME NOT BEING USELESS AND, tHE STUFF ABOUT MY SICK GUNS ALSO, }:)
get that 2miiley out of my 2iight 2o help me.
AT: bUT ACTUALLY, i’M NOT CULL BAIT? vRISKA HAS, uH, gOT A PLAN FOR THE LEG THING AND, wITH ALL THAT NICE STUFF THAT YOU WERE JUST TALKING ABOUT,,, i’M PRETTY CONFIDENT THAT I’M, wELL, nOT GOING TO DIE?
AT: uNLESS I JOIN YOUR, uH, “sUICIDAL TERRORIST MOVEMENT” wHICH, tO BE HONEST, sOUNDS LIKE YOU ARE GOING TO DIE, wHICH I WOULD LIKE TO NOT DO,
AT: nOT THAT I WANT YOU TO DIE, i HOPE THAT IS NOT A THING THAT HAPPENS, iT JUST SEEMS PRETTY LIKELY,
AT: nO THANK YOU, iS UH, bASICALLY WHAT I AM SAYING,
you’re 2eriiou2ly 2tiill goiing two throw your card2 iin wiith VRII2KA??
AT: yES,
CG: HOLY SHIT WHY.
CG: ACTUALLY. NEVERMIND. FUCK THAT. I DID MY PART I’M OUT. IF YOU TWO LADIES WANT TO BATTLE IT OUT BE MY FUCKING GUEST BUT I’M DONE. IT WAS A HORRIBLE, GRATING CHORE KNOWING YOU TAVROS, YOUR PATHETIC STUTTERY BULLSHIT WILL BE SORELY MISSED. SEE YOU NEVER, LOOK OUT FOR ME ON THE MORNING NEWSFEED. I’LL BE THE ONE KICKING ASS AND TAKING NAMES AND PROBABLY MAKING MYSELF LOOK LIKE A COMPLETE AND UTTER TOOL
CG: TRY NOT TO GET CULLED OK?
=carcinoGeneticist has disconnected=

If the empire didn’t find you thought you might die of brain hemorrhaging or maybe just reach into your stomach and pull your own intestines out so you could throttle yourself with them.

So that was that then, the gangs all here, revolution all prepped and ready to go. Except it wasn't all prepped, and the gang wasn't all there, it was just you and a handful of idiots who couldn't just let you die being kept alive solely by the stubbornness of one Sollux Captor. You looked out at the clear, cloudless purple of the late night sky and you couldn't quite shake the feeling that this had never been how this was supposed to go.

You needed to talk to your moirail.

Chapter Text

"Don't do it."

For some reason your block had become asshole HQ and the most noxious of all of the pus leaking assholes was lying under your desk doing something no doubt stupid and destructive to your computer with silicomb. There was a fat purple bee doing something gross with it's feelers on his knee and you were fucking disgusted by it, as well as by the unthinkable horeshit tumbling from his lispy dribbling mouth. He apparently took your thoughtful silence as a cue to spew yet more of the aforementioned horseshit because it just kept coming. Great.

"I'm telling you KK it's a fucking terrible idea. At best he's going to dump you. I mean you know which ship he's getting on right? I'll give you a clue its not the fucking peace corps." He tapped something on his knee with one claw and the bee buzzed off to find its partner or whatever the fuck bees did when horrible douchebags who didn't understand serendipity tapped out stupid messages to them on their obnoxiously bony knees.

"Of course I know shitleak, wow, its almost like the blubbering asshole hasn't shut his chute about it for two seconds since first pupation! I mean holy fuck I'm not in the habit of listening to his preachy juggafuck bullshit but I'm pretty well aware that spewing miraculous idiocy is his messiah given calling or whatever. Hell I'm his moirail remember, I helped the swiss cheese panned idiot fill out his application."

Sollux actually snorted at that.

"What's so fucking funny??"

"You filling out his papers for the Mirthful Mission.” He said, lifting his shoulders just enough to smirk in your direction. “Seriously, you don't see the irony in that?"

You seriously wanted to kick him.

"Come on Second Sufferer I thought you'd been doing your homework.” His head disappeared back under the desk. “What happened to your ancestor?"

He only called you that when he wanted to piss you off. Well, hey, it was definitely fucking working! The bees buzzed in your ear as they returned and you swatted at them.

"Horrible agonising torture followed by a humiliating death?" You answered.

"By who?" He whistled. .

...By the Mirthful Church. Hell, they'd started a whole fucking war against the guy. That shit would have gone down in history as a noble holy crusade if the head honchos weren't so keen on everyone forgetting that the mutant ever existed. The very fact of your existence was heresy of the highest calibre. You were born in sin and cultists cleansed sin one way and one way only. Hell with your colour in his war paint Gamzee would probably shoot through the ranks like a murder powered dick missile. Culling an upstart mutant had to be worth at least a faygo and a pat on the back. Sollux was right and you knew it but you were never going to admit that to him and, well, you had at least hoped that somehow it wouldn’t matter. That you could reveal your blood to Gamzee and he'd tell you he loved you anyway and you could be his little secret miracle that the church didn't need to share. Serendipity would win the day and that shit would be goddamn cinematic.

It was a stupid little pipe dream and you knew it, and Sollux knew you knew it, and he knew he was right and he was smug about it, so you did the mature thing and kicked him hard in the shin. He yelped so loudly that one of his bees stung him and he slammed his horns into the underside of the desk trying to sit up and you felt a little bad for laughing.

---

Unfortunately twenty minutes later when the sparks in his pan had subsided enough to continue the conversation he hadn't changed his tone. Or his opinion. The inconsiderate douchebag hadn't even thought of a more creative way to tell you no.

"Don't do it." He repeated.

"I have to." You replied.

He looked at you with something far more akin to sympathy than frustration for two beats before he threw his heat pack at you and it burst all over your shirt.

---

So the facts were these.

1) Revealing your blood colour to your moirail in person could get you anything on a scale of heartbroken to culled.
2) Your blood colour would be revealed to everyone in a sweep or less and you would almost certainly be heartbroken and/or culled.
3) You really really did not want to be heartbroken or culled.

The safest option, as dictated by Kanaya 'all quadrants are my business' Maryam was to dump him before he left. To just drop him like yesterdays grubloaf without telling him why. The idea was that if you didn’t reaveal your dirty little secret, it would minimise the risk of being violently killed, if not the "certainty" of heartbreak which you still stubbornly refused to acknowledge as writ (I do believe in serendipity, I do! I do!). Honestly, it broke your heart just thinking about it. They had at least allowed you permission to do it yourself and in person, although the fact that you "needed" permission at all made you wonder how the fuck your cluster of concerned friends was any different to the overpowering force of the Sufferists aside from their lack of advanced weaponry. ...Alright, so that wasn't fair. You knew they were doing this for your own good and you knew from all the tragic glances you kept catching out of the corner of your eye that they were at least sorry, but it was hard feel grateful for their efforts. Especially when you heard Sollux had been physically restrained from taking matters into his own hands.

Besides. They were totally working on the advanced weaponry thing.

Grateful or not the plan was put into motion with surprisingly ruthless efficiency. Having left Sollux sitting on his hands in Kanayas block and with Nepeta in tow you reluctantly trekked through the early evening light to Gamzee's beach front hive.

=carcinoGeneticist started trolling terminallyCapricious=
CG: HEY ASSHOLE ROLL OUT THE RED CARPET I'M HEADING OVER.
TC: SuRe ThInG bRoThEr :o)
TC: <>
=carcinoGeneticist ceased trolling terminallyCapricious=

It had physically pained some sad dying romantic part of you not to send a diamond back. Like that was somehow the harbinger of your relationships impending doom, but when you got there he was waiting outside just like he always did, big dopey grin on his stupid painted face. Of course he was. As if he'd notice a tell as subtle as a missed symbol. What a pitiful moron. You whined when you saw him and Nepeta reached over and hit you. You got the feeling she was the only one not going easy on you and that… that helped somehow. She put the car on idle a few metres from the hive and slung her feet up onto the dashboard, immediately unsheathing and picking at her claws.

"I'll be here when you need me." She drawled.

"If."

She just arched an eyebrow and shot you a sympathetic smile. You decided the next person who looked at you with that stupid sad smile would get a fist in it. Assuming it wasn't Nepeta. You weren't stupid.

You could feel her watching you as you walked the rest of the way and he spun you around in a bone crushing hug. From her vantage point in the car she could probably see you flailing and swearing as he put you down and you wondered if she could tell from there that you'd whapped him round the horns a little more gently than usual. When you were finally hidden inside the thick walls of his hive it was a cold relief that you knew couldn't last long. The stupid idiot headed straight for the pile and you let out the lowest, most pathetic pained little whine completely unintentionally and shook your head. THAT was when the big slow lug finally caught up with the program and started to look reasonably concerned.

"Palebro?" He reached down and plonked a huge reassuring hand on top of your head and frowned at you, pulling at the lines of his paint. Oh god, he thought something was wrong with you, you were officially the worst moirail and the biggest piece of shit of all time.

"We need to talk." You said.

Chapter Text

Your name was Gamzee Makara and your palebro was standing in front of you all tied up in wicked horrible knots like as you could feel with your very fucking soul, but you was patient and ready to pap that ass through the pile till sun up and beyond should the need be.

"We need to talk." He said all quiet and sad and you felt a fucking crack making its home in your pusher already.

Ain't never been a conversation in fiction or truth that ended well what started on "we need to talk" not one. You found yourself wishing something fierce that you still had the tang of slime to chill the vibrating in your bones and the whispers in your pan but you ain't touched it in a sweep, not on the regular anyways and your system was squeaky clean as messiahs intended.

"Sure thing miracle brother." You smiled back. "What's all got you wound up right to spring like a jack? We can hash that shit out no problem."

He dropped you like hot garbage. Like he was ripping off a bandaid on a wound gone septic. Motherfucker didn't even do you the dignity of looking up in your eyes, as he said it. Mumbled that shit to the fucking floor like he was confessing he done bad to his lusus. His voice was all cracked and riddled with sorry but there was no explanation forthcoming, no reason that a brother should spit betrayal on you out of the fucking blue like this. You thought you heard the choke of a sob from him, no more than a fucking sniffle but it struck to your very centre. Crawled right into your pan and instead of making you sad like you were entitled on being dumped so callous it made you bubble up with anger.

"Karbro, brother this ain't you. Look at me brother, tell me who's all got up in your head and borrowed your voice to spit such wicked misery on me." You were begging, heavy with denial and you knew it but you weren't about to lose this good thing on someone else's terms and you knew these aint the fucking terms you wanted set. "You sing it brother, tell me who got you wound up like this and I'll see the motherfuckers laid hella low. See them sprayed fucking lengthways like the wicked rainbows that I'll scoop from their skulls-"

He flinched at that. A friend then. A traitor sitting pretty in your hatch brood, someone spitting lies about you behind your back. The kitty cat was picking her claws in her car outside, was it her? Nah. Her peasant blood moirail still dribbled at your fucking feet he'd never allow. Karkat mumbled something. Sorry, maybe. Tried to get his voice all revved back up but his throat weren't cooperating and he made the most pitiful fucking croak. On instinct you stepped forwards to comfort and he stepped back and the anger bubbled.

"Say something motherfucker, tell me I got it wrong and I'll hush up. You can walk out brother, I'll say no shit if you'll just look me in the eye and tell me I'm wrong. LOOK ME IN THE MOTHERFUCKING EYE BROTHER I FIGURE I FUCKING DESERVE THAT."

He stepped back from you again, half an eye on the door and a horn honked beneath his foot. Startled, your little brother stumbled and stuck out fragile palm to steady his feet and you heard him swear as metal sliced skin. Your mess. Your fault. You'd have been right sorry except when he moved to hide the wound it came up dripping carmine. You shut up fast and so did he.

There was a long heavy moment where neither of you moved. Shit was downright beautiful, complete silence holding the scene while faint purple stared down into eyes of mutant candy red.

Some distant part of your pan noted that he looked like he was going to cry before you broke the silence with the heavy thunk of your clubs dropping to hand.

It took him maybe a second to catch you up and fumble sickles to claw but that second was plenty to get your clubs a-swinging and a snarl on your face. You swung for him hard but you weren't aiming to kill, weren't aiming to cripple a brother none till you got that explanation. Till you beat that unfunny noise from his shit blooded skull. There was a hiss of sparks as metal hit metal and he made like to twist the weapon out of your hand with his own. Proper unphased were you as you let the movement take your body with it and twisted your club free, circling round to his side. Too frantic, palebro, fighting without the wicked anger you're all out of control. Shit like that was what warranted defending a brother, what warrented the sick pity that twisted you up inside and made you want to touch his warmth and be motherfucking chill. But you couldn't afford thinking like that with rage in your heart where pity ought to be. Your eyes flashed red as the liquid sin dripping from his hand and you got to realising he'd found his voice.

"Gamzee." He was begging like you had before. Cute. "Gamzee, please I don't want to hurt you."

You swung again, listening for wrist bones to crunch and shatter. "Too late. TOO FUCKING LATE MOTHERFUCKER. You gone and done me hurt plenty already."

"I'm sorry! I'm so fucking sorr--FUCK!"

Crunch. Clank. One sickle hit the floor bouncing and he jumped back. Brother fought low and defensive and so, so, predictable. Would pain you plenty to kill a brother who you knew so deep. Would pain you none to spill a joke so unfunny across the smooth of your hive floor.

"Gamzee I'm sorry, fuck me I am so sorry I am the worst most sorry excuse for a moirail in the history of the universe I should have told you, I should have trusted you, but shit look at yourself! You're holding a club over my head, I knew I couldn't tell-ARGH"

His sickle carved notches in your club above his face as he struggled to hold it back. He was crying proper now, fat red tears spilling down his cheeks. You could smell his fear.

