Chapter Text
The world looks fuzzy. A grey landscape slides up and away in front of you. You have a headache that isn’t at all helped by the blood running to your think pan. You’re upside down, you quickly determine, unsure of what this means or where you are. Your first thought is that you’re flying, but as your vision clears the ground doesn’t seem so far away. You are being carried over someone’s shoulder, feeling the rhythmic bump of their steps. You try focusing, but all your thoughts are so scattered and everything is so fuzzy that you just want to go back to sleep.
You power through the urge and try to remember how you got in this situation. One second you were taking a nice evening stroll near the cliffs and then... huh. Were you attacked? You suppose so. You try and get a closer look at whoever is carrying you. As they descend down a long spiral staircase you only manage to see a thin pair of legs ending in red sneakers. You don’t know anyone who wears red sneakers…
Your thoughts are interrupted by a cold breeze and a shout from your captor. “Breakfast time!” they say. Did they take you to their patio for a nice brunch? No, it was too dark to be a patio in the moonlight. Why would they drag you down here like this? In response to your inquisitive line of thought a spine chilling screech comes from behind you. “I brought you two yesterday!” your captor shouts again at what you believe to be some kind of colossal lusus. More screeches, you could feel the noise rattling through your bones. “Ugh, you’re allllllllways like this!” More screeches. “Come on, look at how plump this one is,” you feel a pat on your thigh. Hey, did they just call you fat? More screeches. “You know what, no. I’m putting my foot down, I’m am a very busy young woman. You either take what I got you today, or you go hungry, okay?” More screeches. “Ugh fine! Be that way!” Your captor says as she spins around to climb back up the lengthy spiral stairs. This is followed by the loudest screeches yet. You manage to tilt your head up to get a good look at this lusus. It’s a massive spider. And it’s surrounded by cocooned trolls. And a morbidly large pile of bones.
Oh…
She is sobbing as she quickly bounds up the stairs with you in tow. Well, it seems fate has bailed you out, for now at least. You’re actually a little shocked by how close you just came to dying. You’re not sure how you feel about it. All you really know is that you’re wide awake now.
She unceremoniously throws you off of her shoulder and you fall face first into a couch. She huffs and puffs around the room muttering stuff under her breath as you right yourself. It occurs to you that you aren't bound and could make a run for it, but you have no idea where you are or how to get out. It looks like you’re in some kind of small parlor, there’s a coffee table with a few game manuals and some more chairs opposite the couch you’re on. You turn your attention to the stocky girl currently pacing in the corner and kicking piles of black spheres. She has a long face streaked by blue tears, an asymmetrical set of horns, an eye patch, and a massive ratty mane of hair. She’s entirely in her own world at this point, you doubt she’d even notice if you just slipped out. But now she’s shouting again and walking over here, none of it is really making sense.
“Why did it have to be me!?” she finally yells as she slumps over on the couch next to you. Poor thing. Looking at an unbridled display like that almost makes you feel bad for her. She’s sobbing uncontrollably into her hands now. Without thinking you slowly sidle up next to her. You raise your hand and awkwardly pat her on the shoulder.
“There, there,” you say softly. She sniffles and suddenly whips around as if to hit you. You scuttle back quickly throwing your arms up in defense. What the fuck is wrong with you. You had a chance to run and now you’ve blown it. She’ll knock you out, tie you up, and feed you to her spider. You’re braced for a strike that never comes. Eventually, you slowly open your eyes. The girl is right where you left her, only now she’s looking at you, as if she only just noticed you for the first time.
A silence hangs over the parlor. Her brow is furrowed in concentration. You pull your knees to your chest and wrap your arms around them, breaking eye contact first. There wasn’t much of a point to sustaining the challenge, she’d already proven herself the dominant one. You look at your grey shoes, then at her red ones on the floor.
“Uh, hi,” you say shakily. She’s quiet. You’re quiet. “I’m sorry about your lusus.” She tilts her head slightly to the side.
