Work Text:
-- terminallyCapricious [TC] began trolling carcinoGeneticist [CG]--
TC: hEy BrOtHeR.
TC: wHeRe'S a MoThErFuCkEr At?
TC: aIn'T gEtTiNg YoUr MoThErFuCkInG hIdE oN aRe YoU?
TC: i KnOw YoU'rE tHeRe BrO i CaN sEe ThAt LiTtLe BlInKiNg MoThErFuCKeR aLl FlAsHiNg At Me AnD hE oNlY dOeS tHaT wHeN yOu'Re OnLiNe.
CG: GAMZEE WHAT THE FUCK DO YOU WANT NOW?
TC: Oh HeY bEsT bRoThEr, ThErE YoU uP aNd ArE.
TC: :o)
CG: I HAVEN'T SEEN YOU IN WEEKS YOU ASSWIPE. WHAT HAPPENED?
TC: i DoN't KnOw WhAt YoU'rE tAlKiNg AbOuT.
TC: wE aIn'T gOt ToGeThEr EvEr As FaR aS i'M rEmEmBeRiNg BuT wE bOtH kNoW mY tHiNkPaN dOn'T wOrK tOo WeLl.
TC: hOnK hOnK.
TC: :o)
CG: WHAT THE EVERLOVING FUCK ARE YOU ON ABOUT?
TC: mY tHiNkPaN, bRoThEr. It DoN't WoRk SoMeTiMeS bUt I dOn'T tHiNk I mInD tHaT.
CG: I CAN FUCKING TELL YOU NOW THAT I MIND IT. I MIND IT A LOT BUT FUCK, YOU DIDN'T FORGET THAT YOU OWE ME BIG TIME.
TC: oWe YoU wHaT?
CG: WELL I'M NOT KEEPING COUNT BUT YOU'RE CURRENTLY UP FOUR MURDEROUS RAGE QUELLING FEELINGS JAMS AND IT'S ABOUT TIME YOU STARTED PULLING YOUR OWN WEIGHT IN THIS PATHETIC EXCUSE FOR A MOIRALLEGIANCE.
TC: wHoA bRo, wHeRe'S tHiS aLl Up AnD cOmInG fRoM?
TC: LiKe I dOn'T kNoW iF I'm ReAlLy AlL uP aNd ReAdY fOr GeTtInG mY pAlE oN wItH yOu.
CG: …
CG: IF YOU'RE FUCKING WITH ME YOU INCOMPETENT BULGELICKING EXCUSE FOR A HIGHBLOOD, I'M GOING TO TEAR THROUGH THE FUCKING DUCTS TO KILL YOU MYSELF AND I'LL DO IT FASTER THAN KANAYA CAN FUCKING GET HERSELF INVOLVED IN EVERYONE ELSES' BUSINESS.
TC: honk.
CG: AND YOU KNOW HOW FAST SHE CAN DO THAT.
CG: WAIT, WHAT?
TC: HONK.
CG: YEAH, NOW YOU'RE FUCKING WITH ME. I'M GOING TO GET SOMETHING TO EAT.
TC: you ain't going nowhere mother fucker.
CG: LOOK, I'LL GO MAKE SOME OF THOSE DISGUSTING PIZZA THINGS STRIDER LIKES THEN COME FIND YOU.
TC: YOU BEST BE SHUTTING UP YOUR MOTHER FUCKIN MOUTH, MUTANT SCUM.
CG: ARROGANT SACK OF SHIT. GIVE ME TEN MINUTES AND WE'LL GET IN THE PILE AND SORT THIS SHIT OUT.
TC: i wouldn't get in a mother fuckin pile with you if you were the last motherfucker on the mother fuckin planet
CG: JUST SO YOU KNOW, NOW YOU'RE GOING TOO FAR AND I'M CONSIDERING THE POSSIBILITY OF ACTUALLY GETTING PISSED OFF AT YOUR SORRY ASS.
TC: HONK HONK, MOTHER FUCKER.
-- terminallyCapricious [TC] ceased pestering carcinoGeneticist [CG] --
Your eyebrow twitches. You try to ignore it, both the eyebrow and the message still open on your screen, but you eventually lower the eyebrow because fuck if you didn't always know Gamzee was completely off the proverbial rails. Still, the chat was inherently unsettling and all you can do is run your claws over your scalp and close the tab. You sigh.
Then, you freeze.
You've dropped your prong from your head but you can still feel claws scraping lightly over your head.
You are fairly certain that the last time you checked, you only had two prongs. You double check, holding them up in front of your face. Two prongs, ten fingers.
The claws dip down below your hairline and settle around the back of your neck. They scrape and scratch, an idle threat to suggest you stay exactly where you are. When you speak your moirails' name, the hand grips more tightly and the claws dig in, threatening to break the skin.
