Work Text:
gallowsCalibrator [GC] began trolling arachnidsGrip [AG]
GC: HOW D1D YOU DO 1T
AG: Oh man, I do a lot of things.
AG: May8e you forgot how many irons I have in the fire?
AG: Do you mean how did I manipul8 the dum8 examiners into pairing us up? Hahahaha, I can't 8elieve you only just noticed that!
GC: TH3Y JUST PUT UP TH3 L1STS FOR L3G1SL4C3R4TOR 4ND FUG1T1V3 R3TR13V1SC3R4TOR TR41N33 P41RS
GC: 1 H4V3NT D3C1D3D HOW 1 F33L 4BOUT 1T Y3T >:|
AG: God, no8ody says "fugitive retrieviscer8or". It's 8ounty hunter! :::;)
AG: And it's going to 8e awesome! What do you mean you haven't decided????????
GC: M4YB3 1M R3M3MB3R1NG TH3 L4ST T1M3 W3 T34M3D UP
AG: Oh my god, you are so negative! Why do you always have to focus on the couple of tiny 8ad things that happened, rather than all the gr8 things?
AG: I said I was sorry for that Team Charge stuff like a million times!!!!!!!!
AG: We were stupid wigglers, you haven't even seen me since I was six.
AG: You have no idea how much I've changed.
GC: VR1SKA, W3 T4LK ON TROLL14N S3V3R4L T1M3S 4 P3R1G33
GC: 1 KNOW 3X4CTLY HOW MUCH YOUV3 CH4NG3D!
GC: YOU 4R3 ST1LL 4 STUP1D W1GGL3R >:]
AG: Ugh, you are so smug! I don't know why I'm friends with you!
AG: This friendship is so frustr8ing and lame. I try and I try 8ut no matter wh8 I do it just limps along!
AG: Limp, limp, limp. 8ecause you never get off my 8ack!
AG: 8luh 8luh I'm Terezi and even though I'm the cruellest person I know, I'm here to JUDGE you for everything you do, so you'd 8etter 8e careful what you say! D::::
AG: Man, remem8er when we were the Scourge Sisters?
AG: I miss when I could just tell you anything.
GC: YOU N3V3R TOLD M3 TH1NGS
GC: YOU JUST L13D 4BOUT 3V3RYTH1NG
AG: Ok, yeah, I couldn't tell you any of the stuff a8out my lusus or whatever.
AG: Even though it was hardly even like I had a choice a8out any of that. I was 8eing a good daughter!
AG: Hahahahahahahaha ok I guess there wasn't ever a time I could tell you anything I wanted. :::;)
AG: 8ut it would 8e so gr8 if I could.
GC: YOU COULD H4V3 B33N 4 GOOD D4UGHT3R W1THOUT B31NG 4 MURD3R1NG L14R WHO L13D!
GC: 4UGH 1 W4SNT GO1NG TO G3T 1NTO TH1S 4G41N
AG: Hahahaha yeah it is pretty irrelevant now!
AG: Wh8ever, who even cares a8out all this ancient history!
AG: We are going to 8e the most amazing team tonight, you don't even know.
AG: We're going to run down that pathetic fugitive so fast the examiners wet themselves with awe.
AG: You'll see!
GC: 1 DOUBT TH4T, CONS1D3R1NG
gallowsCalibrator [GC] ceased trolling arachnidsGrip [AG]
AG: Uuuuuuuugh, I h8 when you get the last word.
*
You haven't met your sister in more than two sweeps. You didn't really think you would ever meet her again. You meant to cut her off forever, after the payback spiral that ended with your blinding. Vriska is difficult to cut off, though. She bothered and poked at you, flouncing off in offence when you cut her down and then trolling you the next day as though nothing was the matter, and over time you guess you ... sort of settled into a friendship. Of a kind.
It's a quite terrible friendship. You weren't made to be on the same side. But neither of you can give up on it, somehow. You both want it too much, even though it suits you both so badly.
You are, as a result, feeling off-kilter and irritable about this meeting.
You smell her from the other end of the corridor: a whiff of blueberry and acid, impatience jittering her edges. She hears your cane tapping on the gunmetal grey corridor and relaxes against the pillar behind her, pulling out her dice to toss them in the steel of her replacement hand.
She's all studied carelessness as she calls out, "Finally. I've been waiting in this transfer terminal for perigees, practically!"
With any other friend you hadn't met in two sweeps you would be grinning like a shark lusus, but you can feel your mouth twisting into a solemn expression. It feels wrong on your face.
"I was talking to the stationmaster who was on duty the morning the criminal escaped," you tell her. Your mouth twists down further. "I can't believe you didn't think to do that! Especially if you've been waiting so very long."
Vriska yawns. "Man, calm down. I assumed whoever was on duty had been culled, obviously!"
"Ugh, you're terrible. You didn't even check? She's been demoted and had her horns notched, but she hasn't been culled."
Vriska crosses her arms, scowling. "I guess I was looking forward to catching up with my sis more than I wanted to talk to stupid stupid dumb failures with notched horns. Excuse me for thinking our reunion would be something great!"
