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splickedylit · 11 years ago

Note

o.o I love the new expressions (lets be honest I love ginger gamzee) but yea you mentioned Alternate endings and I was wondering if there was any way maybe we could go into the au idea from SotW where karkat really just cant see cause gamzee is like out in the middle of nowhere.

(I’m so not writing the entire epic saga of this AU, but I can write some key moments mostly Gamkar, sure! :D But it’s gonna be HELLA DEPRESSING)

—

You’re in a back alley of some tiny, fucked up town when someone pisses off the empress.

When you come back, Rage’s power still jolting up and down your spine in angry stabs, everyone around you is also on the ground, shaking and groaning. You never get used to it, not really—it’s been…what, six years? More? You’re still not used to it.

You pry yourself upright, make sure your jacket’s hood is low enough to cover up your hair, and keep walking before anyone can notice you were there.

It should be easy, finding Gamzee—really it should, that’s why you picked him to find before the others, because you thought it would be easy. (And no other reason, no other fucking reason okay.) Even when you were a kid you could feel him across half a city, and you’re not a kid anymore; your eyes are blurry, useless wrecks, your face is fucking gross with invisible white stubble that you can never shave often enough, and you’ve grown into your shoulders finally. Half the planet is at your fingertips, if you just reach out for them. You feel the constant, shifting undercurrent of them, all those fucking cowards—

Shit. No. No, you know why they’re not fighting back. Everyone has somebody to protect, right, and they have no fucking choice but to be scared. Every single person on the planet is terrified. You decided a long time ago you weren’t going to let yourself turn into one of those people, the ones who hate everyone and everything, who grumble why isn’t anybody doing something when they know why nobody’s fucking doing anything. You can feel how scared and hopeless everybody is, better than anybody else on the planet.

…and since you can feel that, it seems like you should be able to feel Gamzee too. But Gamzee isn’t a kid anymore either and his mind has faded the longer you looked for him as he gets better and better at controlling himself and hiding. The distant feeling of his mind has hidden itself away until it’s almost indistinguishable from all the other scared, angry minds around you. Rage’s almost-daily quelling waves of terror aren’t helping anything either, fuck that guy up the—

You get distracted from that train of thought because you almost trip over a rough curb. At the last second somebody looks in your direction and you catch a glimpse of your own foot headed toward the dip—you whip out your cane and just barely manage to catch yourself on it before you can go down.

The guy whose eyes you borrowed doesn’t offer to help, or ask if you’re okay. You didn’t think he would. You feel him worry, but it’s dangerous, talking to people—anybody could be an informant, a traitor, one of Hope’s massive, brainwashed army. You straighten yourself up and go back to walking, sweeping your cane now, feeling for anything in your way.

Anyway. Gamzee.

You still get flickers of him sometimes, especially after Rage has sent out another attack, and you think you’re finally getting close, even though tracking the flickers is kind of like trying to follow a specific star in the sky (fucking miss stars, stars and leaves and being able to just read stuff, shit). You’ve followed him for miles as he jumps from place to place, stays a few weeks, moves again, and he’s finally, finally fucking settled down in some nowhere-town in the middle of nowhere.

If it comes to that you don’t actually know where you are now (like fuck you can read street signs) but you think you’re probably somewhere in Eastern Europe. Maybe. The language that comes out of your mouth the few times you have to talk to somebody is choppy like the ocean, tight in the back of your throat. Sounds you grew up with. The air smells like frost.

Another flicker. You’re so focused on holding onto it, you actually close your eyes, not that it makes too much of a difference with your blurry vision. Someone peers out a window at you through the curtains—you turn again just in time to avoid a wall. She starts to turn away from the window—her eyes moves away from you and down to—

—tall figure in a dark jacket—

—stranger who lives outside town—

—flicker of bright color, bright red-gold—

In her eyes, you see yourself break out into a run.

—

You’re not sure, you can’t be sure—but when you throw your mind out towards the dark blur in your vision, trying to watch your feet, your mind bounces off a wall of spiky, angry FUCK OFF AND GET OUT and you don’t know anybody but your teammates who could learn how to do that. Your body trips, half-blind; the cobblestones come into focus for a second as you scrape your hands across them, just barely catch yourself before you face-plant on them—fuck, ow, ow, bleeding—scramble back upright and keep going.

He doesn’t run away from you like you thought he might—with his long legs and your fucked-up eyes, you’d never catch him. But he doesn’t come forward to help you either. The angry sharpness of his mind shifts and melts—the barbs of hatred that rebuffed you become shifting confusion, fear. Still impenetrable. What the fuck has he done to his brain?