"If you knew." You didn't let up the pressure, and you weighed up your other club in your free hand as you spoke. There was nothing he could do to stop you from connecting it with his soft parts. "IF YOU MOTHERFUCKING KNEW ALL THIS TIME why did you lead me along brother? WHY DID YOU STRING MY SORRY FUCKING ASS ALONG ON THIS MOTHERFUCKING JOKE? Why did you lie to me palebro, I thought this was a match most fucking serendipitous but you've been holding back the punchline all along."

You jerked the club sideways and down and tore the sickle from his hand, held him steady by the throat and got close to his face so he could feel you breathing. He sobbed and you snarled and you heard the soft clink of his pusher shattering, saw in his mutant eyes that he knew how the next step of this dance ended. Ended with you painting miracles with his blood, shattering up his skull, taking his nubby little horns for keeps. When he died he'd die with his hands up at you, sobbing his weak apologies like you were supposed to find a fuck to give. Brother wasn't stupid enough to believe that fuck'd spare his life, nah. He just wanted to know you cared.

You did care.

Nah.

You had cared.

Couldn't no more. You dug claws in and squeezed, a smile lighting up your face above his as he struggled in your grip and his eyes rolled back in their sockets, breath coming quick and shallow.

“What's the difference between choking a MOTHERFUCKING MUTANT and a fuckin sparkly ass traffic light?”

But he never heard tell the punchline because there was a vicious hiss and claws connected with your shoulder and you had to get your hands back to defend. Motherfucker hit the deck like the wet sack of insides he was up and meant to be. You didn't have time to think on the beauty of it because you'd caught that meowbeast looking bitch by the wrist and she was kicking up a fuss something rotten. You held her at arms length to drink in a good long look while she went all offensive on everything she could reach. With a quick twist you snapped the arm in your hand but in your moment of loud hilarity she up and got her other fist in your face. Shit.

Scraaaaape.

You stood still and let her put three long purple cuts splitting up your nose. Shit hurt like a motherfucker but it ain't nearly as bad as what you were planning on doing to her and you grinned through it like the pain was the sickest fucking miracle she could have handed you. What's a motherfucker without a few fresh fuckin scars anyways?

Didn't even feel him sneaking up till you saw his reflection in her meowbeast eyes. Too late then, to stop him putting his filthy mutant hands on you. One rough paw curled tight around the base of your horn in the way he fucking KNEW made you all fuzzy in the head and yanked you down to look upon his tear streaked nug. The other, all broken and twisted up from what you did (and all of a sudden you felt a fucking guilt at that, the most inconvenient stab of pity), came up and the motherfucker ran his thumb along your cheekbone smearing blood with paint. He choked on his own at that, looked like he was ready to be sick because of it but with shaking fingers he papped you proper.

"Shoosh Gamzee. Shoooosh."

Shoosh you up and motherfucking did. His pads were warm and coarse and they came back stained with paint and purple - shit were you crying? He was for sure. His eyes were wide and red and so fucking genuine, open and flayed bare to his palest messiah damned bones with unrepentant fondness. Something in both of you was all cut up and sewn together wrong and it hurt and you wanted to tear it out and you wanted to fill yourself up with it, with him, wanted to pull open your ribs and let him climb inside, hold him close and precious like a punchline before the kill. He squeezed your horn gentle and obscene and smiled shakily through his agony and you straight up forgot that there was even other stuff that counted as things.

You were frowning a tiny frown at your sweet palebro when the bitch behind you slit your jugular. You’d spare a laugh for sheer fucking brutal cheek of her on that if it’d come up more than a bubble in your torn up throat. Thought you heard yelling as you went down but by the time you woke up to pull your pieces back together the fuckers were gone.

Chapter Text

“We have to move.”

Consciousness dripped back to you in heavy, uneven bursts. The pain creeping back in as sharp as the edges of your shattered bones. Oh fuck. Another voice danced on the edge of your hearing, high and frantic but you couldn’t make out the words. You wondered if they knew you could hear them. It's not like your hive was big or their voices were particularly quiet. You were in your hive, weren’t you? In a moment of panic you thrashed out until you felt the familiar sides of your recuperacoon. Home. Safe. If you listened closely you could hear the distressed clicks of your lusus. Fucker’s must have locked him in the other room. Oh god, everything hurt so much.

“I don’t fucking CARE Kanaya!”

“SOLLUX.”

Holy shit. You smelt, rather than heard the buzz of energy that thrummed through the air as Sollux lowered his voice to a growl and the third voice, Kanaya apparently, cut off as she bit back a hiss. It was on shaking limbs that you climbed, well, fell, out of the slime, your head throbbing as you groped around the floor half blind for something that resembled clothes. Someone had stripped you of torn fabric and washed you of the blood before dumping you into the slime. There were fresh rubber bandages wrapped tight around your wounds and you whined and made weak, trembling little pained noises that you thanked the gods you didn’t believe in no one could hear as you tugged a loose shirt and boxer shorts onto your sopor sticky body. Everything hurt. Everything. You tried very, very hard not to think about why. The physical pain was a bitter sweet distraction from that at least. By the time you’d hauled yourself down the stairs you thought you were going to die, but fragments of half-shouted conversation dragged you forwards, propelled by a combination of curiosity and sheer stubbornness.

“-have to take care of-”

“-not the Dolorosa, Maryam you-”

“-purrlease can everyone just-”

“-DARE you talk to me like-”

“HEY.”

Everyone froze. Sollux was sending red and blue static out like a broken spark plug and Kanaya loomed in front of him with fury in her eyes. She had a few inches on him in height already but he was literally buzzing with pent up energy. His mouth hung open but his fangs still caught at the edge of his lower lip as he snarled, light bled out of his eyes from under his shades and for a terrifying moment you imagined what it would be like to fight him for real. At the edge of the fight Nepeta hovered, her eyes wide like a threatened purrbeast and her fingers flexing into claws at her sides. Given another few minutes you would have walked in on your idiot friends strifing about you, you were fucking certain. You were also pretty fucking certain that it would have been a very short, very violent altercation that would have ended in tears. Surprisingly being the centre of such magnificent bullshit didn’t make you feel special at all. You felt weak. You felt small. An entire batshit cult of self important pious assholes prostrating themselves at your feet couldn’t have made you feel important in that moment. They all stared at you, propped up by the door frame with your broken arm cradled against your chest like a freshly hatched wriggler and flapped their useless maws like they were hoping excuses would just dribble out.

“Are you fucking finished?” You snapped.

It was like you’d cut Sollux’s power cord. The glow cut and his mouth snapped shut and he seemed to drop to the floor even though you hadn’t even noticed if he’d been floating, losing a few inches as he curled his head between his shoulders like he could fold in on himself and disappear. Kanaya took two steps back with practised grace and lifted her chin in defiance. Despite her standing fucking statuesque like she had a hot stick of confidence rammed up her nook it was Sollux who answered you first.

“We were just talking about how-”

“Sollux thinks we need to move you tonight but Kanaya says you have to recover from your fight.” Nepeta cut him off, hopping towards you and frowning at the bruises on your throat. You brought up a hand to cover them on instinct and she flicked her eyes away like she saw nothing. “I think all this fighting is silly! We have things to do and besides.” She shot the two of them a look that made you shiver and they both failed to hold her gaze but her voice was as light as if she was weighing in on a supply list. “Just because Karkat is hurt doesn’t mean he can’t decide for himself!”

“I never said he couldn’t decide I’m just saying the only reasonable option-”

“Mister Catpurr.” She smiled sweetly. “Please shut the fuck up.”

It was honestly a fucking miracle that he did. Damn, you had to find out how she did that. Maybe later though, because right there and then you kind of really needed him to be blunt with you. Kanaya you held a lot of respect for, no seriously, you really did, but she had the tendency to meddle and fuss and she was already giving you that weird sad lusus look that clearly said ‘I Have Decided What Is Best For You Already’ where as Sollux just looked, well, annoyed. I mean he always looks a little annoyed, but he was looking more annoyed than usual. It was the same look you’d seen him get when he was explaining something he thought was simple to someone he thought was monumentally stupid (usually you) and they weren’t getting it. It was a look that usually preceded him taking you apart with brutal surgical precision until you did get it. He never fudged the details or coddled you. One of the beautiful things about Sollux Captor was his inability to care enough about your feelings to lie.

“You.” You pointed at him and his head snapped up. “Details.”

“There’s shitty cullbait blood all over GZ’s hive and he knows where you live. I’d bet money the stupid fuck has it written down so he doesn’t forget, and even if he doesn’t he’s still online which means the panrotten waste of space has left the window open on trollian parading the fact that your hemoanon ass is on its merry way to his hive. The hive where you left his gangly chucklefuck body bleeding out all over the carpet. It’ll be, what like a night? Before his chucklefuck friends come looking for us. Well. You.” He shrugged as if he’d just given you a weather report and you ground your teeth so hard something in your jaw popped. “This will be the first place they look. Since someone tracking us to this hive is now more or less inevitable and I would really like to put as much distance as possible between us and them asap.”

“But-” Kanaya started.

“But KN is worried that if we start looking for somewhere now your precious damaged petals will pop off like a dandelion in a stiff breeze.” He finished over her. She bristled but her mouth clicked neatly shut.

“Okay.” God, nevermind juggalos, you were getting more and more convinced that the stress of dealing with these three was going to send you to an early grave. Maybe leadership wasn’t your bag of meowbeasts after all. “How long do we have?”

Sollux shrugged again. “Could be hours, could be weeks, depends how long it takes for someone to notice you iced Makara.”

You flinched. After the fight there hadn’t been time for much of anything. The two of you ran to the car as fast as possible, cursing the sand that shifted under your feet and left tracks that you barely bothered to cover. You had definitely not spent the majority of the journey home sobbing and hyperventilating into the sleeves of your blood stained jacket. You’re above that kind of wriggler nonsense, obviously but if you HAD come back with red streaks on your face who could blame you? “In which a young troll breaks up with his highblood moirail to keep him safe and he freaks out, forcing a third player to slit the highblood’s throat, featuring one highblood rage, questionable cross-caste relations and an explicit display of pale affection only suitable for wrigglers 6 sweeps and above” would make a good blockbuster romantic tragedy. Who wouldn’t cry, really. Audiences across the empire would weep and hold their breath as they watched you raise your mangled hand up to the painted face of okay no you needed to kill this train of thought before it killed you. You were rambling, snowballing your own thoughts through a drift of bullshit in the hopes of crushing whatever it was that you’d been worrying about in the first place. What were you talking about again? Oh. Right. Iced Gamzee.

At some point you guess you passed out in the car because you didn’t remember getting back at your hive, or getting your wounds treated, or being put to bed. You remembered little moment, flashes of clarity that you’re not completely convinced were real, like waking up terrified and thrashing under a spray of lukewarm water as someone held you down and cleaned the blood out of your hair. Everything was red and blue and frightening and you’d closed your eyes, and the next time you opened them you’d been nose deep in sopor and hyperventilating so hard you’d almost drowned yourself in the slime. At one point you thought you heard Gamzee laughing, but when you opened your eyes there was no one there. You hadn’t really had time to think about what happened with any real coherence until just then when Sollux gracelessly careened a truck of cold hard reality over your freshly broken limbs.

You felt the stiff breeze tugging at your petals.

Sollux clearly noticed because you could see the tiniest crease of concern break the scowl above the bridge of his shades. He took a step back, handing the reigns to Kanaya, you thought, but you spoke up instead.

“Where to?” You asked.

“Initially, Nepeta’s hive would be the best location.” Kanaya said. “Assuming of course that you made it there alive, of which Sollux can make no such promise.”

He rolled his eyes (you thought, hard to tell with him) instead of hissing, which was an improvement at least.

“What about her sweaty bootlicking douchbeast of a moirail?” You said. “Uh, no offense.”

“None taken.” Nepeta smiled. “Equius is coming with us, whether he likes it or not! Sollux needs him to help with a few plans he’s working on for you and I need him to pull his head out of his nook. It’ll do him some good for a change!”

You glanced to Sollux for confirmation, one eyebrow raised way, way up. Those two fucking hated each other, you were pretty sure Sollux would rather stick his bulge in a blender than spend any amount of time in the company of that casteist, perverted sack of garbage. Apparently you were wrong though, because Sollux nodded and shrugged as if to say “Why the fuck wouldn’t I want to have my validity as an intelligent troll questioned up close and personal?” You just rubbed your good hand across your face and summarily decided never to question whatever bullshit those two got up to. You also didn’t bother to question how they were going to recruit a blood supremacist into your rag tag gang of lowbloods and freaks, but then you didn’t make a habit of questioning Nepeta in general. You knew wherever she went he would follow. You tried not to think too hard about why.

“Right.” You went to clap your hands together in a gesture of authoritarial decisiveness and immediately regretted every half formed idiot thought that had ever crossed your mind.

Ow. Fucking ow.

“Nepeta’s then.” You said, through gritted teeth. “Lets pack this shit up.”

