Chapter Text
This is how it happens.
You are standing on a platform across from the only person who has ever understood you, and she is gripping her cane-sword with shaking hands. She is staring at you, eyes red and blank behind her glasses, and she is telling you she can’t let you leave. And then she is pulling out her coin, the same coin that you have watched her flip hundreds of times, and she is giving you a choice: heads, you stay, scratch, you go.
Now it is your turn to stare, and before long you are laughing, laughing, laughing, because you are the Thief of Light, you are a god of fortune; you will steal her luck before the coin hits the ground. You will win, you will abscond, and you will be a hero! You are not an idiot -- you can guess that her intent is to kill you if you leave, to run her sword clean and true through your back and listen to you take your final breath at her hand. But you also know her. You grew up alongside her, you spent sweeps fighting and killing with her, and you are confident in one thing: she will not be able to do it.
She flips. The coin lands scratch-side-up and you smile. You ignore the tiny part of you that aches when you look at her -- now is not the time for wrigglerish feelings, you’ve got a monster to kill -- and you turn around. You give her a wave before you go, triumph in your grin, and then --
Oh.
You feel metal run through you, harsh and cold, and you are distantly amused to find that this hurts much less than it did the last time you died. Leave it to Terezi to give you a quick, clean death, despite everything you’ve done -- she is just, but she is also kind; you have always known this to be true. You had thought, only minutes ago, that this truth would stop her from killing you.
You were wrong.
Didn’t think you had it in you, Pyrope, you think, and you fall.
--
No.
This is how it happens.
You are turning to leave, and you are hearing the scrape of her blade against its sheath as she pulls out her sword, and you are processing the fact that she’s actually going to do it, when a voice rings out and a fist collides with your face and you fly, flip, skid across the floor, and everything goes black.
When you wake up, disoriented as all hell, she has her arm around you. She has her arm around you, despite the fact that a few minutes ago she was ready to kill you. She is trembling slightly; belatedly, you realize that you are too. Without thinking -- you did just get your shit rocked, after all, so you think you have an excuse to make some questionable judgement calls -- you lean into her touch. It’s tender, and for a moment you feel like you’re five sweeps old again, sitting in your respiteblock after feeding your lusus her most recent meal , trying not to shake as Terezi moves a hand slowly up and down your spine. You had never allowed anyone else to see you like that; she was the only one who understood what it did to you to feed them to her, the only one you let understand. You had never had to explain: in fact, you had always lied, told her the shaking was no big deal, just a reaction to the excess adrenaline from the thrill of the fight. She had been tactful enough not to call you on your bullshit -- she always knew when you were lying -- but she had traced tentative circles on your back all the same until the shaking stopped.
And then, every time, you had stood up and brushed her off as if nothing had happened, trying not to let your voice waver as you made some sort of grand statement about the triumphs and defeats, the epic highs and lows of fatal live action role-playing. To her credit, she never pushed you to say more, even though you could tell she wanted to. You respected her for that. You had always respected her.
And now she is touching you in that tender way once again, and you don’t think you have it in you right now to put on the bravado, so you stay silent. Your head is spinning and you’re still not quite sure what actually happened, but you are alive and holy shit, Terezi is holding you. She is saying something to you softly that you are too dazed to understand, and you blink hard and try to focus on her words, your vision swimming in and out of focus.
“...Vriska? Vriska, can you hear me? Alternia to Serket, hello, are you in there or did Egbert knock you upside the pan so hard that you don’t know who you are anymore?” Her words are harsh, but underneath them her tone is gentle, and if you didn’t know any better you’d think you were detecting just a little bit of fear in her voice. You manage a weak smile, and she sags against you slightly in relief.
“‘M fine,” you say groggily, and then, “What the fuck was that?” Your vision has cleared enough that you can make out the shapes of Karkat and Kanaya in the distance, and then you register Terezi’s question and connect it to the flash of blue you saw before you were knocked unconscious and holy shit, was Egbert here? You don’t see him now, but you could swear you saw his face in the split second before what appeared to be his fist collided with what was definitely your skull. Did you hallucinate that? You must have hallucinated that. You groan a little and rub at your forehead.