“Gamzee,” you pant, and now he takes a step back away from you. You give up on caution—pull back your hood. The air hits you like a slap. The noise he makes is worse.

“…fuck off,” he mumbles, and backs away another step. His voice is lower, hoarser—the years away from his hometown have dulled the accent a little, but it’s definitely him, it’s definitely him.

"Gamzee," you say, still out of breath, and hope you’re looking at his face—you can see glimpses of bright red hair, so you think so. Holy shit but he got tall. "It’s—"

"Yeah, I know it’s you,” he says over top of you, still in that hoarse, weary I don’t care drawl. ”What the fuck do you want.”

This isn’t what you were expecting (It should have been it should have been but you’d hoped, hoped he’d be the same as he ever was, such an idiot, you’re such a moron). You stop, looking at him, trying to figure out what to say next, and he takes another step away from you, fidgeting a little, like he’s doing his best not to run.

"…you’re gonna get me found," he mumbles. For a split second something slips through a crack in the bitter, swirling defensiveness around his mind—fear. The constant sensation of someone watching, searching, of the never-ending tension of being just out of the reach of something terrible.

"They haven’t found me and they haven’t found you," you point out. "Don’t see how they’ll find both of us together."

He makes a dubious noise.

"Both of us being here doesn’t make us more noticeable, fuckface," you remind him. "That’s not how it works."

"Oh, you’re the expert now," he says, dry and sharp, and and reaches into his jacket—you hear a click, a hiss—the smell of smoke, bitter on the air. Against the blackness of his jacket, you think the white blurs of his hands are shaking slightly as he puts his lighter back in his pocket.

"Yeah," you say. "Yeah, actually I am, thanks, and if you��d pull your head out of your ass it would be obvious to you too. They’re not worried about us, Gamzee. We don’t matter to them anymore."

He hunches his shoulders a little.

"…you don’t matter anymore,” he says, so quietly you almost don’t hear him, and that feeling, that constant, searching prickle up and down his spine comes back to the back of your mind.

"He’s still looking for you?”

Gamzee half-turns away from you. ”—I’m goin’ home,” he says abruptly.

"I’m coming too."

He growls low in his throat—you scowl at him and cross your arms.

"I looked for you for years," you say stubbornly. "We’re going to talk and you’re going to listen, shithead, this isn’t a request it’s an order from your leader."

There are a couple of seconds where you think he’s going to hit you and run anyway, but then he just sighs.

“…even more motherfucking pushy than I remembered," he mumbles, mostly to himself, and turns around. "Fine. Sure, why the fuck not.”

—

Gamzee lives fifteen minutes’ really fast walk outside of the village, in a hovel that stands out against the silver-white blur of the landscape like a speck of shit on a piece of pure white paper a long time before you get to it. The road is icy and rough—he doesn’t stop when you stumble, and you don’t try to use his eyes again. Better not to push your luck right now, you figure.

When he opens the door, though, you seriously consider making him stop and just talking to him out here in the cold. He notices you stop—he stops too, and you can guess at him glaring at you.

"The fuck is wrong now?"

"Oh, nothing," you say sarcastically, "—I just didn’t know you lived in a dumpster. Holy shit, do you even have a sense of smell left?”

"Hey if you don’t like it you can just leave me the fuck alone!”

You don’t have a choice. You hold your breath as best you can, and follow him into the gloom.

—

"You’re not stayin’," is the first thing he says, and inside he seems more comfortable—enough to raise his voice above a mumble at least. (someone looking over my shoulder someone on the other side of the next corner, looking for me looking for me) ”I’m leavin’ here in a few days anyway. Not safe to be here anymore now you fucked it up.”

Holy shit how can he be this paranoid? What happened while you were gone? ”You’re joking.”

“Do I motherfucking look like I’m joking?”

It’s not the time, it’s really fucking not—but a sort of bitter laugh bubbles up in your throat anyway. “I wouldn’t fucking know, would I?” You wave a hand in front of your face—a pale blur against the grimy interior of his hideout.

He freezes up still inside.

“…what.”

Oh boy. “Did you not figure this out when I almost face-planted in front of you in the middle of the road like an idiot?” You wish you could make out his expression, but hell you can’t even make out your own. “I can’t see anymore. Come on. I’d use some other poor fucker’s eyes, but hey!” You throw out your arms, taking in the entire place—your right hand hits something that clangs on the floor. “—fuck—you apparently want to live as far from everybody ever as you possibly can, so here we both are, huh?” You squint down at the floor—nope, no good. “…what did I just fuck up, did I break something? I can’t tell, your floor is a dump and everything’s a bunch of—”

“Can’t…?” He sounds…terrified. That’s weird. You frown at him. Or, you frown sort of in the direction of him—whatever. “What—who did—?”

