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Rose gets happy with the needles. She gets happy with the jamming-it-in-her-moirail-slash-your-boyfriend's-half-dead-ass part. If there are other parts, she makes sure to look innocent when you creep into her little lab, carved away into the library, even as she thumbs through a journal printed in type so tiny you’re amazed her human eyes can even see it, with diagrams of things that are supposed to keep Sollux from getting sick again—too sick or sicker, at least. You meant to get in her face, but she looks like she’s going to stick you with that pointy, jabby thing in her hand.
“What’s that?” you say, crossing your arms. Your sweater is running short at the sleeves, leaving your wrists bare and exposed. Kanaya is dozing off on a corner bench with a book in her lap. Her head droops forward and then comes back up, but the rising motion is shorter each time. You watch her bobbing head for a moment, then turn back to Rose, now a little alarmed.
“Oh,” she says, breezy. “You know. Medicine.”
Which explains nothing at all. ‘Medicine’ is what she uses to describe handcuffing Terezi to the pipes in an act of grotesque, misshapen ‘auspisticism,’ to describe getting shit-faced drunk in the middle or end of the day cycle, what she says she’s doing when she lets Sollux lay himself across her torso to ‘stimulate immune system response times.’ Yeah, right! That last one rankles you the most because you think there’s something obscene about that, with the way humans squish if you put pressure on them. You would loudly encourage Kanaya to give her another troll to drape over, if you and Kanaya were talking these days.
As is, you turn back to Rose. “What kind of medicine?” you say, squinting your eyes at her.
“An anesthetic. I thought it’ll be useful for Kanaya to have something she can inject into other people. For the pain.”
“Mmmuhh,” Kanaya says, waking at the sound of her name. She yawns like a snake, jaw opening at impossible length, teeth long and wet. Her eyes, normally open way too wide, are now slit by puffy sleepiness.
Rose turns to you, and smiles brightly.
“Oh, hell no,” you say, and cover your neck with your hands.
*
She does stick it into you, a sensation like Terezi snapping a rubber band against your skin that turns painful. A pinch to a secret skin you never knew you had. She sticks it in you twice, because the first time she misses your vein and jams the needle straight into a bit of chitinous plate. You barely feel the sting now, though. A few minutes after Rose squirts it in you, you begin to feel… lighter.
“Holy fuck,” you say. “Is this the hilarity liquid? Your substitute sopor?”
“No,” Rose says, frowning at the needle. “There was no alcohol. Are your pupils dilated?”
You scowl at her and bat at her hands when she tries to shine a light into your eyes, like she’s trying to drill holes through your retinas. “What are pupils?”
“Just,” she says, “wait here,” and she goes to tinker with her toys again. You sit down and stare at the walls. A moment later, you see the wall flickering.
It’s Kanaya. She looks at you in the face, her expression kind but otherwise neutral.
“What?” you say, uncomfortable. It’s been a long time since you’ve talked, even over Trollian. She looks older and suaver. You guess you’re okay with that. “Where’s Rose?”
“She went to seek Sollux’s assistance an hour ago. I said I’d take watch.”
“Okay,” you say. “That’s cool. They can form their impenetrable science babble or whatever it is they talk about when they aren’t imbibing mind honey and sopor like they’re planning on getting Rose giggly enough to stick her hand down your skirt.”
She says, sounding confused, “The waistband is too high for her hand to make it all the way down.”
“No! I don’t want to hear it. I don’t want to hear if humans really grow hair on their palms when you grope their grub-shaped junk.”
“I never tire of how you become offended when you receive answers to questions you posed to begin with.” She squats down beside you, and then scoops her arm under both of yours. “I’m taking you back to your room to rest.”
“Lemme go,” you say, flapping your hands. Not that it stops her. She’s taller now, too, which you noticed on those rare moments when you two actually stop and talk for a conversation, instead of standing on opposite ends of the dream bubble. Sometimes you think she’s watching you, but you figure most of the time she’s just hungry. Your legs are noodly and wobble when she gets you to your feet.
She mumbles, “You are very drunk,” and then hauls you bodily towards the door. “You shouldn’t have let Rose play doctor with you. You know how it gives her ideas. Ideas with needles and scalpels.”
