Work Text:
Their blood is singing to you.
It’s not like the way your dragon sister gets her sight on, inhaling deep to pull the colors over her tongue. You liked the way the world looked through her cherry red glasses, all bright and off-kilter and humming like electricity. You should have gone off the sopor sweeps ago. Why didn’t anyone tell you how motherfucking beautiful the world was when you could really hear it like this? You paint the walls with their blood and it’s like voices singing in a choir, blue running into green running into vivid purple running into choc—
You take their heads. These used to be your friends but they’re just corpses now, meat for the scavengers. There ain’t any scavengers on this motherfucking rock floating in the Ring. There’s just you, taking their heads and leaving their bodies in the tanks in the lab. They float there, limp and curling in on themselves, and their blood colors the fluid in the tanks. You touch the surface of the tank with the Feferi-corpse, leaving purple smears of your own blood. The fluid in the tank is turning wine-dark and it sounds like someone running a wet finger around the rim of a glass.
There are still empty tanks left to fill.
You know they’re still running around out there. You know you’re not the only one on this rock who’s realized his full fucking potential. You didn’t kill your cuttlefish sister or your angry prince brother or your—the point is, your murder count is two and while you’re more than willing to appropriate their cast off corpses for wall painting purposes, you’re feeling this really strong urge to motherfucking subjugglate a bitch and you’d better act fast if you expect to find anyone left alive.
So you ascend.
To the roof.
You know they can’t resist a good gaze Skaia-ward. It’s like they think that if they keep watch on the skies, maybe they’ll see their death coming before it gets here and they’ll have a chance to abscond.
You can hear the stars singing above you, the whole electromagnetic spectrum humming in your ears. It’s all the proof you need that the mirthful messiahs exist and the sound of the stars is their laughter. They whisper their approval in your ears. You will paint this meteor with the blood of your inferiors and the mirthful messiahs will laugh because this has been your destiny all along.
They’re all there. All that’s left of them, anyway. Your spider sister is a cooling corpse and that’s a damn shame. Your fight would have been a fucking sight to behold. But the others are there—Kanaya, jade blood soaking through the cloth tied around her middle. Sollux, his empty eye sockets weeping mustard yellow. Terezi, her cane stained with cerulean blood, inhaling as she stares in your direction. And Karkat, that mysterious, angry little motherfucker. You want to open him up and see what his insides look like.
They want to kill you. They’re fucking terrified. You can see it in their eyes. You tighten your grip on Zillyhoo and you think motherfucking BRING IT.
You’re going to smash them into rainbow paste.
Karkat is the one who moves, quelling the others. He’s the one who draws his sickle. And yes, yes, a thousand times yes, he’s your best motherfucking friend and he’s an abomination that needs to be taught his place at the bottom of your motherfucking hammer. You move forward and he moves forward
and then he
MOTHERFUCKING
cheats
You don’t know how it happens. You are going to kill him you are going to motherfucking murder this insult to the hemospectrum and then he rests a hand on your face, a cool palm pressing to your painted cheek, and the voices in your head stop. The sounds stop. The music stops.
You are going to
to take his sickle and drive it into his
you are
He is calm. He is never calm but he is calm right now, for you. He is stroking your face. His touch is like a drug. It’s like sopor, deadening your thoughts.
For a moment you struggle. You can’t let these voices go. These are the messiahs. This is blasphemy. This is wrong and you can’t let this clarity go. You’ve been asleep for so long and now you’re awake and everything makes sense and you have to cull him for his insubordination.
Your arms go limp. You drop Zillyhoo. Your best friend has his arms wrapped around you. You hold him, and with each beat of your bloodpusher you feel a soft, cottony stillness wrap around your head like a bandage. It’s almost suffocating. You are drowning and Karkat is weighing you down, pulling you deeper. The deeper you go, the more you think Equius was my friend. Nepeta was my friend. Tavros…
Karkat holds you and you let him. And with the last clear thought in your head, you realize, with a cold, exacting certainty, that
if he ever lets go
YOU ARE GOING TO
kill them all