Oh. “It wasn’t your dad, if that’s what you’re thinking,” you say, sharper than you meant to, and he hisses really softly between his teeth. “Believe it or not, as much of a fucking monster as he is, everything terrible in the whole goddamn world isn’t his fault. My eyes were fucked from the second they spawned me. They were already blurry when we were a team, not that anybody ever fucking asked.”

“…oh,” he says, really quiet.

You stand there for a couple of seconds, silent and awkward, and you listen to him breathe. He sounds awful. He wasn’t ever made to live somewhere this cold, you would bet he gets sick all the time now—

“So yeah, I can’t see,” you say finally, and he jumps a little. “So can I get a look at you or what?”

“…no mirror,” he says quietly, reluctantly—his voice really is a lot deeper. You’re glad for the accent—it keeps him from sounding like his dad, and that’s the last thing you need.

“I know.” You put your cane carefully to one side—not that you’re going to be able to really find it again with all the shit lying around, but hell, you don’t want to have something that he could see as a weapon. “I do that super-cheesy blind asshole shit now. It’s not as good as getting somebody’s eyes to look through, but hell, why not.” You hold up your hands and wiggle your fingers. “Come here, if I walk over this stuff I’m gonna fall over and break my neck.”

God only knows why, but he follows orders. He has to kneel down to get on a level with you, holy shit. You reach out really slowly, reaching almost blind towards the pale triangle of his face and the fiery orange blur of his hair.

He shivers when you touch his face, and you shiver a little bit too honestly—his skin is freezing. You feel stubble, hollow cheeks, long hair in greasy curls. It has to be down to his shoulders by now, God, when was the last time he cared enough to cut it? (…no mirror…) His lips are chapped and rough from the cold—they tremble when your fingers run over them. There are…twisted scars—

He pulls away.

“…been a while,” he says, and his voice shakes just slightly. “Like what you see, motherfucker?”

“You smell terrible,” you say, and clench your hand on the feeling of his face under your fingertips. “And you feel like a skeleton. A dirty skeleton. Jesus, Gamzee.”

He snorts and doesn’t answer.

Gamzee, shhh…”

He jerks violently and pulls away, breathing hard and fast. You have no way to fight him, and even if you could, you wouldn’t want to; you sit still, put your hands in your lap, and watch the blur of his face as he pants.

“I’m a grown fuckin’ man,” he snaps, but his voice is ragged and choked. “I don’t need shhh, I don’t need you to—to—I’m not the—”

“…not the boy I fell in love with?”

You can’t see it coming, but you can feel it, that sharp jab of copper on your tongue, the snap of a temper. You roll with the punch—it still hits hard enough it feels like your jaw is shattered, hard enough you white out and don’t even feel yourself hit the ground—what’s left of your vision is all flashing lights and black fog.

“Love,” he spits at you, “Love?! Don’t make me fucking LAUGH—!” Something shatters, a shard of glass glances off your cheek, his sudden fury boils out over you so strong you can’t breathe, so heavy your heart stutters and struggles to beat. You can hear his voice far away, swearing and yelling and laughing—sobbing? Fuck you can’t tell—but understanding words is impossible, the fear is an all-encompassing fog inside your skull. You do the only thing you can do—open up your mind and reach out towards the distant feeling of the town you came from, let the fear boil off you as fast as it tries to drown you.

You feel a hundred minds crumple in terror for the second time today, but you can’t afford to feel bad about it, not now—your mind is full of all alone and scared are they dead did he kill all of them like he said he would is he hurting them, "—years, fucking years and I thought—” I won’t even have to hurt all of them, just that little freak with the white hair and they’ll all feel it, teach you to love someone more than your own family you ungrateful little— “—dead, or, or fucking worse and you got the motherfucking gall to say you ever—” screaming on the ground because no matter how far you run you can’t get away from the fear—

“…G’zee,” you manage to rasp, and you can’t even tell if he hears you, metal clatters, wood splinters, glass shatters as he slams a fist straight through a window, a sudden blast of cold, fresh air—“—Gamzee, you’re—scaring—“

Silence.

You can still hear him, panting, but the smashing stops—the jagged barbs of fear, anger, disgust, frustration, everything eases back into him and locks away again behind those icy walls inside his head. You can breathe again, even if it’s just a shallow wheeze. Far off, you can hear the minds of the people in the town quiet—they think it’s just another attack from the Empress’s ugly fucking guard dog. They have no way of knowing where it came from.

“…Karkat,” Gamzee says, like he just realized you’re still here, and his voice sounds years younger, scared. “K…Karkat?”