Chapter Text

=twinArmageddons started trolling centaursTesticle=
TA: gue22 where ii am riight now.
CT: D --> No.
CT: D --> I will not engage your 100di% attempt to antagonise me.
TA: go on you know you want two.
TA: or at lea2t ii know you’ll want two know even iif you don’t thiink you want two know riight now but that’2 ju2t becau2e you don’t know yet.
TA: eheh oop2 that one kiind of got away from me.
CT: D --> I do not want to know.
TA: are you 2ure?
CT: D --> Yes.
TA: really really 2ure?
CT: D --> Yes.
TA: really 2uper DOUBLE 2ure?
CT: D --> Stop.
TA: what exactly ii2 the 2TRENGTH of your 2ure-ne22??
CT: D --> I command you to cease this f001ish game and tell me where you are at once.
CT: D --> Or at least inform me why you have got it into your e%ecrable mutant brain that I should care.
TA: ye2 2iir, three bag2 full 2iir.
TA: but fiir2t ii need your help wiith 2omethiing.
CT: D --> Abso100tely not.
TA: ii thought you miight 2ay that 2o ii brought backup.
CT: D --> What.
TA: :33 < surpurrise!!
CT: D --> No.
CT: D --> Nepeta you will not po100t yourself with such abhorrent company.
CT: D --> Captor is beneath you in every respect you do not have to go along with his shenanigans.
TA: :33 < blah blah blah shush! sollux is my friend!
TA: :33 < besides it’s not me he wants for his “shenanigans” it’s you
TA: :33 < so there mister grumpyglutes

It was right about then that you stopped leaning over her shoulder and skulked back to the other side of the hive slash cave where Karkat was bitching up a storm from a messy pile of animal pelts.You weren’t sure if Kanaya was actually listening or just humouring him while he she worked on patching up an old dress but it didn’t matter because you were going to interupt them anyway. Checking on the others seemed like a better use of your time than forcing yourself to stomach Zahhaks casteist shit-fit. At least Karkat’s shit-fit would be more personally directed.

“You. Tall streak of nookblisters with some panleak on the side,” Yep, there it was. “What’s the status update on convincing troll Hitler’s biggest fan to join our raving hippie asshole party?”

“AC’s working on it.”

Honestly you didn’t have much hope for him joining your movement, but loath though you were to admit it you really did need his help. No amount of shithive bananas programming skill could beat his expansive hardware knowledge and you knew for a fact he’d been training in certain specialised in areas you were... keen to look into. Plus you could do with the muscle when you went to rescue all the tech you could carry from your hive. Hell you could do with the muscle in general, and NOT just to look at thank you very much KK, shut your chitinous wind hole. You harboured exactly zero misconceptions on this whole runaway rebel thing going off without a violent hitch.

When you were called back Nepeta was sharpening her claws and looking smug. Success then. Blue and yellow text filled the screen from Nepeta’s quick fire exposition of all the event’s that had already happened, which you didn’t bother to read. No one would want to read all that ridiculous horse shit twice.

CT: D --> I still think this is preposterous.
TA: :33 < i don’t caaaaaare
TA: :33 < you’re doing it right?
CT: D --> Fine.
CT: D --> I will assist the disgusting lowb100d.
TA: awwh come on ii’m not THAT bad.
CT: D --> Ugh.
TA: eheheh.
TA: 2eriiou2ly though, eq, thank2.
TA: ii’m 2ure we can get through thii2 a2 not-awfully a2 po22iible a2 long a2 you agree two keep your 2weaty 2uperiioriity complex on one 2iide of the land based vehicle and ii’ll try two keep my actual superiioriity two a maxiimum volume of two.
TA: did AC tell you the plan or diid 2he ju2t fiill you iin on all our madcap adventure2?
CT: D --> She informed me of your current situation and suggested that I go with you on your next assignment.
CT: D --> I understand you need assistance on a technological issue, I will 100k to assist you as best I can despite our %-puposes.
TA: okay fiir2tly fuck you ii am not haviing a technologiical ii22ue, my tech 2kiill2 are 2tiill 2o far above your2 on the proverbiial echeladder that you are a tiiny 2pec upon whiich ii could barely pii22 from thii2 dii2tance.
TA: there ii2 2omethiing tech related ii need two talk two you about but that’2 iirrelevant rn and ii’d appreciiate iif you 2hut your trap about iit.
TA: our next a22iignment ii2 barely tech related at all, mu2cleman.
TA: our next a22iignment ii2 a peiice of pii22.
CT: D --> What.
TA: get your coat we’re goiing 2hoppiing.

Somehow in between the bickering and the not-so-subtle jabs at eachothers mental prowess the two of you eventually agreed on a rendezvous point for two days later. Nepeta begged and fussed but eventually agreed to stay back since her arm was still all kinds of fucked, Karkat was still laid up in her coon so he couldn’t defend himself (an assertion that made him go off on you for a good couple of hours before you eventually knocked him out in lieu of agreement) and Kanaya would be out during the quiet daylight hours searching for an appropriate place to set up camp which meant that if you weren’t back by sunrise the two of them left alone. It worried you, leaving the two cripples to fend for themselves but if all went to plan you would only be gone a few hours. It’d be fine right? It’d be fine, they probably wouldn’t even have to deal with any trouble since no one knew where you were. Well, unless the clowns had been working through Karkat’s trollian already. Then they probably knew exactly where all of you could be found. Hell from the amount of blood Karkat had apparently left all over everything they probably had a pretty good idea of how tactically fucked you were right now. They’d probably be descending on the cave in a matter of days, days that you’d already frittered away caring for people’s injuries and laughing at Nepeta’s paintings. FUCK how could you be so stupid?

You chewed yourself out the entire way to the city.

The meeting point was a shady bar in a shadier part of town, a place where people would definitely look twice at a blueblood and a yellow shaking hands, and then promptly decide on the second glance that it was some kind of concupiscent arrangement that they didn't want to get involved in. One thing you learnt fast in the city was that if you didn’t want to be seen the trick wasn’t so much making yourself invisible as making yourself so visible that everyone around you was too disgusted to care. You weren’t a very good actor but that was okay, you didn’t need to be. Bitter, “don’t fuck with me” trolls were a caegar a dozen in the city and the look came naturally to you, probably because you truly were every bit as bitter and out of fucks to give as the irritable twitch of your claws implied. Equius on the other hand was about as subtle and inconspicuous as a breezeblock to the teeth. When he walked into the bar everyone stared, not that you could blame them since he managed to not only fill the entire doorway but also scrape his one unbroken horn on the doorframe on his way in. At least to them his confused and disgusted frown probably came off as intimidating, the harsh knot of his eyebrows above his broken shades topping off the solid meat mountain that ducked through the door. It was all you could do not to break the silence with a withering sigh. He approached you and you yellowed slightly as several pairs of saucer wide eyes turned to you and clocked the size difference. Fuck. Well, it’s not like you had any dignity in the first place. Your claws tapped restlessly against your glass as he squeezed himself into the chair opposite you and you waited until the rest of the patrons went back to minding their own goddamn business.

“I am uncomfortable.”

“I don’t give a fuck.”

He bristled and huffed through his nose at you. Your psionics crackled around your horns and for a moment you just stared at each other. Fine. This was going to be fine.

You downed the rest of your drink.

“Let’s go.” You snapped, and you shoved your chair away from the table and turned to leave.

The walk to your hive was cold partly because it was late in the night and there was a damp chill coming in off the sea and partly because it was the single most awkward walk of your life. Neither of you were particularly well suited to field missions. You sort of got the impression Equius was trying to be sly, but he just ended up moving like a desert drone with sandy joints. Eventually you hissed something violent and bare comprehensible between your teeth and grabbed him by the arm to drag him through back streets and alleys to a symphony of whistles and cat calls until you finally, FINALLY, arrived in the dilapidated lot at the back of your hivestem where you promptly punched him in the chest for your trouble.

You rubbed your bruised knuckles with your other hand and spat profanity at him as you shouldered open the hivestem door. The lock had broken sweeps ago and the landlord was a lazy sack of shit who’d never bothered doing a real days work on the place so with the right shift of the hinges it jimmied open easily. This was your domain. Every square inch and faulty light socket of this craptacular stem was mapped into your brain until you could navigate the place like clockwork. As soon as you crossed the threshold you went into auto pilot. The lift was broken because of course it was. A cliche inner city apartment block? You were fairly sure they installed the things fucked. Not that it had ever been an issue for you. Red and blue sparks danced between your fingers on one hand and the doors sprung open and the light in the rusty cage crackled into life. You took a moment to appreciate the fact that Equius looked like he would rather suck off a cholarbear than hop in and smirked at him.

“It’s either get in or walk up to the 82nd floor by yourself.”

He scowled at you, it was excellent. “I will not debase myself by spending any more time in this filthy dwelling than absolutely necessary.”

“Then get in the fucking lift.”

He muttered something that sounded like “Language!” and begrudgingly shuffled into the broken elevator next to you. The door slammed shut and you grinned.

“Going up.”

Pchoo. It took exactly twenty two seconds to rocket up from the ground floor to your roof level hive in the rickety psionic-powered death trap. Equius left little dents in the hand rail and glared at your feet the entire time and when the doors finally slid open opposite your door you thought for a beautiful hot second that he was going to throw up.

“What's wrong?” You asked. “Can’t handle psionic powered flight?”

He grunted. “I suppose it is fitting that you have practise with your future calling.”

That touched a nerve, but you didn’t want to give him the satisfaction of winning and besides it was at least a convenient opening to segue into the uncomfortable conversation you’d been patiently dreading. You jiggled your key in your hive lock and rammed your foot against the kickboard of the door until it would turn.

“You’d know all about that wouldn’t you.”

“Yes actually.” He adjusted his shades as he surveyed your hive like it was something Nepeta had rolled in. “Although my aspirations lie with the highest orders of the military as if befitting my caste I have taken a certain interest in matters of interplanetary travel in particular…”

“Helmsblock maintainance yeah I know, your firewall is held together with tissue paper and fakey fairy wishes.”

There was a heavy silence as you started throwing things into your sylladex. You stopped in front of your beehouse mainframes and frowned.

“On a scale of one to fuck no,” you said, rifling through your drawers, “how good are you with biowire?”

“...I believe I could replicate a functioning culture with some confidence although I would require assistance with the biological connections. Troll biology is a complicated field.” He was frowning at you behind your back so hard you could practically feel it but you didn’t care.

“So you could fix the engine but you might kill the battery.”

His little intake of breath at your callous terminology was mentally filed away and you rattled the screws out of a jar and approached the central beehouse, shaking the sparks out of your free hand at your side. This was a tricky procedure but luckily you were basically the barkbeast’s nuts at apiculture networking. No one was better with beenary than you. No one.

“...Yes.” He said.

You hummed and snapped your fingers and the bees dropped where they were and you scooped a few pairs up to drop into the jar. That wasn’t the answer you’d been hoping for, not that you made a habit of being particularly hopeful about things going your way. Still. It was better than nothing. When you looked, Equius was still frowning. Hm, annoying. You captchalogued the select workers and waved a hand over your shoulder at your main system.

“Pack that up for me.” You snapped.

A bead of sweat rolled down his temple and you snickered, carefully dismantling the the middle section of the hive with your powers so that you could extract the queen. She was a bigger than the others, about the size of your fist and not nearly as receptive to your powers. Her wings fluttered sleepily as you lifted a sheet of silicomb to get to her cell. You were leaning over, your tongue pinched between your first set of fangs as your lifted her into the cage when you heard heavy footsteps on the stairs and what sounded like trolls shoving eachother and laughing. That alone wasn’t particularly alarming and you stooped closer to the cell in an attempt to ignore the distraction.

Then you heard the woop woop.

Chapter Text

Them that were quieter ‘n you, those with sure eyes and swift feet what moved silent as squeakbeasts with the squeakers removed, ducked into the hive first and fuck if you wouldn’t be lying to say you weren’t a tiny be disa-fucking-pointed that you missed the look on your old pals faces when they saw em, decked up as they were all motherfucking mirthful in colour ‘n’ paint. Shit was beautiful work to peep on, that of the great and noble ranks of laughassassins but you didn’t have the sure in you. You, on clumsy feet with hands all big and made for getting round a brothers skull, were not made for sneaking. You were made for other things. Bigger things. HIGHER things.

Higher thing such as you were, as you fuckin ARE, when you got to pushing past shard and splinter of Captor’s door they were both cornered. The others parted, motherfucking parted for you can you imagine? Shit was messiah given magic, all unbelievable like you give thanks for on the daily, but for all you aint got the faintest why them motherfuckers parted and held between them was the fucked up rebel and, shit the fucking bed there was your good buddy Equius too. They were backed up against the the wall of hiveframe and somesuch bullshit that beeped and buzzed and pulled up all those little miracles that got to happening on your computer. Fucking pissblood would get to trying to explain with all his numbers and his techno-science like it was him that fucking went and wrote miracles into the code of the universe and he had right to pick them apart till they weren’t funny no more and that shit made your blood fucking boil to think on.

Least you got to see the look of surprise on his motherfucking face when he clocked you. Fucker had you figured for dead sure enough by the look up in his ganderbulbs. Like he’d seen a ghost. Like he’d seen a fucking MIRACLE! Your grin coulda split wider even than your paint. You took one step forward and he took one back.

Heh.

“Brothers.” Your voice was deeper than last, your face scarred and your paint battle worn. You rumbled like thunder betwixed stained glass in the ancient stone tents of the believers. “Be not a afeared. Be not a-fucking-feared of me o’ brothers most motherfucking vile.” You spun a club lazily at your side, your grin still harlequin wide. “Aint me you gotta get your terror on for motherfuckers. You gotta see the motherfucking light. You gotta be all looking up and you see that fuckin light and you stare and you praise it till you get your know on that the bang pow boom, that that sweet blisterin explosion, has all up and come to incinerate the flesh from your fucking heretic bones and as it settles silent over the undoing of the universe He will carry brothers and sisters mine away screaming to shangri fucking lol.”

“Highblood plea-”

“Shhhh.”

You raised a finger to your split lips, teeth bared on that wicked fizzy bubbling cusp of laughter. He up his fucking shut as soon as you pursed your motherfucking lips and if that weren’t the most hilarious thing you don’t know what is.

“I aint here for you little peasant blood. Nah. We all came to up and catch ourselves a little sparkbug didn’t we fam?” You grin at your troupe and they woop back, eyes shining. “And look at what we up and fucking caught!”

Your brothers and sisters most motherfucking mirthful, family of paint gathered close around you like it was schoolfeed all over again and they were hearing sweetest scripture, laughed as you held out a hand to present, claws inches away from the pissbloods face. Captor thrummed with psionic energy and you had a thought that maybe you got an understanding of why the keep the little gold ones alive. Much fucking prettier they are all lit up in red and blue.