“She’s a bitch.” She eventually says as she turns away to face the other side of the room.
“I can imagine.” Why are you doing this? She tried to kill you. “She was being totally unreasonable.” Listen to what you’re saying. She tried to kill you. “It’s totally normal to be upset about that kind of mistreatment.” She was going to feed you to that thing. She tried to kill you.
Just look at her though, all crumpled up, head in her hands. It was impossible not to feel bad for her. To pity her. You’re really feeling red for her? She tried to kill you.
“She’s always like this!” She starts, throwing her arms wide for emphasis. “I work really hard to bring people in everyday- it’s like a full time job! But I have a life, you know. I have soooooooo many irons in the fire. She’s just getting hungrier and FLARPing doesn’t have the same yield it used to. Now it’s like she expects me to go out there at her every whim and just nab them. They’re not all like you, most of them put up a fight. And it’s not like I can just kill them, oh no! That would be too easy! She’s so picky, she just haaaaaaaas to eat them alive. So I have to drag bodies kicking and screaming, sometimes miles, just so she’ll be happy.”
She goes on and on about herself like this, you feel like she’s only opening up to you because you were recently marked for death. Still, it’s strangely intimate. You think back on the last few perigees. The only person you ever had red feelings for got culled more than twelve weeks ago now. You never really got to see any of your online friends in real life. They all lived on the other side of the planet. But here was a really pretty girl, who you were hanging out with in the flesh space. So what if you met under some strange circumstances? Weirder things happen all the time in your fics. You try to force your posture to be a little more open, and tune back into what she’s saying. “...and she just yells and yells all through the day, I can hardly get any sleep!”
“Ha, yeah. My lusus always gets like that when I don’t take out the trash in the morning.” She laughs, a hard dry laugh. Hey, a laugh is a laugh, right? Nah, who are you kidding, she’s grimacing and staring out into the middle distance again. “Uhh, so what’s your name.”
“I’m Vriska Serket,” she answers after she thinks about the question for a little. “What’s your name?” You start to speak but she immediately cuts you off. “I don’t want to know, it’d just make things harder than they have to be.” So, she still fully intended to use you as a meal? Another awkward silence.
You’ve never felt so low in your life. You subconsciously reach up and tug at your short knobby horns. You hear the rush of warm blood pumping through your ears. You slide close to her again, unsure of what you want. You’re just so sad, and you’re longing to be held. When was the last time you were close to anyone? You honestly couldn’t remember. She awkwardly pushes back against you.
“Please, I just…” she says voice cracking. You redouble your efforts, laying your head on her lap and nuzzling up against her stomach. It was a very obvious pale display but you were long past fear of rejection at this point. She dry sniffles, and conciedes to gently wrapping her spindly arms around you.
And suddenly you're telling her about everything. About your friends and culling drones. About long sleepless days reading troll fan fiction and hot lonely nights. About how aimless you felt and all the times you watched tv when you should have been working. About your lusus and your neighbors and just how scared you really were of dying.
You look up at her. She looks down at you. You feel rightly pathetic. You were never strong enough for this world. You honestly don’t know how you managed to make it this far. You feel like a statistical anomaly, like you shouldn’t exist. And you tell her all this. You confide in your captor, executioner, lover. Her eyes are locked with yours, her body curling around you, enveloping you. Light pours through her hair like the windows of a cathedral. She slowly leans down, shaking ever so gently. A soft kiss falls onto your forehead like a snowflake. She pulls back.
“Get the fuck out of here,” she says harshly. “Don’t ever let me fucking see you again. If I do, you’re fucking dead.”
You stand up, only just realizing that you were crying too. You wipe away the warm tinted tears and head to the door on the other side of the room on wobbly legs. Part of you doesn’t want to leave, you quietly kill that part. It only just occurs to you as you reach the door frame.
“Um, where is the exit?” The look she gives you could cut glass. “I uhh, don't worry, I'll find it.”