A second hand drags your chair backwards, until you're far enough from the desk that you can't take hold of anything to use as a weapon. Not that it'd make a difference since he could grab your sickle and break it without giving you the chance to prepare a strike. He's counting on the fact you don't tend to carry unnecessary objects in your sylladex. He's right.
The claws dig deeper and force you up until you're standing. You didn't plan on humouring him but the fact is he could kill you here and now just by closing his fist and you both know it; you let him lead you to the door and out into the silent hall. If you were in any doubt over your captors' identity before, his faded shadow follows along beside yours on the steel wall, towering over you. He's grown. It's probably just the light or something because if you're judging from his shadow compared to yours, he's over eight feet tall and that can't be right, not even for someone of his bloodcaste.
Not even Gamzee himself should be eight feet tall at only seven sweeps.
His claws shift slightly from your neck down to your shoulder and you take that as a good sign. It's far less intimidating and you feel your muscles relax ever so slightly. He'll calm down soon. He'll calm down enough that you'll be able to get him into the pile and then you'll be able to bring him back down from there.
Your skin gives way to his claws like a hot knife through solidified hoofbeast milk.
You flinch, and he notices.
What's a motherfucker gonna do now, he asks, his shadow hunched over to drop the words into your ear. His voice catches, the result of his shout sphincter going unused for perigees on end. Nothing, you reply. You keep walking with only the prong on your shoulder to guide you.
He pushes you forward onto the transportalizer and for one blissful moment you're alone again. The force sends you flying on the other end and you hit the floor face first. You get back up to your knees and smear the blood from your nose onto your sleeve; there's more than you expected and still some on the floor.
It's disgusting, he points out when he appears behind you again. Should have up and killed you long before now. He grabs the back of your shirt and hauls you to your feet. The common room. It takes you awhile to recognise it because he's clearly been in here for hours before he came to collect you.
You haven't seen your friends since before they died, not in the flesh. But there they all are, sprawled on couches and chairs, their rainbow of bloods covering every available surface. You don't know how to react, you can't react, you just stand with Gamzee's claws idly scraping and digging into your throat.
They're all there. He's arranged them as carefully as he can, with whatever you figure is left of his heart. He's taken the time to put those who should be together together, like Equius and Nepeta. Crammed onto an armchair together, inseparable even on the whim of an enraged highblood in the midst of another reality break. The couch held Eridan, then Feferi, then Sollux, all together as if he couldn't decide where she belonged. He'd gone to the trouble of slipping her arm around Eridan's, but had entwined her fingers with Sollux's. Vriska sat in a kitchen chair alone. Tavros was in the bean chair, his head precariously balanced on his shoulders. Gamzee loved bean chairs.
Terezi is there too, hanging from the pipes.
You can't see Kanaya, or either of the humans. You know the humans wouldn't stay dead no matter what he tried. Sensing your thoughts, he tells you he's got them hanging by their ankles in another room. They'll look into each others motherfucking eyes as they both die, over and over, until he can figure out how to keep them dead. And Kanaya, you ask, not wanting the answer. Sister's alive, for now. Her lights will go out soon and she'll starve not long after that.
You're next, best brother. He tells you that he always loved you best, pale as he could be for you. He chuckles, deep in his throat, and drags his claws across your throat again. More gently, simultaneously more threatening. You get to choose how you go, and who you'll sit next to when you're dead and join the carnival of corpses.
Can even get a brother a spot next to Strider, if you want, when the mother fucker kicks it for good.
The claws dig in, more deeply than before.
You ask to see them now, then he can do whatever he's going to do. You give him free reign to murder you how he sees fit. You don't care, you'll be just another dead troll in minutes no matter what. You can't overpower him, not like this, not in this state of heightened rage. He doesn't bargain, not usually, not recently. But after a moment the scratches turn into something more gentle, and his hand slips back to your shoulder.
He leads you back out through the transportalizer and through the halls, murmuring all the while but only sometimes to you. You don't listen to the words and you can't differentiate between the sounds anyway, and if it was important for you to hear he wouldn't have hesitated to do what it took to get your full attention. Another transportalizer and then you're staring at the two humans, suspended from the ceiling by their ankles, just like he said.
Dave's dead, but he won't be for long.
They're both flushed in the face and you know he's probably had them this way for hours and hours, upside down with their arms twisted and tied behind their own backs. Rose is crying. You don't know if this is the first time he's died. You do, however, know that she looked into his eyes and watched the life fade from him and that he's probably done the same or will do when he wakes. It was a deliberate move to string them up face to face. Deliberate, cruel, necessary to him.