“Stay the fuck away from me.” It spat. You laughed again.

“I aint gonna hurt you little bug.” You purred. “Only I up and heard you got something of mine and I fucking want it back.”

He hissed in your face like he was ready to attack but you don’t think he even saw your hand move, a blur. Fast enough that he never had time to get thought in his pan to stop it before you had grips round his wrist and yanked it up between his shoulder blades. You curled claws around the largest of his freaky mutant horns and you had that motherfucker spun right around with his pressed face first against sticky silicomb before he could fucking blank. You pressed him there til you could see the little screws of his eye glasses digging into his skin like they wanted to break it. You wanted to motherfucking break it.

“Where’s Karkat?” You snarled.

Out of the corner of your eye you saw someone take the blueblood down on one knee where he ought to up and fucking be if he had manners proper. Aint his fault. Hard to remember manners when you’re motherfucking starstuck. You grinned at him, an acknowledgement. A reward for good behavior. You twisted the pissblood’s wrist (so thin, so motherfucking thin you could snap it clean through and barely have stardust to grind) and played him like a motherfucking instrument, strumming out sweet symphonies in whimpers and screams. You asked him again.

“Where. The fuck. Is Karkat?”

He spat honey away from his lips like poison and snarled wordless at you. All around his eyes jumped streaks of red and blue and black like lightning. You repeated yourself one more time more threat than question. Get that shit drilled real deep into his pan.

“WHERE IS HE, MOTHERFUCKER?” You slammed your weight harder against him and he made a noise like a balloon deflating. “SQUEAL.”

His head buzzed still and sparks danced all up and down your arms leaving little lightning burns, little stars all sparkling on your skin. What you wouldn’t give to crack that head open and pull the miracles out of it strand by sticky bleeding strand till you could sip faygo from between his horns- but nah. You weren’t as stupid as many were wont to believe and you knew that pretty pan of his was better in one piece. Couldn’t drag your answers out tooth and claw like you wanted, nah. Gotta focus that rage sharp as fucking knife point. The lenses of his glasses cracked in little lines like the lightning dancing round your hair and he wheezed again.

“‘m not…”

Seemed like talking was taking a real motherfucking effort for the little bug so you eased up, loosening your grip on his horns so you could lean back from him all the better for him to peep on you smiling real wide. He licked his lips.

“I’m not telling.” He grinned.

Oh FUC---

Chapter Text

You didn’t even have a chance to move away from the mainframe before your door was kicked open. The first troll in was tiny and packed tight, his wrists and shins were wrapped up in colourful straps and half his face was covered with a bandana under the jagged paint that lined his eyes. A trainee laughassassin, you’d know them by sight in a split second any day of the week, not that knowing would stop the little fucker from taking out your ankles before you could move. Equius did nothing. The stupid, grubfisted, hambrained son of a fucking barkbeast just stood there gaping as the little assassin got his claws in somewhere sensitive at the side of your neck that made your head swim and the light in your eyes flicker and put you down for just long enough for his crew to catch up. It was as if every greetings card piece of horseshit you’d ever pulled up about hemoequality fluttered away and up away into the sun like fucking garbage, leaving you with a blind, completely understandable rage towards blue bloods as a whole, especially that one. That one right there with the stupid musclebeast fetish. Fuck him.

They backed you both up against the mainframe coiled tight and scared and in a moment of horrible clarity you realised that you were probably going to die.

You were kind of OK with that.

The gathering of juggalos parted like the shitty faygo sea and-

Fuck.

No fuck.

You stared at Gamzee like you’d seen a ghost. This was bullshit, this was grade A bullshit he was supposed to be dead. No one stands up to the sharp end of Nepeta’s firsts and survives. He took one step forward and you took one step back. He laughed.

You didn’t bother listening to his preaching, you never had. It was all the same kooky fake-messiah slasher clown bullshit you’d heard before anyway, you just needed to keep your eyes on that club. He swung it, round and round and round, and the swirl of colour (oh god there was cherry red smeared down one side to the handle like he’d put it there on purpose, you’d bet he had, you’d go 50/50 on him putting it there specifically to fuck with you,) held your full attention like a flutterbug to a flame, which was convenient because that was exactly what he thought of you as. An insect. Something to be captured and pinned. He shut down Equius without a second thought and your gut twisted because it was so fucking wrong. Zahhak was so much fucking STRONGER than that and you hated him for submitting, you hated yourself for thinking it would have gone any differently.

“...We all came to up and catch ourselves a little sparkbug and look at what we up and fucking caught!” He grinned at his crew and at you and holy shit his teeth were disgusting.

Your entire body thrummed with psionic energy and you tilted your head forwards, teeth bared as you hissed back at him. It was a blatant threat display, a threat display with all the actual threat of a wet meowbeast behind it but a threat display none the less.

“Stay the fuck away from me.”

The laughter only got louder. A little circle had formed around you as Gamzee’s crew honked and holla’d and wooped along with everything he said like he was some shitty slam poet spitting their holy rhymes. You could feel the lukewarm sticky spread of honey seeping through your shirt where they had backed you into your hives. Little shocks of static buzzed up and down your spine where it was making contact with your skin and you gritted your teeth. All around you the bees slept peacefully, useless purple fucks.

“I aint gonna hurt you little bug.” Gamzee purred. Yeah, right. “Only I up and heard you got something of mine and I fucking want it back.”

Out of fucking nowhere you found your cheek ground into sugary mind-fuck syrup and it took you a couple of seconds to realise what had happened. You’d hissed, straight up leant forwards and hissed like the ornery little sack of shit you truly are and he’d taken the opportunity to defend against the attack with aplomb. Naturally you’d followed the path of the club as he swung it lazily back so you hadn’t even seen his other hand snap up, not that you’d have been able to stop it, god fucking damnit he was fast. He’d grabbed your horn in one hand and you almost definitely didn’t yelp or whimper as he squeezed his fingers tight, too tight, around the smooth keratin and pulled as if he wanted to fucking remove it. With your hands half up to free yourself he’d gotten his other hand around your wrists, twisted up in a little knot behind your back that hurt to struggle against.

“Where’s Karkat?” He snarled.

You struggled. It felt like your wrist was going to break and fuck, oh fuck, your head was buzzing with static. There was honey everywhere, you’d lost track of where it was giving you contact high and you were focusing as hard as you could on not swallowing it or letting it swallow you. You felt little sparks dancing out across your temples and between your horns and you forced your tongue out between your teeth and bit down until you drew blood.

“Where. The fuck. Is Karkat?” He repeated.

It hurt to move. It hurt to think. It was very quickly starting to hurt to exist. You tried a scowl, but your eyes felt like they had dry ice pressed against them and your skull was suddenly far, far too small. Purple lightning arched between your horns and flayed at Gamzee’s fingers but he didn’t seem to notice anything except the wordless snarl as you reared back and tried to spit the honey out of your mouth. He was over you again in a second, screaming at you, frantic. Six foot and change of wiry paint gargling asshole slammed into your spine and rushed the air from you. Oh god. Oh god this was how you were going to die. Crushed to death between a computer and a juggalo. You needed an out. You needed an out yesterday.

Psionics hummed in the air as you struggled to keep a hold on them and calculate an escape at the same time. You felt, rather than saw, the fractures shooting along the red and blue glass of your shades, mirroring the sparks that were shooting up and down your body. Static pulsed through your veins and over your throat and you had a fucking terrible idea.

“‘m not…”

You took a deep shuddering breath and tried to make it into words. The chucklefuck let up just enough for you to twist round in his grip, bones burning and chest heaving. You licked your lips and held all of the shaken pieces of yourself together just long enough to smirk at him and spit

“I’m not telling.”

You let go.

Letting your overcharged psionics take over felt like putting your tongue in a plug socket in a good way. It was like taping your eyes open to stare into the sun except the sun was in the back of your skull and okay, that one got away from you. The static tickled and burned and scarred, humming kisses against your skin and you felt yourself lift up from the ruined floor of your decimated hive as the power surged through you. They were a strange thing, your powers, because they came from you, they were intrinsically part of you in a way that you didn’t care enough to understand, but at the same time you were just a conduit to the destruction their power could wreak. You were sure that one day they would destroy you from the inside out. After exactly twelve seconds you to dropped back onto the rubble, your legs collapsing under you and leaving you in a heap of hollowed out and aching limbs. It took another full two minutes for you to breathe as though you weren’t going to die.

Your hive lay around you in ruins. The entire top floor of the hive stem had been blown upwards and collapsed in on itself taking your home and the two other blocks on your floor with it. A wordless bubbling groan from the rubble told you pretty clearly that your lusus wasn’t going to make it and you crawled towards him. Nothing hurt anymore. Nothing felt much of anything except empty and so it was with very little theatrics that you lifted the sharpest jutting piece of shitty metal garbage you could and forced it up through his ribcage. With that done you collapsed back into the blood stained dust and tried to gather your thoughts into something resembling coherence. The first thing you needed to do was get your shit together and get as far away as fucking possible. It was quite likely that you’d just killed a handful of highbloods, not to mention your neighbours and there was absolutely no hiding your appleberry blast mutation now. The explosion would have been visible for miles. The dim evening light glinted off the shattered lenses of your glasses near your ankle and you huffed. Fuck. With great difficulty you managed to dig around in the rubble until you found something to cover your eyes. Cracked, square black shades, dorky as all fuck but you supposed if you needed a cover looking like a straight up retard was a good start. You wrapped yourself up in a dark green jacket that had been kept nicely blood and dust free in the safety of your sylladex and took a moment to thank your past self for foresight. The hood was big enough and thick enough to cover your face and disguised your smaller set of horns enough for you to walk around in public without flashing your mutation. Perfect.

Kitted out and shaking you managed to drop yourself jerkily down to street level with the sputtering dregs of your powers and you ducked through side streets and under fire escapes until you found yourself nestled behind the thick black out blinds of a pokey internet cafe, your husktop balanced on your knee tapping the keys with one hand while you chugged hot coffee with the other. The second thing you needed to do was contact Karkat. Lucky you were 200% batshit fucking fantastic at computers or that would have been really difficult. Unfortunately, you were 200% batshit fucking fantastic at computers so you’d already established contact before your feet even hit the ground.

=twinArmageddons has sent file armageddon.~ATH=
=Automated message from twinArmageddons=
TA: kk iif you’re readiing thii2 iit mean2 my central maiinframe ha2 been de2troyed and that’2 pretty much never goiing two be good. a22ume the wor2t ii gue22. iif ii don’t check back iin iin fiive miinute2 the2e are the fiile2 you’ll need two maiintaiin your cover, iif you keep your head down and look out for ac you’ll be fiine. do NOT fuck thii2 up ii’m countiing on you. 2hiit thii2 ii2 2tupiid, ii wii2h ii could make thii2 me22age more rea22uriing oh well. 2orry for everythiing.
CG: WHAT?
CG: HEY.
CG: OH NO. NO NO NO DON’T YOU FUCKING DARE.
CG: THAT’S FUNNY. YOU’RE REAL FUNNY. HAHAHA FUCKING HILARIOUS YOU REALLY GOT ME!
CG: I BET IF I OPEN THIS FILE IT’LL JUST A HUMOUROUS MEME!!
CG: SYSTEM FILES?
CG: CAPTOR WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ON?!
CG: ANSWER ME YOU NOOKHUFFING SACK OF SHIT THIS ISN’T FUNNY
CG: OH GOD OH GOD OH GOD
CG: DON’T YOU DARE BE DEAD DON’T FUCKING DARE AND I SWEAR ON THE MOTHER GRUBS MOST DANGLY APPENDAGES THAT I WILL TEAR THE ENTIRE UNIVERSE A NEW COLLECTIVE ASSHOLE TO SHIT RAGE FROM IF I FIND OUT YOU’VE BEEN CONSCRIPTED
CG: PLEASE DON’T BE DEAD OR
CG: SOLLUX?
CG: OH GOD
=twinArmageddons has started trolling carcinoGeneticist!=
TA: awh you do ca|

You stopped and tapped your claws on the keyboard mid-sentence. Seeing Karkat freak out over you pulled something hot and biting out of the dull buzzing emptiness you’d been feeling before. After another seconds thought you backspaced your sarcastic knee jerk and started again.

CG: OH GOD
=twinArmageddons has started trolling carcinoGeneticist!=
TA: ii’m 2o fuckiing 2orry iit’2 okay ii’m here.
CG: OH MY GOD CAPTOR WHAT THE FUCK.
CG: WHAT THE FUCK??????
CG: WHAT
CG: THE FUCK?????
TA: iit’2 an automated re2pon2e 2y2tem iinca2e 2omethiing happened two my hiive. the iidea wa2 that iif anythiing happened two me iit would triigger 2o that you wouldn’t be up 2hiit creek wiithout a floatatiion deviice.
TA: 2o yeah ii blew up my hiive ju2t now whiich 2et iit off but ii’m okay.
CG: WHAT.
TA: ii’ll be back 2oon. diid kn fiind 2omewhere for u2 two 2et up?
CG: NO, HOLD ON, WHAT??
CG: YOU BLEW UP YOUR HIVE??
CG: WHAT??????
TA: oh riight.
TA: funny 2tory
TA: actually WOW FUCK ii don’t even know where two 2tart with thii2 2hiit.
TA: 2hiit don’t tell nepeta yet.
CG: WHY NOT?
TA: ii miight have acciidentally kiilled equiiu2 ii2 why not.
CG: WHAT THE FUCK??!!?!??
TA: ok ii’ve got two bounce before they catch up wiith me.
TA: ii’ll check iin a2ap
=twinArmageddons has stopped trolling carcinoGeneticist!=
CG: WHAT
CG: THE
CG: FUCK.