You dare to sit up—the blur of him hovers closer, and you can just make out individual fingers as they get closer to you.

“Gamzee,” you say, and it comes out wheezy and tiny and really squeaky because you can’t breathe, “—fuck—”

He grabs you by the shoulders so hard and sudden you let out a croaky gasp. His hands are shaking; he presses his fingers up under your jaw like he’s feeling for a pulse, then spreads his hand over your heart.

You get a flash of feeling—relief, warmth against your palm and a heavy, pounding heartbeat—and then he lets out a croaky noise and pulls you into the worst hug you’ve ever gotten. He’s freezing, he smells awful and he’s all pointy bits, it’s like he doesn’t remember how to hold people.

You squeeze him back anyway.

“—killed—” he mumbles, breathless and small, “—could’ve—I could’ve—“

(just angry so angry and she crumples down and writhes and screams but it’s good, it’s good she’s suffering hurt her hurt her push and push with all the anger inside until the connection snaps like broken wire)

(No pulse.)

(No heartbeat.)

You’re shushing him before you have time to think about it and this time he doesn’t pull away and snap at you, just holds on and breathes. His hair is unbelievably gross, but the way he shivers when you pet it makes it worth it.

You missed this. Fuck but you missed him.

“I could’ve killed you, I could’ve killed you,” he says, over and over again like he’s reminding himself as much as he’s talking to you. “I, I could—”

“I’m tougher than you think I am,” you tell him sharply, and it seems to take him by surprise—he hasn’t had somebody to cut him off short when he starts on one of his spirals, has he? “Shh. Shhh. You always did that thing where you blamed yourself over and over again, look at my face. Look at me.”

He makes a cracked, miserable noise. “…I am,” he croaks.

Oh. Shit. (God you miss having eyes that worked.)

“Good,” you say. ”Well—well keep doing that, okay, I want you to look me right in the face and listen. I get it. You killed somebody. You fucked up. And that’s a big fuck-up, I get that. But you’re not a monster.”

The doubt and tired disbelief are so strong you almost rock back in your seat from them.

"You’re not," you insist, and you dare to put your hand on his face again, making your fingertips do the work your fucked-up eyes can’t. You can feel the tight fear in his furrowed eyebrows, the straight, trembling line of his lips as he tries to keep his face under control. "If you were a monster—if you were like him—you wouldn’t feel bad about it and you wouldn’t keep punishing yourself for it, holy shit, you think I actually buy that you’re living out here because you like it, or, or because you couldn’t find someplace better if you tried?”

He sniffs hard, and you don’t have to see his face to reach up and wipe his wet cheeks for him.

"Yeah," you say, and you can tell when you try to smile it’s a pretty shitty attempt, but he leans into your hands anyway. "…that’s what I thought."

Things aren’t the same anymore—you know they aren’t. He twitches and tenses up when you move, he can’t quite seem to relax. As soon as he’s back under control he sits back, pulls out of your arms and vanishes into a blur again. But you can’t keep yourself from smiling just a little bit anyway.

—

It’s not hard to convince Gamzee to leave his shack, in the end. He makes it really clear that he still doesn’t have any intention of going with you to fight Life and Hope and his da, but you dare to think that maybe, just maybe, he doesn’t want to leave you again, any more than you want to leave him. All the shit on the floor and the walls is mostly trash he picked up, he tells you, things he can leave behind no problem, and it doesn’t take long for him to shove a few of the more important things into a bag and strap them on the back of his bike.

…which is a thing he has now. You aren’t all that pleased about that, even though he’s wanted one for a long time and his banged-up motorcycle is obviously one of the few things he allows himself to have even though he likes it (and Gamzee is not allowed to have things he likes because BLUH BAD PERSON BLUH). You’d be more okay with motorcycles if you could still fucking see.

Then again it gives you an excuse to put your arms around Gamzee and hold on really really tight, so who are you to complain.

It takes you a couple of hours of driving to get to a town that is any bigger than the tiny shit-heap you found him in, and by the time you get off the bike you’re shivering and Gamzee’s hands are so cold he can barely get his helmet off. You get a room at the first shitty motel you can find, and when you start to dig some money out of your wallet to pay for the room, the cashier stammers something about n-no charge it’s free for you sir! and hurries off.

You don’t understand why until you turn around and realize that Gamzee is carrying his motorcycle under one arm.

“Put that down!”

"No."

"Gamzee I swear to god—"

"Shit gets pinched if you leave it lying around," he says stubbornly, and his arm reaches past you and takes the key out of the shaking hands of the man behind the desk. "Not letting any motherfucker get a greedy hand on my bike. It stays where I fucking stay."

