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crabbygreymalkinTitle: In The Greenwood Shade
Ships: Aradia<3Karkat
Summary: Karkat hates ghosts, cryptic arseholish sprites, and anything Equius Zahhak has ever touched, and he's not that fond of frogs either. But even when she drags him on the worst sidequest ever, he still can't manage to hate Aradia Megido.
Notes: Third fic for the fairytale challenge - March's prompts were The Frog Prince and black. ...I don't think this one should be any more upsetting than canon generally is? Though it may help to remember that Karkat has no idea what he's talking about when it comes to mental illness and related issues.
"Ribbit," she says, and the puzzle piece you're holding slips out of your hands.
"What the fuck?"
"Sorry." She sounds completely unapologetic, and for a moment you worry about what else that creep might've hidden away in her programming, before you remember she was just as bad when she was a ghost. "I'm part frog. I can't really control the ribbits."
You knew that. You did. But you've been trying not to think about it, and her calm acceptance of her condition makes you want to recoil.
"Yeah, about that." You take a moment to check your fingers for cuts before you gingerly pick the piece up again and hand it up to her where she hovers level with the outline's head, "I get that you being a sprite is important in some way you won't fucking talk about because you have some terrifying robot boner for being infuriatingly cryptic at every goddamn turn, but why the fuck did it have to be a frog? Why the hell would you decide that dumping a goddamn frog head into your sprite is so fucking important that you can't even trust Nepeta to prototype the damn thing for you? And then there's the fact that they're all over the fucking place - Kanaya even said her planet's covered in them, like crocodiles and salamanders aren't fucking awful enough."
She slots the piece into place with a soft whirr, and doesn't look down. "What did the Archagent tell you, Karkat? And I could use a piece with a sharp end now."
You hold back a snarl - it's not her fault this nookwhiffing piece-of-shit game climbed out of its shell early and stole every other game's share of jigsaw puzzles before they woke up - and hunt for it. "Mostly that the Queen took off her ring and went into seclusion, and that's where I should fucking be right now, on Derse getting it back, so remind me why the fuck I'm on your stupid crystal planet helping you open doors?"
"Because I told you to." Her voice is calm, cold and infuriatingly patient. But you did promise to obey her orders for the duration of this sidequest, and given the number of times her clones have saved you in the last day alone, that's far less than you owe her. "And why did she go into hiding?"
"How the fuck should I know? All Jack said is it was something we did. Something one of us dropped in the ker-" You stare up at her, failing to notice the new piece you're holding slide out of your hand until it hits the ground like the first. This time it shatters. "Holy fuck."
She glides down to land beside you, and you swear you feel the air ripple as she picks up the broken piece. In the half-second it takes her to look back up at you and twitch her mouth in something that, on a good night, might almost pass for a satisfied smile, it's whole. "Ribbit."
Can't control them, your arse.
---
It's really not that you hate frogs, or robots, or ghosts. Well, maybe ghosts. But you can't think about her being a robot without imagining Zahhak's sweaty fingers in all of her circuits, and as for frogs... well, there are reasons you've been bonding really well with Jack, and even if you do think his loathing for them is kind of over-the-top, you've still never been fond of them.
The first time you see her in person, though, less than a day into your quest, you're still startled by the strength of your revulsion. Maybe it's because even before she opens her mouth, you know her presence means you fucked everything up.
---
"So do I get to know the truth yet?" You attempt to brush the rock dust out of your hair as Aradia heaves the stone door open. Bad move. You're pretty sure you just look like you have grey hair now, and your scalp itches. "I mean, I know you're getting off on all this "blind obedience" hoofbeastshit, but I've seen way too many movies where the protagonist gets dragged into a fight he knows nothing about by some half-baked veteran and only finds out after he's blown up half the Imperial Fleet that his mentor was an insurrectionist the whole time, and you know what? They all suck."
You wait for her to say, That's because they're all Imperial propaganda, or, But you still keep watching them, but all she says is, "I'm sorry," and she drifts into the darkened passage in that eerie ghostlike waft that nothing made of metal and gears and circuits should be capable of, and you force down a shiver and follow.
The door slams behind you without the vicious red signature of her telekinetics, and you're left in the dark. "Fuck! It couldn't wait one second for our eyes to adjust?! Or mine, I guess, you can probably just shift to thermals or some shit."
Her hand brushes yours, the metal warmer than you expected, and you jump. "Equius hasn't worked out how to bring me down to a blueblood temperature range," she explains, and there are so many things wrong with that sentence that it leaves you breathless. "But maybe you should list the rules for me, Karkat."
You chafe against her tone of command, but you did give her your word, so you grit your fangs and say, "Fine. I do as you say until we get back to -" your hive, only she doesn't have one, just like she doesn't have a real body, fucking Vriska, Aradia was your friend, one of your better ones, and she ruined her - "a return node. I don't ask questions. I don't try to take control. And I don't complain about the way you're obviously going to be a cryptic fuckpan the whole time and let me walk into every trap without a scrap of warning, and can we please just fucking get on with it before I decide to eviscerate myself instead and leave my corpse to be eaten by whatever vermin are living in this temple?"