You've seen them now, motherfucker. Choose. Option motherfucking one, or option mother fucking two. Two, you reply without thinking. It doesn't matter. You're fucked either way. He laughs again, from deep within his chest this time, the sound echoing off the cold walls. You don't care why he's laughing because it's at your expense regardless. Option motherfucking two, he repeats. Option two. Good choice, brother.
Option one was to slit your motherfucking throat in the middle of the common room. To spill your fucking blood there to complete the motherfucking rainbow and kick off the carnival in the motherfucking best way. Option two, option mother fucking two, was to do it here.
I might have a broken think pan, brother, but I ain't up and blind like the Pyrope bitch. He cackles then. We'll just wait for the kid to up and motherfucking revive himself just to watch you die.
He's got you tied to a chair before you can tell him to go and fuck himself.
You watch as he pushes Rose aside, shuffling her rope along the pipe. She's choking a little on her tears, struggling to catch a breath. She calms down when the rope stops swinging, or as much as anyone could given her position. Another sniffle and the highblood threatens to slap her into next week if she doesn't stop. She tries, swallowing as best she can.
Your chair is forced into place opposite the currently dead Strider.
You don't know how long he's been dead and you don't know how long it'll be until he comes back. Gamzee has patience enough for this. He's dragged up another chair for himself, sitting half behind you, half beside, so that when Dave does wake, the first thing he'll see is the kitchen knife at your throat.
It's not even an interesting weapon.
You don't know how long you've been sitting, staring at the corpse opposite you. Gamzee occasionally stands and makes a lap of the room, twisting the blade between his fingers as he goes. On one lap he takes out another three knives and you watch him spin them through the air the same way he used to juggle bottles of Faygo. You try to remind him of that, of the fact that he'd usually forget he'd been throwing the bottles around and open one too soon afterwards. He doesn't respond and returns to his chair.
Rose coughs. You still don't know how long they've been suspended upside down but it's been more than long enough. She coughs again, struggling to catch a breath. The third cough never gets the chance to finish forming; Gamzee has forced the knife through her ribs and you're sure he's gone straight through the bone. You don't know how long it'll take her to die from that kind of injury. He doesn't seem to know either and watches her bleed with all the curiosity of a wiggler leaving his hive for the first time.
You don't turn to watch. Hearing it is bad enough.
He pats your head as he passes again, wiping the blade clean on your sleeve and muttering about Lalonde's vile human blood.
It's another twenty five minutes before Gamzee flips his chair. He's screaming about humans being unreliable sacks of motherfucking shit because Dave is still unconscious. You don't know when he died. You don't think Gamzee knows either and unless he'd come in to check on them before collecting you, he's got no way of knowing how long Strider's been passed out.
Motherfucking bullshit is what this motherfucking is, he shouts. Motherfucker should be all up and awake by now. He'll be back, you say, it's never more than an hour. It hasn't been, as far as you know. Neither of the humans has ever taken longer than an hour to revive. Gamzee snarls right in your ear and you flinch at the sound, if only because it's so close. That's what you tell youself anyway; you'd never have expected him to use that noise against you. It's followed by another laugh, deep and nasty and pure malice and he kicks his toppled chair out of the way.
You hear the familiar click of an item being decaptchalogued somewhere behind you.
A slight breeze rushes by your fingertips and over the back of your neck, and Gamzee's shadow flies over your shoulder, right way up on the wall behind the still upside down Dave.
Sorry, brother, he says quietly. But a motherfucker ain't as addled as you think he is and this shit stops now.
You watch his shadow raise a club, still behind you, and there's nothing you can do to stop it connecting roughly with the back of your thinkpan.
Karkat?
Your name. You're not sure who's saying it because both the humans are still dead and Gamzee is laughing and -
Kanaya. It's Kanaya, and she's perched beside you on the edge of the couch, one hand patting a slow rhythm on your chest. You try to sit up but she forces you back down and it's just your fucking luck that she caught you in the midst of a nightmare.
You suppose that's what you get for falling asleep in the common room.
She asks what you were dreaming about, and reminds you not to lie, because you were shaking in your sleep. You were trembling enough that she'd felt the need to wake you, even though it's the first time she's seen you sleep for more than an hour in perigees.
Nothing, you say, because telling her about the dream means telling her about the cause and you're not ready to talk about that just yet. You're not even sure what the implications of the whole bullshit ordeal are yet. You need time. She gives you that look, that same fucking look she gives everyone when she thinks they should talk about something. You glare back through still-hazy vision and all she does is pat your chest again before she gets to her feet.
Maybe later, you call after her. She doesn't respond but you know she'll listen when, or if, you decide to explain. You stretch out on the couch, joints popping, then stifle a yawn.
You don't think you'll be sleeping again any time soon, sopor or no sopor.