And the worst part is, he’s probably right. You can imagine somebody taking the stupid thing if it was left outside, and god knows you would be screwed if you didn’t have a means of transportation. You’ve gotten this far mostly by manipulating people’s emotions so they’ll pick you up and take you where you needed to go, but hitchhiking only goes so far, especially when you have somebody as dangerous and suspicious-looking as Gamzee hanging around with you.

The room is tiny, when you finally get up there, and tinier with a motorcycle in it. You manage to wedge the stupid thing pretty well into a corner, drop a couple of random bills in Gamzee’s lap with the vague order "—get some food or something" and then go and take a well-deserved shower.

By the time you get out, Gamzee has turned on the TV and is moodily shifting through the channels, and hasn’t moved to order room service at all. You snatch the money, the TV remote, and the phone, and turn the TV off.

"Shower," you say firmly.

"Hey, I’m—"

"Not a kid anymore, I know. Look if it makes you feel better, don’t think of this as me giving you orders, okay, i’m fucking begging you go get cleaned up, you smell like trash.” You hesitate, but…why not. ”…you can wash your own hair…?”

The question hangs in the air between the two of you for a long, long second, and then he takes a long, careful breath and lets it slowly out again.

"…yeah," he says quietly. "I’ll…I’ll do that my own self. I. Thanks."

Well you expected that, but it still makes something sting deep, deep down in your chest. Stupid. It was never normal in the first place, missing it is stupid. Stupid, stupid.

"Cool," you say, for want of something better, and settle down with the phone. You have to hold the shitty paper room service menu inches from your eyes to read it. "You like rosół?”

"Uhh…" Gamzee re-emerges from the bathroom briefly and digs through the bag on the back of his motorcycle. "…don’t care."

"More like ‘don’t know what it is’."

He doesn’t answer, just vanishes back into the bathroom, and you pick up the phone and dial. Once upon a time you wouldn’t have been able to talk to the guy in his own language over the phone—but you have an entire country at your fingertips right now. You can even feel the faint trace of other languages, in countries over the border miles away—you could speak, what, German? If you wanted to.

You’re a lot stronger. (Enough stronger? Who knows, god, who even fucking knows.)

—

By the time Gamzee comes out of the shower, wearing a towel and smelling considerably cleaner, you’ve talked to the guy who brought up the food, handed him a couple of imperial bills and Gamzee’s old clothes and started in on your dinner. It’s been a long time since you were comfortable enough to splurge on an actual hot dinner, but it’s noodles and chicken and it’s hot and delicious and you’ve missed fresh food a lot.

Gamzee searches around for about five minutes before you can bring yourself to stop stuffing your face.

"—not here," you say, through your soup. "—got—khgh—fuck that’s hot—getting them cleaned."

You feel the frown in the air as clearly as seeing it on his face.

"I told you, anything you leave gets—”

"Oh please, he’s not gonna steal your clothes," you roll your eyes—feel around until you find the other bowl. "Here, come eat. The wife of the guy who runs this place makes the food, it’s fucking amazing. And I’ll cut your hair, Jesus, that shit is out of control.”

He makes an unhappy noise, although he does come over and take the bowl from you. ”M’hair’s fucking fine.”

"Your hair hasn’t been cut more than one or two times since we fucked up," you correct him, and you know your guess is right by the way he hunches down a little. "—wait, give me the bowl back for a second and go get a chair, you’re too tall for me to mess with your hair while you’re standing up. God, why do all of you have to be so fucking tall? And get me a brush."

He does as he’s told, and you shuffle the chair over in front of the battered mirror on the wall while he’s up. He hesitates when he comes back and sees where you’ve put it—you pat the seat and hold out his bowl of soup again as bait and he sighs and sits down reluctantly.

"Don’t fucking sulk," you tell him, and pull out your knife. "You don’t want me cutting your hair blind, do you?"

"…no."

"Good. Eat your rosół. And take down some of the shit you’ve got up around your brain already, trying to look through you is like trying to sleep in a thorn bush.”

The second he lets you into his mind your vision flickers and things go clear and clean again. Your faces blink into sight in the mirror—his eyes flicker up to your face and back down to his, and his sallow cheeks go pink.

He really does look just as awful as he felt to your fingers; the scar you felt on his lip stretches up to his left eye and gashes his left eyebrow, a second one cuts across the bridge of his nose, and the third one across his right eye. He’s got a scrubby bit of beard that kind of trails away into stubble, his fists are bruised and his bare chest and arms are painfully thin under the muscle that’s still left.