“Good question!” You can tell she’s trying to sound cheerful, but her tone rings false, uncertainty lurking just below its surface. She stands up abruptly, and you definitely don’t wince at the sudden lack of contact, because that would be pathetic, and you are not pathetic. If you make any kind of involuntary movement, it is purely a coincidence. “I’m not completely sure. If I had to make an educated guess, I would say shenanigans were involved, but the jury's out on the specifics. From my perspective, Egbert showed up, punched the shit out of you, handed me a scarf full of instructions written in my own blood, and left. Something about fixing my mistakes, and doomed timelines, and everyone dying -- your typical bullshit. That’s really all I got.”
You nod. You open your mouth, ready to crack a joke about John not knowing his own strength (because even you have to admit that his punch hurt like a bitch), or maybe rib her a little about Egbert’s clear superiority over her lame Strider boy, but to your horror you find yourself saying something else entirely.
“You were really gonna do it, huh?” you ask, and fuck, you did not mean to say that. You really did not mean to say that.
She freezes. You suddenly feel all too aware of the distance she has put between you, and you find yourself shivering slightly, missing the feeling of her warmer body against yours.
“Relax, Pyrope,” you continue when she does not respond, trying your best to sound nonchalant. “I’m impressed! Really, I didn’t think you had it in you.”
“You were going to get us all killed,” she points out, but her voice lacks its usual cheery conviction. “I -- I was going to do what I had to do. Or, what I thought I had to do, I guess. Someone needed to stop you, and that seemed like the only way, so… yeah. I was gonna do it.”
She isn’t looking at you, which wouldn't be that big of a deal considering the fact that she can’t really look at anything, except for the fact that you have never known Terezi to shy away from your gaze. Even minutes before, when she had been ready to drive her sword through your back, she had kept eye contact, forcing you to stare at the scars you had given her. You wonder what has made things different now.
“I’m glad you didn’t,” you say quietly, and it feels a little too much like a confession, but you’re dazed and tired and your head hurts so fucking much and you just can’t be bothered to put on a whole act right now. Not when Terezi won’t look at you. Not when you’ve just narrowly avoided permanent death by canesword.
You wait for her to say something, anything, but the silence stretches on and you can’t help but panic a little bit. Her expression is unreadable, and you’re starting to worry that this was all a mistake, that she’s already regretting sparing you (because who wouldn’t, honestly, says a nasty little voice in your head, you’re a killer and a monster and she has always been too good for you), when finally, after what feels like sweeps, she sticks her hand out to you. You grab onto it, trying not to think about how good it feels to touch her again, and she looks down at you and smiles softly. You can’t help but grin back as you squeeze her hand a little tighter.
“Shut up, Serket,” she says, her smile widening, and she pulls you to your feet.
--
You are on the way to the Green Sun, hurtling through Paradox Space at a truly nauseating speed thanks to the power of Sollux’s psiionics, before she speaks to you again. She hasn’t been ignoring you, necessarily, there’s just been more important matters at hand -- namely, an explanation of, as Karkat had put it, “WHATEVER THE FUCK KIND OF DUMBASS BULLSHIT JUST WENT DOWN HERE”, followed by a mission to subdue and hogtie Gamzee. When the others had regarded you with open hostility during Terezi’s speech, she had brushed her hand against yours and fixed her blank, unsettling stare on them. That had shut them down pretty quick. And then the Green Sun had appeared in the distance, and everyone had scrambled to their places as Sollux began to pilot the meteor at his own expense.
Now, as the bright green dot in the distance grows larger and larger, Terezi comes up behind you and places her hand on your shoulder once again. You startle at the sudden contact and she pulls her hand away, which is not what you want at all, and before you can stop yourself you catch her hand in your own and place it back on your shoulder. You can feel her grinning at you, not the soft smiles she’s been giving you ever since you came to, but a honest-to-god trademark Pyrope Shit-Eating Grin. You turn to her and roll your eyes, but she just smiles wider.