Chapter Text

What you were doing was pretty much definitely not crying and fuck anyone who said otherwise. It had been a long day of being forced to do nothing, putting you at the level of frustration somewhere around the “snapping at your friends for no goddamn reason and locking yourself alone in someone elses respite block” mark. The conversation with Sollux had done approximately jack shit to calm your nerves, in fact the conversation with Sollux had tipped you so far over the edge of the handle that your nerves were just spinning and spinning up and away into space, screaming obscenities like some wanktastic vulgarity fountain. Luckily that left you in a bizarre state of organized calm. You had to know what was going on. You had to work out a plan for what to do next. You needed a solid plan, something better than “wait for Sollux to stop being awful” (an unlikely turn of events at best) to keep you occupied so you did the first logical thing you could think of and opened up the newsfeed on your husktop. Two neat midblooded trolls in sharp colour accented suits grinned up at you from a background of eye-bleeding pink glitter.

“In a shocking turn of events a communal hive stem in the Dyad District has been torn apart by one of its lowblood residents.” The first one drawled, tilting his head to emphasise his fucking dreadful pun as if it wasn’t in bad taste enough. “It is suspected that the culprit, a yellowblood psionic who has been identified as Sollux Captor, was using mind honey recreationally at the time of the event-”

“Gosh, it just makes you wonder why they don’t keep closer tabs on these kinds of trolls doesn’t it Jefrey?” She curled her lips around ‘these kinds of trolls’ like she was talking about something obscene. Her claws glittered under the studio lights as she gestured emphatically with one hand as if she could shoo the imaginary miscreants away.

“It certainly does, Sharon, it certainly does!” He laughed, the manufactured angles of his grin failing to hide his annoyance at being interrupted. “Captor was under investigation by a faction of the Subjugglator Faithful when the incident occurred. He was involved in a number of treasonous activities against the Empire, including harbouring dangerous fugitives and acts of extreme terrorism, and now with the death of several innocent civilians and the grievous bodily harm of a Laughassassin on their hands, anyone associated with Captor better watch out! The Empire knows who you are and They Are Watching!”

“It sure is good to know that The Empire is there to protect us from dangerous and unsavoury trolls like that!” Sharon simpered. “At the site of the incident we’ve connected with Subjugglator Convert, Brother Makara for details.”

They cut to a spinning Crockercorp News logo and then to a dark, sweeping shot of Sollux’s destroyed hive stem. At the bottom, Gamzee stood in the dark street, his hair dusted with bits of rubble, blood dripping down one side of his face and smearing one half of his painted grin. He looked hurt. He looked like he didn’t care. You clenched your fists in your lap anyway. It couldn’t be him. It couldn’t. You’d seen him die, it had to be a coincidence. You were so busy trying to convince yourself that it couldn’t really be him and that you weren’t going to empty your lunch into your lap that you missed the beginning of what he said. When you dragged your attention back to the screen he was staring into the camera with bloodshot eyes and you could have sworn he was staring straight at you.

“-miracle brother o’ mine. Got my know on where you’re at so you just sit tight motherfucker. Gonna come get you-”

You slammed the husktop shut.

Your heart was hammering against your ribcage like it wanted to be fucking free and your throat burned with the threat of being sick and yes, okay, you were crying. His voice had been a thick, heavy purr like he was promising to sweep you into the pile and comb the knots out of your tortured psyche. God, you wanted him to. You wanted to just curl up in his arms and forget everything that had happened forever so fucking badly. You wanted it so fucking badly that before you realised what you were doing you found yourself curled up on the floor with your arms around your head and your face buried in your knees trying desperately to resist the urge to grab comfortable handfuls of your own painfully inadequate horns.

“Karkat.”

You squinted out from between the bars of your elbows and up the long expanse of skirt to Kanaya’s primly crossed arms. She was looking down at you with the little frown creasing the smooth grey of her forehead that meant she was debating whether it was her place to meddle and you were suddenly acutely aware what a fucking mess you looked.

“I’m okay.” You lied.

She hummed and her shins disappeared from your line of sight. You heard movement around you and then a half-hemmed curtain plunged you into darkness and you felt the warm weight of someone occupying space near you. Not literally, not near enough for you to feel the slight coolness of her skin against yours but just inside your awareness. It was weirdly comforting when it should have been uncomfortable to have an unquadranted troll that close. She sat in silence until you emerged from under the heavy material and she didn’t even look up from her sewing when she spoke to you.

“It is perfectly reasonable to be upset.” She said.

The loss of a moirailegiance was generally considered a pretty fucking good reason to be upset even in the vicious cycle of bullshit that was Alternian culture, but she didn’t add that on. She just waited for you to respond. When you didn’t she took a sharp little breath and banished her sewing to her sylladex, folding her hands in her lap and leveling you with a needle-point look that was damn near fucking impossible to ignore. It had this kind of odd intensity, like standing too long under the blazing sun she seemed to love so much.

“Have you heard from Sollux- Ah.” The look on your face at the mention of his name told her everything she needed to know. “Not good news I take it? I did attempt to warn him that there would be complications.”

You wanted to shut her down. To tell her to shut the fuck up because you didn’t need to listen to whatever bullshit back and forth bickering he’d instigated with her, since he’d apparently forgotten that there was any goddamn way to communicate that didn’t involve thick layers sarcasm and liberal use of personal attacks but there was something oddly sincere about the way she said it. There wasn’t a hint of smugness to it, if anything she sounded a little annoyed but it wasn’t like she was mad she was just… Disappointed? Disappointed not in Sollux, not as a troll, not really, but in the reckless way he did basically fucking everything and quite frankly you had rocketed past disappointment on that front and were orbiting a super nova somewhere in the fuck that guy galaxy. You bark out the laugh before you’ve even registered why it’s happening. The curtain hangs from your shoulders like a shitty red cape.

“When the fuck has Sollux ever listened to anyone’s advice? Sollux “I know best” Captor, Alternian world record holder in fitting his entire goddamn head firmly into the warm inviting folds of his own dripping nook doesn’t need such pedestrian things as advice. He obviously already knows the best and most exciting ways to calmly and completely wreck everybody’s shit. Do you know what he did Kanaya? Do you know what he fucking did this time? Take a seat because I assure you this one is truly a doozy of a fuck up. I’m impressed, honestly, and I’ve seen some monu-fucking-mental fuck ups from him in my time.”

She’s already sitting, obviously, but she tilts her head politely and purses her lips as she listens to you rant. You pull your makeshift cape closer across your chest and continue.

“He blew up his hive! Blew it the fuck up. Bicyclops lusus is dead, that obnoxious brown blood who listens to the worlds shittiest candy pop at weird times in the day is dead. Do you know who else might be dead??” You pause and maybe, just maybe, your throat constricts around the words. “Equius. Equius might be dead. Trust Sollux of all people to end that debacle not with an ill conceived and out of control hatred the likes of which you could only dream to auspice for, but with a goddamn pan trauma induced accident.”

If she was taken aback by the loss of Equius she kept it under stylish troll-couture wraps. She reached out and smoothed out the creases on the deep red curtain, her fingers brushing gently against your back as she listened.

“You know who isn’t dead? Gamzee. I don’t even know what- Gamzee, he’s- Ugh.” You threw your hands up in resignation. Fuck that guy too. “What the fuck am I supposed to do Kanaya? Honestly, consider this an open invitation to stick multiple sniff nodes into this business because I have no idea what I’m supposed to be doing. I am the shittiest leader, it is me.”

“Well. Sollux will be back, I am relatively certain of that at the least.” She smoothed the fabric out over your shoulders and you sighed.

“How do you know that?” You sound like a whiney wriggler and you hate it but you can’t stop. “What if he fucks up his stupid little suicide mission even more and he gets culled, or worse? I honestly can’t do this without him Kanaya, he’s my best fucking friend.”

“For all that he is reckless, inconsiderate to others feelings and generally regards himself as expendable, Captor knows that. He would never disappear when you still needed him, in part because he knows that I would make it my personal mission to track him down and make him pay, but not only that. He does care for you, you know.”

You blinked and turned to face her. She still seemed completely infuriatingly unaffected. You barely had time to register that little revelation before you were rudely interrupted by the ping of your husktop. You grudgingly lifted the screen back up and checked the message.

=centaursTesticle started trolling carcinoGeneticist=
CT: D --> Vantas I believe we need to talk.

For once in your fakey clown god forsaken life you could have wept mutant pink tears of joy at the sight of that pompous blue text. You distantly registered that you’d made a horrible happy sort of choking noise in the back of your throat but you quickly squashed it down as you splayed out your makeshift cloak around you and settled down in front of the keyboard.

CG: NEVER IN MY ENTIRE LIFE DID I THINK I WOULD SAY THIS ZAHHAK, SO LISTEN AND LISTEN WELL BECAUSE THIS IS A RARE ONCE IN A LIFETIME OPPORTUNITY. I WILL SAY THIS ONCE AND ONCE ONLY:
CG: HOLY FUCKING SHIT AM I GLAD TO HEAR FROM YOU.
CG: RIGHT NOW THAT VILE BULLSHIT IS OUT OF THE WAY I DEMAND A FUCKING EXPLANATION. WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ON??? CAPTOR SET SUCH A FUCKING INSPIRING SCENE, I AM GOING TO NEED ALL THE NITTY GRITTY DETAILS RIGHT THE FUCK FIVE MINUTES AGO.
CT: D --> I assume your correspondence with Captor was much like mine in that it was as informative as it conciliating.
CG: HAHAHA! YES. YES EXACTLY FUCKING THAT.
CG: HE CALMLY INFORMED ME THAT HIS HIVE WAS DUSTED AND POSSIBLY SO WERE YOU, AND THEN IMPLIED THAT HE WAS BEING TAILED BY ALTERNIA VICE BEFORE DISAPPEARING INTO THE FUCKING VOID.
CT: D --> Infuriating.
CG: YEP.
CG: SO NOW YOU’RE GOING TO TELL ME, WHAT THE FUCK HAPPENED.
CG: (THAT’S YOUR CUE TO FILL ME IN, CHOP CHOP ZAHHAK TIME IS YET MORE SHARDS OFF MY DELICATE MENTAL STATE)
CT: D --> Oh dear.
CT: D --> We arrived at Captor’s hivestem largely without incident although I believe we attracted more er scurrilous attention than was entirely comfortable.
CT: D --> The hive was then raided by highb100ds.
CT: D --> I must admit the troupe of Laughassassins and Subjugglators that descended on us left me positively quivering with reverence at their STRENGTH. I may have been less helpful than Captor had hoped.
CT: D --> Captor then ingested mind honey under the coercion of the Highb100d
CG: OH FUCK.
CT: D --> That is a fairly close if disgustingly 100d appo%imation to my thoughts at the time, yes.
CG: ALRIGHT. ALRIGHT. WE’RE NOT SAFE HERE ANYMORE WE NEED TO BAIL.
CT: D --> By “here” do you mean Nepeta’s hive.
CG: YES. YES I DO.
CG: I’M SO FUCKING SORRY I DRAGGED YOU BOTH INTO THIS. IF YOU WANTED TO BEAT ME INTO A SICKENING LUMPY PULP AND COLLECT YOUR 200 CAEGARS FROM THE EMPIRE AS YOU PASSED GO I WOULD UNDERSTAND COMPLETELY.
CG: YOU’LL HAVE TO HURRY THOUGH BECAUSE I CONTINUE TO BE A FUCKING HORRIBLE COWARD AND LIKE ALWAYS I AM GOING TO TURN AROUND, TUCK MY VESTIGIAL TAIL FIRMLY BETWEEN MY TENDER BUTTOKS AND RUN THE FUCK AWAY.
CG: A PART OF ME WANTS YOU TO COME WITH US. NOT JUST BECAUSE OF NEPETA, FUCK KNOWS SHE HAS A HANDLE ON HER OWN SHIT, BUT JESUS SHITFUCKING CHRIST ZAHHAK YOU MIGHT BE AN INSUFFERABLE SACK OF CASTEIST MUSCLEBEAST SLURRY BUT YOU’RE STILL MY FRIEND.
CG: PLUS IF SOLLUX THINKS WE CAN USE YOUR HELP WITH THIS THEN I GUESS I HAVE TO BELIEVE HIM SINCE HE’S THE IDIOT WITH ALL OUR LIVES IN HIS HANDS. HAHA, FUCK.
CG: LOOK I’M NOT GOING TO ORDER YOU TO FOLLOW ME, IF YOU COME I NEED YOU TO BE BEHIND THIS FOR REAL.
CG: THIS EQUALITY SHIT, I SWEAR IT CAN WORK. I HAVE TO BELIEVE IT CAN WORK.
CG: I GUESS JUST
CG: FUCK IT I’M OUT. TALK TO NEPETA I’VE GOTTA GO.
=carcinoGeneticist has stopped trolling centaursTesticle=

Kanaya captchalogued the makeshift cape straight off your shoulders and leveled you with a wry look when you made noises of muffled complaint. You opened your mouth to shout at her but it just came out as an incoherent sort of ‘nyarggh’ of frustration and a second wave of horrible wet sobs. She sat with you a little longer while you cried yourself dry from... relief? Fear? Fuck, you’d lost track, but she sat with you anyway and made no further attempt to tell you it was all going to be okay no matter how hard she was thinking it. The spring in Nepeta’s step when she joined you much later, flinging her arms around you both and babbling motivational meow beast nonsense about revolution was all you needed to know that Zahhak had agreed to join you. Well, good. Maybe it was going to be okay.