"We're here to be graded!" you object. She's impossible.
Now that you're closer you can smell her much more clearly, and it's putting you even more on edge. The evidence of the damage you did to her, the eye patch and the steel robotic arm, makes your bloodpusher beat an uneven refrain, sick and hectic; you're not sure how to classify the feeling. Her good eye has filled in almost all cerulean in the sweeps since you saw her. A tangled lock of hair falls over the patch, resting against her mouth, liquorice fading into the tiniest scent of blue on the inside of her lower lip. Her horns are longer than they were, cruel jagged shapes rising from the heavy mass of her hair. She's wearing official trainee fugitive retrieviscerator uniform: a grey waistcoat with cerulean piping to mark her bloodcolour, a high-collared black jacket and breeches. She's added cherry-coloured boots and a jaunty blue scarf around her neck.
She smells really, horribly good, and it's messing with your head. The irritating gleam of blue in her yellow eye, the tangle of her hair, the tilt of her hip, the way her top fangs dig white points into her lower lip when she grins ...
You want badly to lick her. And again, if she was any other friend you would just do it – even if she wasn't a friend at all you would do it, probably. It can be fun to push things onto an easier footing than the other person is comfortable with. But it's Vriska so you don't. Easiness is exactly what you can't give her.
She sighs. "Fiiiiiiiine, so what did you learn from the failure with the shame notches that was so much more important than being on time to meet me?"
You wrinkle your nose. "I added it to the existing research I've compiled on our fugitive embezzler. Then I made a dossier of places he could have jumped to using the only transportalizer on the station."
"Here, lemme look." You let her take the sheaf of papers, cackling as she makes a face and holds it out at arm's length. "Ugh, you really do lick everything to read it. Man, you're such a freak."
You take the papers back. "I've made a shortlist of follow-up destinations. It's based on proximity to places reachable by station transportalizer cross-checked against places the fugitive has connections or could find a buyer. My guess is that he'll want to sell as quickly as he can; wherever he's been stashing those scarabs, they must be depreciating in value." You frown. "There are some places on the shortlist that we could reach directly by transportalizer, if we can convince the authorities here to give us higher clearance than the criminal could have managed by hacking into the system. That way we can get a jump or two ahead of him and make it an ambush rather than a pursuit."
Vriska flicks her dice in her hand. "Not even a problem, I already coerced the transportalizer guard on my way in here, she'll give us anything we want."
It's not how a legislacerator would have gone about it. The law tends to be a bit lax for bounty hunters, though, and this doesn't break any of the rules of the exam.
You make a face at her anyway. "So you're still relying on mind control for everything. Are you still using it on your friends? I guess I'm lucky I'm immune!"
Her shoulders go tight. "God, don't pretend you're a nicer person than me. Maybe you can fake nice when you're talking to your stupid wiggler friends who can't take a joke, but I know you'd love the chance to take their little minds apart."
You can't summon the energy to keep holding the moral high ground here. Vriska does know you, and she knows as well as you do that you might be a better person than she is, but no, you're not a nicer one. You've hurt all of your friends with mind games one time or another, because you thought something was interesting or funny, and you're constantly having to remind yourself not to do it again when you talk to them.
It's not as if you mind treading more gently around your friends than comes entirely naturally. That's how friendship works. You're getting better at it.
You sigh. "Fine, let's just ... where's the transportalizer hub? I can narrow our options down a bit more once I smell the layout, I think."
The guard troll gives the two of you a glassy-eyed bow when you enter the hub. Vriska grins and tweaks the guard's horn as she passes.
You have a brief, quickly choked urge to claw the obnoxiousness right off her face.
You pace the perimeter of the hub, tracing back through what you know of the ex-prisoner's motivations and the timeframe of the escape. Vriska leans against the wall, fiddling with the controls of the transportalizer.
"This is taking foreeeeeeeever," she complains. She tilts her head back against the wall, her horn making a hollow thunk against the smooth surface. A moment later she darts forward and snags your notes off you again. You let her, your thoughts still absorbed in the problem. You should be able to narrow down the right choice to within an acceptable error of uncertainty, you just need to think all of the options through to their logical ends.
Vriska shakes the papers, trying to get saliva off them, then lays them flat on the panel of the controls. "So these eight are the shortlist," she says.
You turn your face towards her, sniffing to see which page she's on. "Yes," you agree. "Although I've nearly discounted number four."
Vriska leans down, examining them. When she straightens she's pulled out her dice again. "This is boring," she announces. "Sometimes you have to take a gamble, Terezi."
"What?" Your head jerks up and you start towards her, but she's already rolled. She punches in the coordinates of whichever one came up and grabs your hand with her metal one, slamming the heel of her other palm down on the transportalize button.
The world goes black, a void to your nose. You're spinning in darkness, Vriska's cold grip digging into the palm of your hand. Then the ground forms under your feet again and you stumble, throwing a hand against what turns out to be a scarred brick wall. You're outside somewhere. There are tall, crumbling buildings all around, and a street with gutters clogged with newspapers and bottles and, oh god, you think that might be a used bucket over on that corner? Ugh. The light is pale, shadows lying heavily in the street, and you'd guess that it's only a little after moonrise. It's deserted.