But the worst part is his eyes. His eyes are sunken pits, hooded and exhausted and hopeless, and there are heavy, brutal shadows underneath them, like he hasn’t gotten a single good night of sleep for the past…what? Five years? Six? (Seven years since last time you curled up and pulled his nightmares away from him to give him quiet dreams, squeezed him hard enough it almost hurt him because it made him feel safe?)

Yeah, it would be…six and a half years, maybe seven. God, what a waste.

“…Karkat?”

He’s staring at you. You jump a little bit—your body was staring off into space, and you put in the extra bit of thought and effort to get it looking where it should be. When you rest your hands on his skinny shoulders (not so skinny, not so skinny anymore) he still shivers but he doesn’t pull away. “Okay. I’m just going to cut it so it’s short all over. Right now it’s long like a girl’s.”

His cheeks go even pinker. “…didn’t cut it a lot,” he mumbles bitterly, and sinks down in his chair.

"Obviously." You pick up the hairbrush. "Holy shit, it’s all the way down between your shoulderblades—what?"

"—nothin’,” he mutters, but when you shrug and run the brush through his hair again he shudders again. ”—no, I…I just—”

"Yeah," you say, and he sighs as you rest a hand on top of his head, feel the echo of your own touch, warm and heavy. "…I know."

—

It’s like walking down the court of some kind of ancient queen. Except instead of the tapestries that you’ve seen hanging in old pictures of courts, there are old windows hung with rags. Instead of men and women in old-fashioned, fancy outfits, there are desperate, tired, grubby people in dirty clothes.

And at the other end, the queen.

Feferi sits on an old, old chair—she’s not looking up at you yet, she’s talking to somebody you can’t see down by the side of her throne and the people gathered around her all mutter and glare at you.

And then she looks up and says “…Karkat?”

"Feferi," you say back, kind of wary, and she squeaks and throws herself up out of her seat, raising her voice.

"Sollux! Eridan! Boys, it’s Karcrab! And—oh my god."

Gamzee shrinks a little bit, hunching over, but Feferi comes flying forward and jumps, jumps up so high she can throw her arms around his neck and hang on. He staggers and then grabs her and hugs her back, and she laughs and squeezes him so hard you know anybody less tough would have trouble breathing.

"Where have you been?!” Feferi asks, shrill with emotion, and Gamzee winces—not just from the noise, you know. ”Oh my god we were so worried, I thought—we thought—”

"We thought you got left behind," says a dry voice, and you look up and see a huge, scrawny figure, even bonier than Gamzee—Sollux looks like he’s gotten inches taller and no heavier at all. "Jesus fuck, GZ, why didn’t you try to get in contact with us before now? We thought you didn’t get away. You too KK, what the hell."

"I found him as fast as I could," you say, needled—Feferi’s hair is blocking Gamzee’s eyes and you’re having trouble seeing, which makes you antsy. You switch to somebody in the crowd instead, watching yourself from far off and to the right as Sollux comes forward. Eridan is slower, behind—he looks weirdly bent over, moving really slow.

"Well they’re here now," says Feferi, and turns to her…what, her subjects? Her friends? Her army? Her voice when she addresses them is friendly, but it rings out like an order. "Two more of my friends have arrived! Karkat Vantas and Gamzee Makara. Please treat them with all the courtesy you treat Sollux and Eridan and I!" And then, in a lower voice, "…Karcrabby, what’s wrong with your eyes?"

Oh. Well shit, most people don’t notice that fast.

"Just generically fucked-up bad eyes," you say, and she goes hmmm and clicks her tongue. ”Nothing your magic hands can fix, Peixes, so don’t even fucking try.”

"Oh please," she says, "—I know better than that." and you’re surprised to realize you kind of believe her. When she was a kid she would have tried anyway, but you’d bet there’s been a lot of times in the past couple of years people have asked her to fix things she can’t fix. "But you can come in and have some food!"

Sollux punches your shoulder, hesitates, and then reaches out to Gamzee like he kind of wants to shake hands. Gamzee wraps one skinny arm around him and squeezes him tight for a second, (if there was anyone She would want, anyone she would tell da to get for her…) and then lets him go. Sollux stares at him, looking kind of a lot more ruffled but sort of weirdly pleased.

"…hey, Kar," says a quiet voice behind you.

The first thing you notice is the purple streak in Eridan’s hair is gone. He’s hair is cut shorter, and he’s obviously still taking care of it but it’s not as silky as it used to be.

The second thing you notice is the cane.

He notices you looking—you keep your mouth shut when he quirks an eyebrow at you, determined not to ask, but he answers anyway.