“How was I supposed to know that?” you demand.
“Anyone who has ever spent time with her would know of her tendency for excessiveness.” She jostles you again as she leads you through the halls, and you grunt, uncomfortable. You try to get comfortable against her, but it’s like trying to relax against one of Dave’s sword piles. “You and Rose have been spending more time together recently. Especially given your relationships with Sollux.”
You turn your head down for a moment, trying to figure out how to say, Well, I meant to tell you, in a way that won’t piss her off—not that you think Kanaya can get that mad at you. Mostly you don’t want her to be disappointed in you—or worse, indifferent.
When you look up, she looks kind. “If it matters, I wholly support anything you are doing. Except for the clown.”
“Gamzee,” you begin loudly. That’s when you two crash through the floor. First Kanaya gives way next to you, and then before you can yell, you’re weightless, and the walls have become very tall above you.
Then you hit the ground.
*
You’re in some kind of below-ground hovel. Actually, you are in a space between the top of the floor and the bottom of the ceiling. The supportive sandwich between one level and the next. It stinks like sweat, Faygo, and stinking sopor. You’re flat on your back on a pile of dust, staring up at a ceiling, a surprising distance removed from you.
“That clown,” Kanaya says, her subvocal harmonics growing dangerously high. You sit up, swaying a little. She’s already on her feet, waving her glowing hand at the walls.
“Did we just seriously fall through the floor?” you say. “Is that what just happened here?”
“You’re being very dense.”
“Your girlfriend drugged me, you inconsiderate ass,” you snap. “What is this?”
“One of Gamzee’s hideouts,” she says, squinting at the walls. Then something cobalt blue appears on the wall, one of Gamzee’s smiles—you turn your head away. Kanaya hisses, subharmonics surging up like a high tide. “He has many of them on the asteroid, though they are difficult to find.”
“Have you ever seen him?” you say, suddenly curious.
“I believe everyone but me has had that privilege.” Her sourness sounds so airless and well-bottled that it’s practically fermenting.
“I haven’t,” you say. You miss Gamzee all the time. You don’t think you’re even his moirail anymore, with the way he leaves you alone for sweeps at a time—left you, now. “I thought Rose said you weren’t into killing him anymore.”
Her eyes drift to the left, then to the right. “I didn’t lie.”
“Yeah, that sure convinces me.” You look around you. The light comes from Kanaya, who won’t stop moving like she thinks Gamzee might be waiting, and from above, but that illumination makes everything look dim and bleak. You find one of Gamzee’s shoes, and for a moment sit there cradling it in your arms. Then you toss it aside. She turns to the noise, ears swiveling forward with a hunting eagerness. “Hey! Why don’t you not?” you say.
“How can I ‘not,’” she says, in a tone of voice you’ve heard her use on Rose when she’s talking about Eridan or Tavros, nasty and a little nasal, “when he has laid this trap for us—”
“I just want to get out of here.”
“We will, in time.”
“Yeah, sure, bulge rash. I want out now.”
“It will only be—”
“Fucking hell!” you shout, slamming your fist against the floor, and then, “Shit, my hand!” The drugs left you limp, and so instead of tensing on impact, your hand instead crunched against itself, tendon snapping over bone like the strings of a guitar.
That stops her. She returns at her rangy, funny-legged gallop, bends down to get your hand. “Are you all right?”
“Fine,” you mumble. You flex your fingers, and make a fist. “I’m okay.”
She rubs your wrist guiltily, and then says, “I didn’t mean to upset you.”
“Let’s just get out of here.”
For a moment her eyes get weird, all shifty. She never looked like a hunter before. Competent and capable, yeah, but always a little too—nice? Untrollish. Now she’s literally thirsty for blood, glows in the dark, and wants to cut your ex-boyfriend. She’s dating your current boyfriend’s moirail. She has teeth like she grafted spider fangs into her mouth.
You reach out and touch her face.
“Hey,” you say. “You can come back later, I don’t care. I just don’t want to be here now. You know?”
“I will be back later.”
“It’s just that, he used to be my best friend,” you say. “And, fine, you’re getting in touch with your happy murder side, I get that! It’s just that—”
“I had a moirail once, too,” she says. She takes your hand off her face, and helps you stand up.