Chapter Text

Were this some cheesey, film noir spy flick you figured you’d be walking through a light rain with your hands in rammed in your jacket pockets, a loosely rolled paper nicotine inhalant hung between your lips as the street lamps flickered their green-blue light in segments all along your dreary path, a poetic metaphor for the dim ache of flickering loneliness in your tortured soul or whatever. Aradia would have loved it, hell, she’d have manufactured the evening to fit the formula just a little better, tugging up her collar against winds that weren’t there and tilting her hat down over her eyes as if it could somehow hide the absolute fucking brilliance of her smile. It would suit her, you thought, sashaying down the street to the soft glow of morning light with a conspiratorial glint in her eye. Her footsteps wouldn’t echo with the sharp click of high heels, she never wore heels because they were hard to climb in, but she’d swing her hips like she was until she toppled over. She’d toss her hair and laugh and you’d- you’d punctuate that thought by throwing your lit cigarette to the ground and stamping it out a little harsher than was strictly necessary. You’d stand there under the harsh beam of a singular streetlamp as the camera took a wide, sweeping pan of the city and you, in the middle of it all, alone.

Aradia died years before but you still weren’t over it. Sometimes you thought that you would never be over it, that the idiotic mistakes of your wrigglerhood would haunt you until you dribbled your think pan out of your nose and expired, whereupon presumably the universe would have a great fucking laugh at shitting you out into some kind of afterlife you never wanted or believed in, so that it could make you relive the same garbage that tormented your waking life through your dreaming death as well. Everything reminded you of her. Everything. It really was like she was haunting you. Giggling at you through every girl with chipped claws, every whisper of a long skirt and every stupid, shitty hyperbolic metaphor. In the shitty noir film of your life, Aradia would have been The Girl. The Femme Fatale. The mysterious dame, with the long coat and the lipstick and the looks that could kill, who slipped through your fingers at each pivotal moment in a wisp of pistol smoke and a flash of a grin. She’d be your motivation, the unattainable dream that got you out of your recuperacoon at night.

Of course your life wasn’t a shitty spy movie, and she wasn’t some unattainable femme fatale with a killer smile, and you weren’t walking through the rain in the dim morning light you were sat on a brightly lit subway platform, picking at your nails and hoping the jadeblood just up from you was concerned enough with getting home to have not watched the news feed.

Okay, maybe sometimes Aradia was the reason you got out of the recuperacoon.

“Mister Appleberry! I can smell you moping from all the way up here! I hope you’re not expecting me to walk over there and get you.”

Oh god. Terezi stood smack bang in the middle of the platform, leant forward with both hands folded neatly on the head of her cane as she scrunched her nose at you, her mouth a strict, ridiculously angled diagonal line. Something loud and angry in the pit of your stomach shrunk shamefully away from the little crease of her brow that got ever deeper as you slouched closer. She was pissed at you. You could tell she was pissed at you, because you always knew when she was pissed at you regardless of how stupid her expression was or how loud and frivolous her insults were. As soon as you were in arms reach her hand darted out and dragged you down by the front of your jacket, took a long sniff of your face and frowned at you with her tongue out like you were something distasteful.

“Blergh.” She said. “What the fuck happened to you?”

You laughed weakly and shoved her away. After punching her address and a couple of caegers into the transport drone you spent the ride amicably bickering or, rather, she spent the ride ribbing you for your conversational skills, appearance (“Fuck off, you’re blind.”), and general lack of ability to be anything other than adorably incompetent at basically everything. It would have been a kick in the teeth, but as she hauled herself out of the car she huffed and drubbed you on the back of the head with her cane and somehow, it wasn’t.

“You’re not supposed to agree with me, asshole.” She said. “I actually happen to think you’re quite capable. Now get up there and get your shirt off.”

Wait, what. You spluttered and objected as the dragged you up the winding stairs into her tree top hive.

“Stop whining, take your shirt off and drink this while you’re at it.” She said, shoving a mug of something milky and sopor thick into your hands.

“The fuck, Terezi?” You took a glup from the mug and immediately regretted everything, hacking over your hand as you tried to cough it back up. “Holy that is fucking hideous what is it??” .

She grinned her too wide grin and tilted the mug in your hand, forcing you to take another sip or slop the gunk all down yourself. When she was satisfied you’d drunk enough she snatched the half empty mug away and jabbed you in the stomach with one pointy finger.

“Shirt.” She said. “And it’s royal jelly in lemon juice. Do you know how expensive royal jelly is Captor, because it is very expensive and you should be very grateful.”

You’d gotten your shirt half way over your head when you heard what she was saying and it sank in your stomach like a lead weight. It was a well known fact, particularly among members of your caste, that the number one use of royal jelly was as a psionic suppressant administered to low bloods, by high bloods, to incapacitate them. There were, by your count, a sum total of fuck all good reasons for a high blood to jack someone’s powers and Terezi had just done it to you. Terezi had just done it to you. You stood, with your shirt tangled up around your horns and your arms trapped uselessly above your head, staring at her. You didn’t even realise your jaw had gone slack until she put a careful finger on your chin and pushed your mouth shut with a tight little click. She carefully untangled you while you struggled to catalogue all the minutiae of your situation. The picture was this - you were alone, shirtless and now apparently drugged in a highblood’s hive hours after having your face plastered across the news feeds as a wanted terrorist. The situation seemed pretty dire. But… On the other hand, if she’d wanted to get you culled, you’d already had your guard down in public with her for almost an hour and it would be strategically ridiculous to take someone back to your own private fucking respite block before you arrested them. For fucks sake, you were arms reach away from her goddamn recuperacoon. Terezi was your best friend bar Karkat. She had been since the accident and you trusted her completely. Fuck, you trusted her so hard that she’d been your first point of call when you were running from the law and she was lined up to be a fucking legit legislacerator in a sweep or so. To drug you like that she would have had to have a really good reason and you hoped, no, trusted, that reason wasn’t ‘all the easier to turn you in to the empire with’. Of course, the question still remained as to what the hell that reason was. You licked your lips before you spoke and your tongue was heavy in your mouth.

“TZ.” You managed. “What the fuck.”

It surprised you a little when she actually managed to look hurt for a second before you whipped you with your shirt and banished it to her sylladex.

“I cannot BELIEVE you just entertained those thoughts about me, I am very upset.”

“But I didn’t-”

“Shut up. I could practically hear you. Do you know what the number two use of royal jelly is?” She said.

“You can’t read minds.” You said, a little more sulk in your voice than was strictly necessary. “That was never a thing you could do.” You hesitated and frowned, thinking. You never really got your hands on the stuff, bees or no. Harvesting it was complicated and it was highly regulated by blue-and-above assholes anyway, so it was something you never bothered to factor into your equations. You ticked off it’s properties one by one in your head until- oh. Oh fuck, yes. “It’s used to prevent psionic burnout and aid proper healing after strenuous events like-”

“Like snorting mind honey like some kind of enormous fucking tool and blowing out half your hive block, yes.” She disappeared into her ablutions chamber, shouting over her shoulder and sound of running water. “What the HELL were you thinking?!”

“Mostly I was thinking, oh fuck, I’m covered in mind honey and I’m about to get a club up my ass.” You snapped as she came at you with a wet cloth, scrubbing at your sticky shoulder like a finicky lusus. You tried to swat her hand away but the jelly made your fingertips numb and you fumbled so hard that she ended up just snatching your hand out of the air and sniffing at your fingers.

“You weren’t thinking.” She said, dropping your hand and the cloth and folding down into her desk chair like a ball joint doll.

You shifted to lean against the desk next to her. “I wasn’t thinking.” You said.

“Sorry” you meant.

“In my defense,” you continued, ramming your numb fingers into your pockets and trying to forget them. “It worked.”

She gave you a look (it was a few centimetres off but you knew she was looking right at you) and you pretty much withered on the spot like a bulge in a snowstorm. Without another word she hooked you with her cane, reached up and slapped you hard around the face. You yelped like a grub and when you looked up at her, head hunched between your shoulders, she was still glaring at you.

“Don’t you EVER scare me like that again.” She said.

You swallowed hard and nodded. Distantly you were very aware that you face was uncomfortably close to hers. Close enough that you could see the unnatural fog in the red of her eyes, even through her shades. When she moved her hand again you thought she was going to slap you a second time, even it out and keep the duality gimmick going for kicks. You’d have deserved it, fuck, you deserved worse. She was right, what you did was stupid and reckless, you could have gotten trolls that you actually gave a fuck about killed - hell, you were a wanted fugitive, you were risking Terezi’s life just by being there. Even Karkat and the others were probably at risk since you blew subtlety through the roof. You were just a fucking asshole in general. Maybe you should have just let them take you in, gone down without dragging the others to hell with you-

You almost flinched harder when her hand came down gently and her thumb gently traced the curve of your cheekbone.

“Shoosh, idiot.” She murmured. “Stop worrying. We’ve got the rest of the day for worrying.”

Well. If that wasn’t the smoothest come on you’d ever experienced.

Some sixteen blissed out hours later the two of you were tangled together in a pile of scalemates, her elbow digging uncomfortably into your ribs as she attempted to balance her laptop across both of your knees. One of your arms was slung loosely around her shoulder and you fiddled absently with her hair as you psionically interfered with her keyboard and balanced your own on the other side. She was looking for dark spots, anywhere that the empire wouldn’t be likely to look for you that was secure enough to hide the others, and you were reestablishing a truly troll-macgyver-esque secure connection to contact the others with. You had promised to try and work out a way for the two of you to keep in touch while she was in training but both of you knew it wasn’t fucking likely. You bickered amicably while you worked, shared a bag of crispy beetles and wasted away the hours until you had to part for-

Well, maybe it was best not to think about that.

“Got it!” She shouted, right next to your ear.

You leaned round her and peered at the screen. A little red marker sat in the middle of a low res satellite image of a rocky wasteland. It was a fair distance from most civilisation, the nearest evidence of life existing that far into the desert at all was a small cluster of lowblood style lawn rings clustered around a solid dark square that appeared to be the cratered ruins of an old training facility. The town's official population couldn’t have been more than two hundred at most, and that was assuming all the lawn rings were occupied. It was, in short, perfect.

So you said as much.

“Shit, TZ, this is perfect.”

“I know I am.” She grinned. “Now. To assemble your fearless troupe of rebels.”

“Careful.” You snorted. “That’s treason.”

=gallowsCalibrator started trolling arsenicCatnip=
GC: *GC SWOOPS M4G3ST1C4LLY DOWN FROM TH3 41R 4ND 4PPRO4CH3S TH3 HUNTR3SS W1TH C4UT1ON*
GC: *SH3 S4YS... 4CTU4LLY SH3 TH1NKS TH1S CONV3RS4T1ON M1GHT B3 TOO S3R1OUS FOR ROL3PL4Y
GC: 1 H34RD WH4T H4PP3N3D W1TH YOUR MO1R41L 4ND 1 W4NT3D TO M4K3 SUR3 YOUR3 OK >:/
AC: :33 < i could say the same to you!
GC: >:OOO
GC: 1’LL H4V3 YOU KNOW M1ST3R C4PTOR 4ND 1 W3R3 JUST FR13NDS!
AC: :33 < sure you were ;33
GC: *TH3 F34RSOM3 DR4GON B4PS TH3 PR3SUMPT1OUS HUNTR3SS ON THE NOS3 W1TH H3R T41L!*
GC: *4ND 4LSO ONC3 W1TH H3R SNOUT FOR GOOD M34SUR3*
AC: :33 < heehee
GC: OK4Y Y3S 1T 1S S4D TO H34R MY GOOD FR13NDS COULD TURN OUT TO B3 A L4WL3SS R3B3L!
GC: OOPS 1 M34N FR13ND**
AC: :33 < “”friend””
GC: YOU STOP TH4T
GC: DONT WORRY THOUGH 1 4M NOT 1NCONSOL4BL3 4BOUT TH1S WHOL3 TH1NG
GC: 1NF4CT YOU COULD S4Y 1 4M F33L1NG DOWNR1GHT
GC: CONC1L3D >;]
AC: :33 < :OO GASP!
AC: :33 < im soooo glad! im okay too
GC: 4ND W3 W1LL B3 3V3N MOR3 F1N3 WH3N W3 MOV3 ON TO GR33N3R P4STUR3S
GC: TH3 P4STUR3S 4R3 COMPL3T3LY M3T4PHOR1C4L
GC: OBV1OUSLY
AC: :33 < obviously
GC: THOS3 P4STUR3S 4R3 SO GR33N B1TCH3S DO NOT 3V3N KNOW. TH3Y SM3LL L1K3 TH3 SOUR3ST C4NDY L1M3! >:D
GC: W3 SHOULD MOV3 ON R1GHT 4W4Y
AC: :33 < oh reeeally
AC: :33 < sounds purrfect! ill pack my metaphorical bags right away!
GC: TH4TS TH3 SP1R1T!
GC: MY B3ST MOST M4G1C4L W1SH3S FOR TH3 MOV3!
GC: SP34K TO YOU SOON <3
AC: :33 < <33
=gallowsCalibrator has stopped trolling arsenicCatnip=

Chapter Text

=You have been connected to the 2ECURE network=
=twinArmageddons started trolling carcinoGeneticist!=
TA: 37°25'45.0"N 138°35'43.0"E
=twinArmageddons has stopped trolling carcinoGeneticist!=
> user: carcinoGeneticist has been booted from the 2ECURE network
> your hu2ktop wiill 2elf de2truct iin 3...2…

Despite your totally dignified scramble to the other side of the hive your husktop did not self destruct. It did, however, stamp “lol jk” across the screen in obnoxious yellow letters.

“Guess that’s where we’re making moves to!” Nepeta mused, right in your goddamn ear.

“I hate him.” You said, mostly to yourself, as you swatted her out of your space. “I fucking hate him. I’m gonna kill him, I really am. What a dick. Do you think he’s a dick? He’s is. He’s a dick. I hate him, Nepeta.”

She grinned at you and twirled the end of her paintbrush between her teeth. “Mmm, no you don’t.”