"My 'dad' didn’t take me leavin’ much better than Gam’s did,” he says dryly, and pulls up the hem of his sweater and edges down the waistband of his jeans. There are twisted scars marching crookedly up his side, vanishing under his pants. ”He tried to gun me down when I ran for it during the rout. Shoulda followed Fef, but I didn’t see where she went and I just wanted to get the fuck out.” he drops his sweater again, hiding the scars. ”…pretty well shattered my leg. By the time I found these two again there was fuck-all she could do.”

You can see it now—the twist to his leg, like his hip is healed badly. Not enough to keep him from walking, but enough to make him hobble a little, lean hard on his cane.

"…how many times a day do you get away with hitting Sollux in the legs with that?" you ask, and he blinks and then laughs.

"A couple," he allows, and stands up, wincing, lifting his weight off his cane and favoring one leg but looking much more like his former self for a second. You feel how that hurts him, but his back is aching anyway and he wants to stand up and look at you. For some stupid reason, you feel your face go warm. "Fef feels bad when I do the hunch and make my leg tremble, but Sol knows I’m playing it up and it pisses him off."

You bump fists, and you feel more at home than you have since you collapsed on that too-small hotel bed next to Gamzee. His smile looks almost like you remember—his cheeks are hollower and his lips are chapped and his eyes have heavy shadows under them, but it’s still Eridan.

—

Equius is within inches of you when he pulls his punch.

"—Vantas," he says blankly. He doesn’t lower his fist—but you see his hand clench and loosen a few times, nervous.

"—Karkat?"

Even Gamzee’s eyes don’t pick up the blur of movement before Nepeta slams into you like a juggernaut.

—

"Hope has an army," Vriska points out from her lounging-place beside the fire, and digs in her teeth with her knife, unconcerned, when everyone half-turns to look at her. "I’m just saying. We’ll need to deal with that, if we’re going to do this glorious suicide run or whatever the fuck."

"…I’ve got that."

Everyone turns again, a lot more surprised this time, and Tavros sits forward into the firelight. The scars on his arms stand out in sharp relief in the flickering golden light. He doesn’t meet anybody’s eyes.

"…we have an army too," he says quietly. "We have an entire army, of imps, and ogres. They’re mine now. I’ll bring them, from all over the continent."

"I thought you didn’t use animals as soldiers," you say, surprised, and he looks up at you. His eyes are so very, very tired.

"…I thought a lot of things," he says, and doesn’t say anymore.

—

"Last thing Nepeta did before we ran," he says, and touches his face. His eyes are somewhere far away. "—saw him taking his knife to me and..and me taking it, for the fucking love of him and she just…stole it. All of it. She took it away.” He smiles down at his hands, but it’s not a nice smile. It’s got edges to it. ”…keep saying it at myself,” he says distantly. ”…’I’m gonna kill my da’. ’I’m gonna kill my da’. Doesn’t mean a thing.”

"But then—"

“I’m going after him because there ain’t a single other person I want to do this but if they get us," Gamzee says over you, and his voice is dull and gentle, not despairing, not angry, it’s…nothing. "…I’m gonna put a bullet through my head. Best friend. Or he’ll have me, and this time I’ll break."

"You didn’t—"

But he’s shaking his head. ”Karkat,” he says, and it’s almost a laugh, a rueful sort of sigh. ”…brother. I’m half there already.”

—

You’re every mind in Life’s throne room, every face in Hope’s army, you’re the poor bastard they’ve sent to Rage to report the latest bad news, you’re all of them.

“You’ve hurt us for too long," you say through their mouths, and you know they know who you are. "We’re coming to make you pay.”

—

"Can’t you feel him?" Sollux’s voice is tight as drawn wire. Sparks are flowing off of him like a cloak, burning the ground and cracking the asphalt under his feet. "Can’t you feel him? Listen.”

And then you open your mind, and you do. You’ve gotten used to the sound, connected to every mind in hundreds of miles, mind wide open, you’ve gotten used to the distant, inaudible sound in your skull.

You’ve gotten used to his screaming.

"Everybody, get behind me," says Sollux, and you can hear the tension and the control in his voice. "Now.”

"Sollux," starts Feferi gently, but Sollux bares his teeth and every single person slides bodily back until they’re fifty feet from him, until he’s standing alone in front of the impassive walls of Life’s fortress.

Sollux raises his hands, and the world turns upside-down.

—

You can see it all, from hundreds of different pairs of eyes; stone grinds and steel screams and Sollux rises off the ground, a fragile pillar of shadow against the harsh silver light of the cloudy sky.

Buildings orbit him like moons, skyscrapers that roll and crumple themselves in midair into crushed balls of metal and concrete. The glass shatters in hundreds of windows and then hovers in midair, a glittering mist wrapping itself around Sollux’s frail body.

