Work Text:
Karkat hasn’t dreamed about Gamzee Makara in ages, but today he glimpses him somewhere else. When he wakes, he’ll decide it must’ve been his subconscious’s idea of Beforus, like where all those too-soft long-dead danscestors lived. If it tastes real, he’ll spit out the knowing before he can swallow it. Before it can stain his tongue, make him hope.
Dream-Gamzee’s lucid and unrotten, without even a single one of his fangs lost to a careless juggling club in his childhood hive. He’s ancient, crouching through ordinary-troll doorways so they don’t scrape his curling horns. He’s lived alone for sweeps, but doesn’t consider himself unattached. His home’s full of things another version of Karkat left behind. Movies, paintings, furniture that no longer fits his stretched-long bones, stretched-long life. Gamzee constantly quotes a moirail who only lived a fraction of his sweeps, but that he’s never unstuck from. He teaches giggling clown-cult catechism classes, writes rap-hymns, plays court jester and counselor to the Empress. Counselor, not horror-clown killer. Feferi whispers in his ear, and his answering laugh is sickeningly familiar. Innocent.
“All souls meet again in the blessed carnival beyond. He’s waiting for me, for fucking sure.”
Karkat wakes, feeling waited for.