She winked and waggled her eyebrows and you punched her right in the rumble sphere.

When she finally relented and released you from her armlock you had to start the arduous task of packing for the journey. The internet said it would be a three night walk across the desert, or two and a bit if you took the underground and risked being seen. Less if they travelled above ground and walked through the day (“No, no, no. Not on your life Kanaya. The freak daywalker doesn’t get a say in this. The daywalker sits down and shuts up a second.”) but sun running was not exactly your favourite sport and the idea was shot down faster than an albatros lusus in Orphaner territory.

After much debating (arguing) you decreed, as the unquestioned leader of this ill-conceived gang of hooligans (and Kanaya) and apparently also some kind of goddamn saint, that you wanted to take the underground and anyone who disagreed could write that disagreement on a piece of paper, roll it up, and slowly shove it up their bulge hole. It would be FINE. It was only Captor who’d been totally busted, so the rest of them were still good to travel freely without raising too much suspicion, and your falsified papers would only be an issue if you actually got stopped, which you wouldn’t. Probably. You hoped.

Killing your trail took longer than was even remotely fair and in the end you just ended up gathering up anything remotely incriminating that wasn’t coming with you into a pile by the door and torching the fucker. Screw it. It was a huge smoky, kerosene reeking beacon to anyone who cared but it would do. It’s not like you were planning on sticking around for long anyway. By the time anyone got off their ass to investigate you would be long gone. Still, watching your few accumulated possessions go up in flames did kind of make you wonder if this life on the run was really worth it, but then you turned and saw Nepeta leap into Equius’ arms, completely unaware of her hat dropping into the dust behind her as she nuzzled her cheek against his. Her face split wide in that cheshire cat grin and your blood pusher did some stupid pink pointy thing and flipped in your chest. You thought about Sollux and Eridan, and how you’d never seen either of them as anything but equals despite Eridan’s fervent protests. Hell, even Feferi had occasionally been a good friend to you, someone who you could talk to despite her blood. Over the last few sweeps you’d even begun to develop a serious admiration for her ability to deal with the bullshit that life threw at her, just like it threw it at you. Almost exactly the same in fact. None of you were that different, not really, even if the whole fucking lot of them would argue you that until they were blue (or yellow, or green, or purple) in the face. You watched the whirl of green and blue as Equius spun Nepeta round and heard the shrill laughter echo off the back of her abandoned hive and you nodded to yourself as though someone might be watching. Yeah, you thought. Yeah, it was worth it. It had to be worth it.

Holy fuck, did you hope it was worth it.

Travelling by subterranean channel on foot was always awful. It was just a fact of life. Barkbeasts go bark, moobeasts go moo, subterranean traversal routes go drip drip drip, squelch miserably underfoot and invariably have a lingering aroma of stale piss. Still, in the time it had taken you to get this far you’d only had to miserably slink away from one tragic wheezing bundle of bedrolls and cullbait begging at the side of the path, so really it could have been worse.

You’d stopped, struck hard with platonic pity and they’d approached slowly, illness clearly taking its toll on their already skeletal body. It took you until they were in arms reach to realise they were a psionic, the light in their eyes was so low. Fuck, their metabolism must have been working extra shifts with their sickness to fuck them royally in the ass. You’d ignored your companions concern. What the hell were they going to do? Cough you to death?

“Yes, actually.” Kanaya had reminded you. “It is entirely possible to cough someone to death.”

Well, fuck it. What was one more risk? You sat them back down and crouched next to them, your face scrunched up in a tight little frown as they told you how orphaners took their gorillaraptor lusus from them and left them in the dirt. They tested too unstable to be dragged away for helmsman conditioning because of some stupid wrigglerhood injury, but that left them hiveless, lususless and most importantly to the empire, useless. Everything that had happened to them was totally legal, and there was nothing that could be done. They were just another shit blood psionic hiding from the sun and the drones and scraping by with whatever they could beg, borrow or steal. Your stomach churned to think that save a few key differences, save for you, this could have been where Sollux ended up.

You had wanted to take them with you. To offer him what Sollux had offered you, a chance to get away from the Empire and an opportunity to fight against it. You wanted to offer them food and shelter and the companionship of trolls who cared more about them than the colour of their insides but Zahhak had urged you on with gripes about time and supplies and you’d had to grudgingly comply. Just because someone was in need, he’d stammered on, continuing the lecture long after you’d left the kid sitting in the dirt with a bottle of water and damn near fuckall else, didn’t mean they’d be sympathetic to your ideals let alone your, “er, condition”. Picking up strays would be “ill advised”. You argued, of course you did. You practically screamed yourself hoarse at him the rest of the walk. It didn’t matter if they agreed with you or not, it did not fucking matter if their favourite hobby was pissing in people’s cheerios at day, they deserved not to fucking starve to death. No one, not even someone who would (hypothetically!) spit in the face of your generosity deserved to be treated as less than a troll because of things that they couldn’t help. There was no excuse for being anything but benevolent to those who asked it of you and as someone who planned on preaching kindness to others, hell, as someone who already had a bunch of misguided assholes looking up to him and a decent goddamn troll it was your fucking responsibility to prove that.

Unfortunately, no amount of shouting would change that he was right this time, you were in deep enough shit as it was and you had no idea what was waiting for you at the end of your journey or if you would even make it that far. Taking a stranger with you would be as unfair to them as it was risky for you. You stared back over your shoulder into the damp dark and resolved to help for the next one anyway. All in all, things were going well. Almost too well. Well enough that really you shouldn’t have been surprised when you heard the chittering of drones and saw the ominous green glare of floodlights up ahead. The entire group froze all at once.

“I thought this route was supposed to be clear!” You hissed, fumbling with the straps of your pack.

“Clearly, it is not.” Said Kanaya.

Fuck. Fuck fuck fuck. You dug your papers out and scowled at them as if somehow your pure, blistering rage at how pants-shittingly unfair this was could be channeled, psionic-like, through your ganderbulbs and vaporise the fakeness right off them. Maybe they’d feel guilty for their obvious inadequacy and buck up? Nope, Karkat Tasvan, hemocode A10000, scowled right back at you and entirely unsurprisingly the details refused to change. You clenched your fist around them and set your jaw into something a little more determined.

“Go ahead of me.” You said.

Immediately they started protesting. You hissed between your teeth and waved your hands until they shut up.

“Go ahead of me.” You repeated. “I’m the only one here who shouldn’t be, but if I get caught you’re all fucked and I’m not going to let you get shit out by a drone for something as stupid as this.”

You gestured emphatically at the papers and yourself to really hammer in the point but they all just frowned at you like you were a fucking moron.

“Karkat.”

“I’m serious! I might be a crotch blistering stain on the fetid panties of the universe but you’re all still squeaky clean! Go ahead, if they catch me they catch me, just. Just don’t turn around. Be the Orpheus to my troll Eurydice.” You stared pleadingly at Kanaya and in your minds eye you saw her dying for you. “Please. They might not even stop me! These papers are more illicit than a cross-quadrant fourway papathon, I have it on good authority that they’re the damn near perfect replicas of the kind of papers someone who wasn’t a disgusting, illegal blight on the empire would have. Trolls like you! Trolls who can pass through that checkpoint with no worries and no debilitating injuries by culling fork!!”

“Karkat we’re not-”

“Nope. No. Shhh. Shut your hideous wind flaps and get walking. I’m not about to-”

“Karkat!” Kanaya yanked the papers out of your hand and frowned. “If you could stop being a moron for just a moment that would be fantastic.”

You gawped at her and she huffed out irritation through her nose.

“We are most certainly not about to leave you to the culling drones, regardless of what happens, even if it were the best way to get us all through that check point unscathed which, if you would remove your head from the confines of your waste chute briefly and look, you can clearly see it is not.”

She was right, obviously. The drones had stopped chittering to each other and were watching you expectantly. Splitting up now would be suspicious, since it made no sense for a united group to split up and leave their most vulnerable member to face the drones alone. You hissed and stomped your foot like a petulant child, forcing your voice lower as if it wasn’t entirely too late for that.

“Fine. Fine! Fucking fine. How the hell are we going to do this?”

How the hell you were going to do this turned out to be frighteningly simple. Kanaya called for Nepeta to go ahead, Equius flawlessly fitting into the role of impatient highblood without even trying, as she made a pantomime of rifling through her bag for her papers. Once the two of them had their ID’s checked and were safely past the drones Kanaya triumphantly brandished her passcard at you, and the two of you walked towards what you were positive would be certain doom.

This was it, this was how you were going to die. You made Kanaya go ahead of you, assured yourself that if anything happened she would run and join the others. She would run and join the others. She would run and join the others. She wouldn’t lie to you, of course not. Your hands shook as you handed over your fisher price identity. Every muscle in your body burned hot, too hot, a sheen of sweat creeping over your skin that you were sure was just fucking broadcasting your guilt. Guilt for lying, guilt for existing, it didn’t matter because the drones were going to smell it on you and you were fucked. They handed the papers back, and turned away from you.

For five long seconds nothing happened.

You’d made it, you were free to go.

As you turned to pass by the chittering around you increased in pitch and volume and your unnaturally warm blood was suddenly replaced with gallons of raspberry slushie. You were wrong. You took a deep breath and accepted that you were about to die.

Kanaya came past you like a ripperwasp, the roar of her chainsaw just drowning out the sounds of shouting from up ahead. Clawed hands took hold of your shoulders and shoved you forwards and down, the sharp sting of metal on your arm shaking you back to reality just in time to see Equius and Nepeta spin together, back to back, so that his fist could connect with the bloodied thorax of the first drone, spreading cracks out from where Nepeta’s claws had already torn through it’s chitinous plates. He crouched down to swipe at its legs as she rolled over his back and used her claws to peel its crushed exoskeleton away from its chest and you couldn’t tell if it was impressive, romantic, or fucking disgusting.

By the time you’d pulled yourself together and gotten your head screwed back on and your sickles out it was clear that you were never really needed. Equius and Nepeta had the first drone well and truly accounted for, its movements twitchy and its chittering morphing into an ear bleeding screech of pain, and Kanaya was holding the other off with a snarl tearing out of her throat to rival that of her weapon. The tunnel suddenly smelt overwhelmingly of adrenaline and blood and you silently vowed never to complain about the damp again.

The noise petered out in sections. First the screeching of the injured drone gurgled to nothing, then the frantic chittering of it’s partner, followed by the slow dying of Kanaya’s guttural snarl. The chainsaw hit the ground with a heavy thud and hummed slowly to a halt.

“Oh.” Kanaya said.

The drone she’d been pushing back was torn nearly in half from side to side, blood and viscera oozing like tar from its abdomen and it’s fist was shoved most of the way through Kanaya’s stomach.

Chapter Text

“Oh god what have I done. Kanaya?”

You ran forwards and grabbed her body as the drone fell back. You wished so hard you could just unbelieve it and make it not real, to pretend it was just grub sauce (oh please, god let it be grub sauce) and to have it be true. The game wasn’t fun anymore. Time for this fucktastic mess of a make believe time to be over!

“Oh god oh god oh god oh god…”

There was so much blood. They say that in moments like that, time slows down, but not for you. Time marched stubbornly on reminding you, even as you tried to heft her body out of the sticky mess of black and jade that stuck to everything and clogged your senses like an oil slick, that you were on a schedule and you needed to move, to run, to get the fuck out of there right the fuck five minutes ago. Equius came forward to help you lift her and you hissed at him, loud and feral snapping blunt teeth at his fingers as you ham-fistedly manhandled her body away from the pool of drone viscera to the relative clean of the dirt floor. You huddled over her like you could protect her that way, like you weren’t a huge disgrace of a leader who was always way too late to save anyone. Too fucking late, oh god, and it was all your fault. She died because she was trying to protect you. If you weren’t here she’d be alive right now. She died because of you.

When this whole mess started you had insisted that you didn’t need help. You were the pariah, you had no future on Alternia- but, save Sollux, the rest of them had lives to live and you were determined to let them live them in peace. You could make it on your own, you told them again and again, who the fuck did they think you were? This was never going to be some squishy wriggler fun with shapes time and you knew that, but you would bravely go it alone for the sake of your friends. Karkat “Bravery” Vantas, that was you. Hell, probably something even more dramatic than that. The Stalwart. The Enduring. The Suffer- No, not that. Anything but that.

You’d never wanted to suffer. Fuck, you’d never wanted anyone to suffer. Even trolls you reasonably had no excuse to give a fuck about were caught under the looming shadow of your overwhelming desire to be safe. You knew the stories, you had a pretty graphic idea of what happened to the Sufferer and his unfortunate followers, but you weren’t like him. You weren’t peaceful and you never would be. When it came to it you’d be ready to fight and you didn’t give a fuck. If trolls had to die so be it. The first one who dared to lay a finger on your friends was definitely going to get a sickle shoved up their nook so far they could pick their fangs with it. Except, hey. Turns out you couldn’t even do that. Kanaya was fucking dying and she still didn’t even need you. What was even the fucking point of you?

Nepeta jumped when you snarled at her and fuck, okay, that was a pretty good indicator that it was time to stop acting like a selfish piece of shit and actually deal with the situation. You carefully laid the body out in front of you and stared hopelessly at the others. Really, Karkat, you berated yourself, a half chewed grub could have handled this better.

“Good sense dictates that we divvy her sylladex between us and leave the body.” Equius reminded you.

“I’m not just going to-!”

“Yes, I had rather expected that you wouldn’t be dictated to by good sense.” He ignored your snarl and continued. “In which case I am the logical choice to carry the body, on account of my strength. If that is your order, but I do believe, well. Oh my.”

“Spit it out Zahhak.” You hissed, “We haven’t got all night.”

“My point exactly. On such a restrictive time schedule I find it ridiculous to saddle ourselves with such a burden.” He said.

“She’s not a fucking burden, bulgesucker, she’s my fucking friend!”