“You’re not off the hook, you know,” she says. “You still killed Tavros! Just because that particular murder may have been overshadowed by the rest of our friends going off the rails doesn’t mean I’m going to let it slide. A legislacerator does not allow crimes to go unpunished!”
You tense. She’s still smiling unsettlingly at you, but her tone is sincere, and you can’t really bring yourself to disagree with her. If you’re honest with yourself -- and you so rarely are, but hey, there’s a first time for everything -- you felt like shit the second you shoved the lance through Tavros’ chest. He had been weak, and stupid, and irritating as hell, but he had also been kind, and you were supposed to be his friend. You’re realizing, with a pain in your chest that reminds you of the mornings after a particularly gruesome feeding, that he didn’t deserve to die. Even worse, you’re realizing that maybe you did: the pendulum must have swung Just when she killed you, otherwise you wouldn’t have stayed dead. You don’t really know how you’re going to live with the knowledge that Paradox Space looked at you and saw not a hero, but a villain; you had always thought you would go out Heroic, if you went out at all. You’re beginning to realize that there is a lot you were wrong about.
“So, what?” you eventually respond, because being honest with yourself is one thing, and being honest with Terezi is another entirely. “Did you change your mind about killing me? Seems like a bit of a waste for your future self -- or doomed self, or whatever she was -- to go to all this trouble to stop you from murdering me just so you can do it an hour later than originally planned!”
“Don’t be an idiot, Serket, I’m banned from killing you! I couldn’t even do it if I wanted to.” If your heart skips a little bit at the sentiment implicit in her statement -- she doesn’t want to kill you -- well, that’s nobody’s business but yours. “I will have to find other ways to bring you to justice. Perhaps I will consult the humans about their weak and terrible legal system for inspiration. Perhaps I will just have to make you clean my respiteblock for me for the entirety of our journey, or until I deem you sufficiently repentant! There are many options.”
“Well shit, Pyrope, are you saying if I had just offered to clean your respiteblock the first time you would have reconsidered blowing one of my limbs off? Goddamn, you should’ve just asked!”
She laughs then, high and clear and a little terrifying, and it’s the best sound you’ve ever heard. It occurs to you that it’s a bit inappropriate to be joking about something like this, and the pang of guilt inside you is no duller than it was a minute ago, but Terezi has her hand on your shoulder and she’s talking to you, the way she used to when you were FLARP partners, before she took your arm and your eye and you took her sight and everything between you went to shit. You place your hand on top of hers again.
“I’m gonna make up for it,” you say fiercely, and you stare into her eyes, swallowing hard as you gaze into the blank red expanse. You want to be good. You want to be worthy. “I promise. You saved me for a reason, right? Obviously I’m supposed to be important somehow, because without me everyone died. You died. So I’m not gonna let that happen, Terezi, I swear, I’ll do whatever it takes. You’re not going to regret bringing me back. You won’t! I’m going to fix things, you’ll see, I’ve got irons in the fire already, I’ve been planning since I woke up --”
She cuts you off by pulling you into a bone crushing hug, and, oh, you hadn’t realized how much you missed this. It’s brief, and really quite painful, but it makes your bloodpusher swell and your eyes sting a little all the same. You think you hear her sniffle a little when she pulls away, but it’s so quiet you could just as easily have imagined it. You try to search her face for any discernible emotion, but her expression is carefully blank, eyes hiding behind her glasses. Even if you could see her eyes right now, they wouldn’t tell you much anyway -- you had made sure of that sweeps ago. You know she has grown to love her blindness, but you think of her crawling back to her hive, skin raw and bloody from the rays of the Alternian sun, suffering because of you, and you kind of want to throw up. As if she can tell that you’re seconds away from an honest-to-god self-loathing spiral, she grabs your hand. She always knew how to pull you out of it when things got too dark in your head.
“I’m glad you’re here, Vriska,” she says, and you give her a small smile, a soft one that is decidedly unlike you. You know she can’t see it, but she must feel it, because she smiles back.
“Me too,” you say, and you try to believe it.