—

Equius's fist goes through the bunker door like it's wet paper. He leans his weight into it, growls low in his throat and heaves and you see the muscles in his arms work as the doors scream and squeal and bend, steel inches thick yielding under his hands.

"Robotic drones," says Kanaya calmly, and the lights around her spin dizzyingly in circles, blinding to your body's blurry eyes. "But with camera input as their primary means of vision, I notice. Karkat, I will deal with these. Terezi?"

"Oh, it would be my pleasure," laughs Terezi, and pulls out a long, deadly-looking knife, the twin of the one Vriska carries at her hip. "Everybody get moving before you end up like me!' And she whips off her glasses, blind eyes wide, and dives forward as you sprint for cover and the room fills with unbelievably, searingly white light. You hear metal crunch and Terezi laughing, and you put your head down and run.

"I loved you," says Gamzee blankly, and his voice is so quiet but so clear over the noise of the fight around him, over the terrible, tiny wet noises Psii is making. "Loved you more than I cared about being alive."

Rage doesn’t say a word. He’s still smiling—but he seems to have realized that something is different. He’s wary. You feel like you’re going to be sick. Somewhere else, you glance out through Eridan’s eyes and Eridan raises his gun, points it straight between Hope’s eyes. You huddle against the wall and watch Feferi wrestle against Life, punching and clawing, tearing at each other’s hair, wounds healing as fast as they’re made.

"And now you figure you outgrew me," says Rage slowly. He cocks his head to one side—the air whines. His power is all over the place and uncontrolled and you stagger and put your head down, let the waves of aftershocks roll over you. They’re not even meant for you but they’re so strong. "After you just rolled over and cried for me when I cut up your face last time? What’s different, brat?”

"…did, didn’t I?" says Gamzee distantly, and when he looks at his father now he looks almost…disappointed. "…I don’t love you anymore."

—

"No fair play?" Life looks up at you and spits blood, and she still isn’t scared. You are…very, very angry with her. You think you may explode. ”Two against one is—”

"Precautions," you interrupt, and you can see her straining at Equius’s grip. He’s shaking trying to hold her. You reach out and press a hand to her forehead. "This won’t hurt," you say, and you know it’s the truth.

—

“Thirty seconds,” says Ara softly behind you, and you look Hope full in the face and feel his fear. ”You could do it now.”

"You just said I wasn’t going to," you say, and your finger slides sweaty on the trigger as she laughs, quiet and sad.

"I know," she says. "…you won’t have to."

You’re breathing to pull the trigger when Vriska’s knife goes through Hope’s heart.

—

Nepeta looks up, and you know she knows. Her face goes tight and sad and old, so much older and sadder than she should be.

"…Oh," she says. "…I knew you’d ask. Eventually."

"I need it back," Gamzee says, and if you weren’t looking for it, if you weren’t half inside his head, you wouldn’t see the way his hands shake. "…’s important."

"It’s going to—"

"—I don’t fucking care if it hurts!”

Nepeta chews on her lip—glances at you, like you could stop him. You shake your head.

"…alright," she says, and when she holds up her hands Gamzee pretends he’s kneeling, that he’s not just half-falling, that his knees aren’t shaking and weak.

You feel the moment she gives it back, because it’s hot like fire and it’s sweet and it’s near and it makes him feel like his chest is filling up with light because he loved him, he loved his da and you feel him close his eyes and imagine the way the body looked on the ground. The way Rage’s eyes had flickered out as his breath rattled, the way his neck had just snapped—

—

The ruins of Life’s fortress are quiet, as the world celebrates, as the news spreads, as people scream and yell and holidays are made and you all lie quiet, holding each other. Some of you cry—some of you laugh or sing softly or just talk. Some of you just lie still, like you can pretend that you’re dead if you just hold your breath long enough.

Aradia stands up, and looks around, and in a flash and a sigh, she’s gone.

—

A flash and a sigh, and all of a sudden, Aradia is standing there. But not Aradia like your Aradia—older Aradia. Taller, thinner, more hair, dirt on her face and blood and dirt on her hands. There is blood on her stomach, a spot she’s holding like she can stop her blood coming out. Her skin is grey under the brown of it.

"Don’t," she says. And you look into her eyes, and you see the dark. You see everything that would have been true. "…don’t do what we did. Don’t let it happen."

You nod, and she holds your eyes until the second that the light in hers go out.

#wrenspaperwings #Saviors of the World #Splickedydrabbles #Saviors Excerpt #Sort...of...?#unfinished unedited unfit for human consumption #just take it #just #just take this piece of crap #*rolls away in shame*

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