You knew you were being irrational but you didn’t fucking care. It hurt too much to think clearly, it hurt to think of Kanaya as something that was past tense. Someone who was past tense.

“We’re taking the body.” You said. “That’s not up for debate. Even if she wasn’t one of our closest fucking friends, you bloodpusher-less sack of pus, we don’t have time to search the body or pick out the plumpest, most sensible and well thought out ideas off the decisions table right now and frankly I don’t know about you but I’m a little fucking on edge so my judgement-”

“Excuse me?” That was a voice you didn’t know.

You scrambled across the floor to get your abandoned sickles back in hand, kicking up a cloud of dust and an equally foggy cloud of creative, if vaguely incoherent, expletives. It was only through the virtues of a last minute side-scuttle that you managed to keep your back turned away from your would be attacker. If Nepeta happened to silently get her claws up against the newcomers throat before you had your sickles back in hand then that was just a testament to her agility, not a reflection on your woeful incompetence.

She hissed in his ear and forced his chin up, the points of her weapon denting his skin where he swallowed.

“Karkat.” She warned, eyes narrowed.

You frowned, completely lost for a moment as her eyes flicked pointedly from your face to your arm. Oh. Oh fuck. Amidst the drama of the battle you hadn’t even noticed, but clear as moonlight, smeared across your skin through your torn sleeve, were two horizontal scratches bleeding damning candy red. You tried to twist the panic off your face as your eyes met the stranger’s. He saw your blood. You’d take it back if you could but can’t and as fucking always you were slow on the uptake. It was too late, and now you were going to have to deal with yet another innocent asshole getting dragged into the spiralling vortex of your inadequacy. He looked scared, but not nearly as scared as you, and for a split second the words ‘Kill him’ threatened to spill from your mouth.

“It’s okay.” You said, covering the wound with one hand. “It’s okay.” You clenched your free hand into a fist to stop it from shaking. Now would be a great time to channel the wisdom of your ancestor, maybe get one of those little bracelets the heretics wore in the midday propops - What Would the Sufferer Do? “You’re okay. We’re not going to hurt you.” Nepeta made a noise like she thought that was unlikely and you bared your teeth at her over her captives shoulder. “We are not. We’re not like that.”

“I know.” He blurted out.

What?

You tried not to let the confusion show on your face (and failed). You looked at him, actually looked at him properly, as if you could dig up some clue from his appearance. He was small, built for speed not for strength, which explained why he hadn’t tried to fight Nepeta off, and his eyes were covered with thick dark lenses. A psionic maybe? Shit, you should have noticed that before. Not knowing what he could do meant you had to be twice as on edge, but nothing he was wearing, from his standard imperial issue shirt to his standard imperial issue shoes told you anything about him except that he was a yellow blood with some dumb angular sign you didn’t recognise.

“What the fuck does that mean?” You said, surprisingly calmly.

“I said I know.” He said, his voice taking off at a mile a minute. “I know you wouldn’t hurt me because I know who you are and I don’t think you would from what I heard anyway, I mean he might have been wrong but Sollux said you didn’t like hurting people. Well no, he said you were a weenie but that seems kind of disrespectful and I don’t know if you can call someone a weenie if they just fought a drone-”

“Woah, woah hold up sneaky prairiefiend.” You interrupted. “Slow it down several thousand notches, this isn’t a race. What the fuck do you know about Sollux?”

“The flightless tweetbeast is the fast one, sneaky's really slow.” He said.

“Oh. My god.”

“That’s the joke because he can’t catch-”

You must have looked as apoplectic as you felt because he flinched.

“Sorry.” He said. “What was I saying? Oh yeah right so I don’t know a lot about Sollux really except that he said you guys wanted to help and that he sent me to find you. Well not just me. He did send me though so I guess that’s the important part because I’m the one who found you even though I said you probably wouldn’t come this way because of the drones but I guess you didn’t know about that huh?” He grimaced at your reaction and trundled on. “Basically I was supposed to check if you guys came this way anyway and then if you did come this way and I found you he said to bring you back to the base in case you couldn’t find it on your own.”

“Base?” Said Nepeta.

“Yeah! The old factory. I dunno how he did it but he got inside! When we left he was setting up a bunch of computer stuff or something I didn’t understand but-”

“No, no stop. Hold on. Again.” This kid was starting to give you a headache. “Who the fuck are you?”

“Oh. Lucoze Redull. I live here, well not here obviously but up top in the hive cluster. Sollux landed near my hive liiiiike 27 hours ago? He flew the whole way wow. So I let him in I mean I wasn’t just going to leave him there when the sun was up but then I recognised his symbol off the newsfeed and I kinda... had to… ask?” He trailed off like a clockwork toy, his head knocking sideways a peg with each pause.

“About us? Yeah. Yeah okay whatever.” You said, running a hand over your face and forcing your posture to soften. Allies. Right. You knew you were going to have pick some of those up eventually. “You know where Sollux is? Take us there. Right now.”

You gestured for Equius to grab the body, and had a full five seconds to squint at him in confusion as he shook his head and refused to move before Kanaya tackled you to the ground.

In the frantic scuffle that followed you learnt three things in very quick succession. One, Kanaya wasn’t completely dead. Two, Kanaya still had a hole the size of a fist smack in the middle of her stomach that was sort of slowly oozing jade blood. You could see the torn edges of her internal organs, but she wasn’t dead. Finally, thirdly, Kanaya wanted to suck your blood from your neck. So, she couldn’t be completely dead. It struck you in a bizarre moment of quasi-clarity somewhere between the side of your head bouncing off the floor and Nepeta getting her arms hooked through Kanaya’s elbows and hauling her away that you didn’t actually give a fuck that your closest friend had just risen from the fucking dead and tried to chow down on you like an East Alternian all-you-can-grab buffet as long as it meant that she was, at least partially, alive.

Nepeta wrestled her back with Equius’ help and between the two of them they pinned her upright, her arms trapped at her sides until she stopped thrashing and her pupils shrank back to normal size. Red blood trickled down her glowing white chin as she snarled at you and you very calmly threw the fuck up.

“Woah.” Said Lucoze, helpfully.

“Oh.” Said Kanaya, her voice muted despite the snarl not quite being gone from her face. “Oops.”

“OOPS?!?!” You shrieked.

“I think,” Equius said, “It would be wise to have the rest of this conversation at Captor’s base.”

Chapter Text

Maybe they wouldn’t make it.

The drones could get them. If they travelled above ground they’d have to camp out in the desert and there were stray lusii and day walkers and all sorts of nasty land beasts that could have tangled with them. Hell, all it would take is a scratch to get Karkat the culling fork. Maybe they’d been taken out by another troll already. Maybe someone followed you and they’d been cut off by subjugglators. Any minute you were sure you’d hear Legislacerators pounding on your door.

You tapped your foot arythmically against the crossbar of your chair and stared out past the threadbare blackout curtain you’d strung up across the windows of your fakey as fuck mock up of an office. The room was practically bare, there wasn’t even a working computer in there really, just a showy junk machine that ran the security display and fuck all else. You glanced nervously at the readings on the screen and fought yourself over being disappointed or relieved that there was no change. It’d been a while since you’d sent that ragtag team of idiots out to look for your friends and you’d heard nothing since, well okay, no. It had been less than a night, technically, but the sun was starting to creep up the horizon and despite your best efforts the aboveground portion of this shit hole was no where near livable. Soon you’d have to retreat into the actual safe hive you’d established underground and once you hid yourself away in the basement the kiddies you picked up from the surrounding hiverings wouldn’t be able to find you. At least, you hoped they wouldn’t. You’d hidden the entrance pretty well, you thought, but hey you’d been wrong before.

Some people might call it paranoid, having a safe hive in your safe hive so that your new allies wouldn’t be able to find you but then most people weren’t top of the most wanted list with a soda huffing juggalo hot on their tails and their face and symbol being broadcast across the empire with, last time you checked, a credit reward way in the quadruple digits. Since you got here you’d traded out your shirt for some random brown blood symbol you’d found in the trash and you’d kept the hood up over your horns but your eyes were harder to hide. Even behind Equius’ shades the red blue flashes were easy to spot and the duality wasn’t exactly a common mutation. Besides, at least one of them had seen you land and you’d had to give your real name to the kids you sent out so they’d have at least a little credibility if they actually managed to find your friend, so as far as being undercover went you were doing an appalling job.

Less than two hours until sun rise. Sure, sun running is no one’s favourite activity and they’d probably all have the poor sense to shush their lusi and take your little band of fugitives into their own hives for the day rather than burn but that just meant another day of worrying and really, what made you think you could trust these kids to hold their nerve for another twelve hours? What made you think you could trust them this far? There was nothing to prove they hadn’t taken your descriptions and gone out to cull your friends on sight.

Your computer flashed a warning that there was movement on the ruined road leading up to your hideout. Raised voices floated up on the morning breeze and you practically melted into your chair. God. What the hell did you even install all that security for when Karkat was just going to announce his presence ahead of time like some kind of ear blistering vitriol cannon. By the time they reached the door you’d managed to gather your cool back up into something vaguely passable and you buzzed them in without a word, only to have Karkat cross the room in three steps and punch you square in the nose.

Given that your head was already a little delicate from the events of the last few days it took you a couple of seconds to react further than just clutching your face and swearing. Before you managed to string a sentence together though, he wrapped his arms around you and pulled you into a hug. He clung to you like a vice and he buried his face in your chest while you just stood there, your arms trapped at your sides, making awkward eye contact with the rest of the group as they filed in.

Eventually he pulled back and cleared his throat. “You’re a fucking ASSHOLE, Captor.”

“I know.” You laughed.

The tension in the room shattered. Amidst hugs and smiles you sent Lucoze away and filed everyone down into the hideout.

Sorting Kanaya out was first priority. She was dizzy and disoriented from her transformation and didn’t seem to be entirely sure where she was or who she was with. You and Nepeta took turns letting her feed from you under Equius’ watchful eye until she came to properly, fluttering her eyelashes and gently swiping her hair away from her face like troll sleeping beauty as she asked what happened with such grace that it was hard to believe a few hours previous she’d been trying to chew on Karkat like jerky. With her sated and everyone introduced to your new base of operations there was nothing left to do but make plans in hushed whispers and wait for the moons to rise. Long before the flow of drinks ran low and the conversation lulled you snuck away, leaving the others to finish celebrating their escape without you. You would have just brought the mood down. There was no point bursting their bubble so early. Let them have their moment of triumph.

“Hey.”

You looked up from the makeshift pile of technology and comfort squares you’d been working on and saw Karkat standing in the door behind you, his hands shoved deep into his pockets. The sound of excited but muted conversation drifted through the door behind him and gave the silence a companionable shape.

“What are you doing?” He said.

“Making a,” you gestured vaguely to the pile. “...Mess, honestly. Why aren’t you out there celebrating?”

He crouched down next to you, idly moving pillows around. “Celebrating what? My continued blight on the clusterfuck that is troll kind, almost getting three of my best friends killed or the ever darkening shadow of looming responsibility creeping over my head?” He snorted, dropping his ass into the half finished pile and laying back. “Fuck that. What about you?”

You shrugged. “Same.”

“Yeah. Figured. This is the worst construction of assorted comfort items I’ve ever been in Captor, are you completely useless at everything you touch or is it just--”

You whipped him with a cable to shut him up and flopped down next to him, winding it idly round your hand. “It’s just not designed to hold the weight of your fat ass.” You said. “You know we could always ignore that shadow for a couple of days. Not gonna lie I could probably sleep for like a perigee no trouble, even in this musty stink hole.”

He knew you were lying, but the corner of his mouth quirked up anyway. “And leave my adoring public hanging for any longer? They’d be distraught. They’d pine. I bet they’re out there right now, sitting in their shitty safe houses and watching your totally dignified escape on the tv grub and whispering about how I’m finally accepting my duty to overthrow the fish bitch and take my rightful place as ruler of their fucked up democratic Empire.”

You snorted and pumped your fist weakly in the air. “Down with the Empress!”

“Gods.” He laughed, rolling over to stare at the ceiling. “I can’t wait to see the looks on their grubby little faces when Feferi sits her ass on the throne.”

“I dunno.” You said. “It’s not like FF’s gonna kick you out of the palace as soon as the tiara touches her head. Maybe they’ll get their King of the Lowbloods after all.” Karkat groaned and you laughed. “No no, think about it. You can finally order everyone to do shit and they have to listen to you. What would be your first royal decree?”

You spent a lazy half an hour rolling around in the pile together and discussing everything from caste equality laws to making it illegal for anyone who can’t open their email to own a computer. You listened quietly as Karkat ranted about all the things he’d get the assholes who treated him as a god to do, such as backing off, removing their heads from their asses and growing some self respect.

“... That’s it, that’s what I’m going to say. My first decree as God King is that everyone has to start treating other people as actual fucking trolls, even me even though I’m still their goddamn leader. Someone has to be.”

“Yeah?” You mumbled, sleep dragging at your eyelids. “I’m gonna decree that you shut the fuck up so I can sleep.”

Surprisingly he didn’t argue, just grunted and shifted in the pile until his hand was curled loosely in the crook of your arm, a warm point of comfortable contact in cold press of threadbare cushions and squishy computer parts. You sighed, nudging a particularly fat grub under your head as a makeshift pillow and closed your eyes, methodically acknowledging and filing away all the little voices that took that as their cue to tell you everything that was wrong with you and all the ways they thought you should die. He was asleep long before you were done, his breath whistling out of his nose and his eyebrows drawn in a tight frown. A little voice, insidious and reedy, crept up to the front of your thinkpan and reminded you that his life was more or less in your hands now, that the price for fucking this up was higher than anything you’d fucked up before.

The last thing you remember thinking before drifting off into a fitful soporless sleep was that it was totally worth it.