You're in the backstreets of the colonial city of Condescension's Wrath, and you're just around the corner from a beetle pawnshop twice patronised by the fugitive's lowblood moirail, before his culling. It was number 2 on your shortlist.
You are furious.
You wheel on Vriska. "If you'd given me twenty more minutes I could have worked out exactly which destination we needed! Now we're an hour and a half at the least from the closest civic transportalizer hub, and if this isn't the right place we've lost our only chance at getting a step ahead of the criminal!"
Vriska laughs. You can smell how much she's enjoying making you this mad, spitting and impotent with rage. "Maybe you forgot how much luck I have! God, you're lucky too, to have me as a partner. I just saved you twenty minutes of useless working out time."
"You don't know that. This is so stupid. You are so stupid."
Vriska's still laughing, flicking one die over and under the fingers of her regular hand. She ignored you and took a chance when there was no need. She sabotaged your methods. And she's standing there crowing, refusing to back down.
You lunge forward, sweeping your cane behind her ankles. Vriska stumbles, only just keeps from falling, her shoulder scraping on the wall behind her. She opens her mouth, outraged, but you don't let her speak. You lean forward, hissing almost into her mouth, "One day you may grow up and realise that there are more important things than luck!"
Vriska's pulse is fast and uneven beneath your claws, pressing against her clavicle. "My luck makes me the kind of winner you'll never be!" she gets out, her voice strangled.
You cannot stand her. Everything about her hurts you. You wrap your other hand around her snaggled horn, your claws digging into the sensitive base, and use it to wrench her head back. The back of her head knocks against the bricks, and as she rebounds you crush your mouth against hers.
It's teeth and pain and the taste of blueberry on your tongue, her glasses scraping against your own. She makes a small hurt noise and presses back against you, tongue and breath and sharp enamel.
You wrench back, your mouth stinging. You still have her head pulled back, the line of her neck exposed, and she looks wrecked. Her breath comes fast and her eyes are closed.
She opens them so slowly. The pupil of her good eye is completely blown: there's almost no yellow left, only a blue so dark it smells black. And her expression ...
Every bit of bravado, every trace of tentativeness is gone from her gaze. She stares at you with an utterly certain hate that cuts all the way through you. It feels as though a veil has been torn away. All of your confused, wretched emotions about her have been cleansed and made clear. You could die of this certainty.
Then Vriska tangles her claws in your hair and pulls you towards her, getting her mouth against your neck in a sucking bite. It feels so painfully perfect that you let it happen. Then the fingers of her robotic hand find your side, digging into the soft skin of your grubscars. You hiss and pull away.
Vriska's laughing, low and dark but with a thread of light through it. She sounds breathless. She sounds glad. You want to hurt her and you want to kiss her. You circle one another, panting.
She wipes the back of her regular hand over her mouth. "I guess you haven't had much practice kissing, huh?" she asks, grinning through a torn mouth. "Man, that sure was sloppy."
You feel the sting as your mouth stretches in a grin. "What about you, Serket. Was that your first kiss that didn't need mind control?"
You smell that one strike home. For half a second you feel the usual worried remorse, that too-late reaction to saying something too cruelly perceptive to a friend. But Vriska's gaze only darkens further. She bares her teeth at you and feints to the side, pulling you into another painful kiss. It burns you, sweet like acid, and you kiss back, pushing against her.
When you pull away for breath you realise: you can say anything to her. There's no hurtful or hateful thing you can say that won't make this bond stronger. That's what kismesis means. You seize her and kiss her again, almost sobbing with the freedom of that.
You hate this girl so much. You will never hate anybody the way you hate your sister.
When she finally pulls away again it's with a small, needy sound, her eyes squeezing shut. You instinctively reach for her, and she sheers away, digging her teeth into her bottom lip.
You realise with a jolt that she's pulling away because she's too turned on. You're in public, you're in a public street. You are not going to pail in a public street. You can feel teal rushing into your cheeks at the thought. You press your hands against your thighs and concentrate on your breathing.
Vriska rests her head against the brick wall behind her and throws you a sidelong look. "God, Pyrope." Her voice is husky. "I know I'm irresistible, but did you have to maul me?" She blows hair out of her face and lets her back slide down the wall till she's sitting in the street.
You wipe your mouth, mixed blue smearing on your skin, and drop down next to her, kicking your ankles up onto her lap. She knocks your head back against the wall in token retaliation. Your horns jar painfully and you grin again.
It comes to you that you've been running the calculations and scenarios for the criminal's likely destination in the back of your mind this whole time, without really noticing. You've just come to the end of the train of thought, and reached your conclusion.
He's coming here. In about forty minutes, if you're right on some secondary counts. You're going to ace this exam.
You laugh, your mouth aching. That might almost be worth Vriska being impossible about it.
If not, you can think of some ways to wipe the smile off her face.