“Okay, but you were red for her. Classic crosswired doomed romance.”
She doesn’t respond to that, just turns her head away for a moment, then says, “Karkat.” She puts a hand on the back of your neck, right along the vertebrae, and rubs them absently, like it’s supposed to do something to you besides make you nervous.
“What?” you say, a little wild. “What? What are you doing? Are you trying to search for a vein or something?”
“Never mind,” she says hastily, withdrawing her hand. “All I mean to say is that we’re still friends. I don’t want to hurt you—I’d never mean to. I remember you once said I was your best friend.”
“I had a lot of best friends,” you say, rubbing the place where she touched you. Had a lot of best friends. As though by agreement, the two of you look up at the hole from which you fell: the edges are smooth, and the ceiling looms above you like a mirror.
*
“It could be a toxin,” Rose says when the two of you make it back to your room. Rose and Sollux are there already. When you came in, Rose and Sollux were playing Battleship with two pizza boxes and pen caps. Now Rose is hitting your knees and elbows with a paperweight. Sollux is beside you, a little less corporeal than usual. Your hand nearly goes through his when you reach for it. For a moment your fingers dip into his palm, wobbly as jelly, or grub guts spilling out a split stomach.
“You poisoned me?” you squawk.
“Maybe,” is all Rose will say on that matter. Sollux laughs at you. His smile is gummy.
“Shut up,” you say. You pull your hand away. Kanaya is behind Rose, watching the scene with interest. You don’t understand why she hasn’t left. She hovers over Rose’s shoulder as she squints at her list of notes. One of her hands floats, searching for a place on Rose’s body to settle—just put it on her back, dingus, you think, but it ends up on Rose’s ass. “Hey!” you shout. Kanaya sticks her hand back into her pocket and takes a step back, but not before the two of them share a look.
“What?” Rose says.
“Just—just go necking when you’re not trying to stop me from dying from your creeptacular medicine.”
“Necking!” Rose says. “Kanaya, you need to bite him.”
“What?” she says, just as Sollux laughs at you again. “No.”
“Rainbow drinkers have anti-disease transmission mechanisms in their saliva that destroy most disease vectors. It’s like all those times I had you bite Sollux to make him more corporeal.” Kanaya gives both you and Rose a stony look. “I don’t see what the problem is here,” Rose says. “You’ve literally had a bite out of everyone on this rock.”
“Except me,” you say. Your skin prickles in a weird way. You don’t know why she’s never gone to you for food—you just thought Kanaya not snacking on you was just an extension of her terminal neglect, but she’s doing that shifty hunting thing again. You rub your neck with your hand, remembering the coolness of her fingers moving across the ridges of your bones.
“… Really?” Rose says. “Well, now’s the time to start. Or we could just have him wait it out and see how much liver damage happens.”
“We don’t call it a liver. We call it a ‘death trap,’ because of its detoxification properties.”
“I don’t know why I bother sometimes,” Rose says as she yanks Kanaya to you. Kanaya doesn’t look any more thrilled than you, but she lets Rose maneuver her in front of you. “It’s really,” she says, “quite painless.”
Kanaya puts a hand on your shoulder. Now she’s moved behind you, but you can almost see her concern. “If you don’t want to do it, I could drool into a drum skin.”
“Forget it,” you say. “We used to be friends, right. I trust you.”
“We still are,” she says, sounding confused. “Why wouldn’t we be?”
Gamzee, then Rose, then Sollux; dream bubbles and missed chances. All of your dead friends, and then your one undead one. She’s left you out to prance around in her new necking lifestyle, you think angrily. “Just do it quickly, all right?”
She lowers both of you onto the ground. One of her hands comes up across your chest, settles at your collar bone. Then you feel her head moving around yours. For a moment it feels like dead vines dropping around your shoulders. Then she says, “Hold my hand.”
“Okay,” you say, reaching for her fingers. You try to squeeze it, and are surprised by the bones underneath.
“It doesn’t have to be like this, you know,” she says, her hand warm around yours. “I could sedate you.”
Her teeth settle against the tendons of your neck. Your heart beats faster. The edge of her teeth is cool and damp, and curves like a sickle blade. You hold on tighter and pretend there is no pain.