"Ok." She curls her fingers inbetween yours, and you don't want her to touch you, but you want even less to spend the rest of your sidequest walking into walls. You let out a frustrated breath and let her lead you through the dark, seething silently at your helplessness.
-- apocalypseArisen [AA] began trolling carcinoGeneticist [CG] --
AA: hell0!
CG: WHO THE FUCK ARE YOU AND HOW DID YOU GET MY TAG?
CG: DID SOLLUX GIVE IT TO YOU?
CG: IS THIS PART OF HIS "BETRAY KK'S EXISTENCE TO AS MANY OF HIS FUCKED UP FRIENDS AS POSSIBLE IN A MISGUIDED ATTEMPT TO STOP HIM BEING A HERMIT" SCHEME?
CG: BECAUSE IF IT IS, LET ME TELL YOU I AM QUITE FUCKING HAPPY LIVING AS A HERMIT.
CG: IT'S PRETTY AWESOME ACTUALLY.
AA: c00l!
AA: i bet y0u can tell me all kinds 0f interesting things ab0ut being a hermit
AA: and y0u sh0uldnt be mad at s0llux
AA: hes just trying t0 l00k 0ut f0r y0u
CG: OH FUCK YOU'RE ONE OF THOSE.
AA: 0ne 0f what?
AA: psychics?
CG: THAT TOO? FUCK. YOU WOULD BE ANOTHER OF HIS FREAKS.
CG: BUT AS LONG AS YOU STAY OUT OF MY SPONGE I DON'T ACTUALLY GIVE A SHIT ABOUT THAT.
AA: w0w
AA: y0ure pretty weird
CG: SHUT UP, I'M STILL RANTING.
AA: 0k
AA: ...well?
CG: ...YOU MADE ME LOSE TRACK OF MY FLOW, OKAY?
CG: I KNOW YOU'RE LAUGHING OVER THERE, STOP GODDAMN LAUGHING.
CG: WHAT I WAS GOING TO SAY IS, IF YOU'RE ONE OF THOSE DOUCHES WHO THINKS THEY'RE ENTITLED TO JUST WALTZ INTO MY SPACE AND EXPECT ME TO TRUST YOU WITH THE SECRETS OF MY INNERMOST PSYCHE JUST BECAUSE SOME SCHIZOPHRENIC NOOKWHIFFER WITH NO GODDAMN SENSE OF BOUNDARIES GAVE THEM MY NAME AND SAID "HEY, GO MAKE FRIENDS!" THEN FUCK YOU.
CG: FUCK ALL OF YOU.
CG: AND DON'T EVEN THINK ABOUT TRYING TO READ MY MIND,
CG: ITS INNER SANCTUM IS FULL OF HUGE VENOMOUS SERPENTS,
CG: EACH ONE MORE PISSED OFF THAN THE LAST.
AA: 0_0
AA: y0ure just as intense as he said y0u w0uld be
AA: als0 hes n0t schiz0phrenic but 0k
AA: why did it have t0 be snakes th0ugh!
CG: WAIT, WHAT.
CG: ...DID YOU JUST QUOTE TROLL HARRISON FORD?
AA: maybe i did!
AA: if thats a pr0blem then y0ull just have t0 put up with it!
CG: NO, IT'S
CG: ACTUALLY THE ONLY REASON I PROBABLY WON'T BLOCK YOU YET.
CG: BUT YOU HAVE TO ANSWER ME ONE QUESTION.
AA: 0k sh00t
CG: MARRION OR ELLSAR?
The creepily sassy plant-monster guarding the next door wants blood in exchange for letting the pair of you pass, and you're the only living troll in the room, and no fucking way are you doing this.
"Okay, here's the point where I have to ask," you snarl, after retreating to a safe - well, safer - distance from the unholy offspring of a corrupted copy of the Empress's Sweeps Eve Message and a triffid. "Did you have any fucking idea this thing was down here? And why me? Why not anyone else on our whole fucking team?"
She glares at you, and you remember too late that you weren't supposed to ask questions.
"Fuck, sorry."
Her anger fades a little, accompanied by a faint soundtrack in the form of the whirring of a fan and the faint grinding of an overclocked optic drive, and you'd almost rather she stayed mad at you, because it looks less disturbing on her robotic face than sorrow. Or pity. "You don't have to show me."
You look at her, and at the plant, humming mockingly in its alcove. The blood has to be troll, it's already told you. And it has to be yours. And if that shitty green fucker does another cheery retro dance number about chopping your friends up, you think you'll rip out your own spleen, and somewhere in the back of your pan you're starting to wonder if this is really her quest at all. "Yeah, I do."
When you pull a broken puzzle shard from your sylladex (you don't want to sully the Homes Smell Ya Later with your foul ichor while you can avoid it) and slice open your palm, she doesn't even blink. In fact, she doesn't react at all, and you're shaking as you follow her into the next room.
She can't tell anyone - both your computers shut themselves quietly down as soon as you stepped into the temple above, and you can't get them to reboot - but that's slight comfort when she could snap your neck with no weapon but her brain.
AA: y0u have it all wr0ng karkat
AA: im n0t like s0llux
AA: he hears pe0ples last th0ughts
AA: and dying tr0lls are really angry and scared
AA: especially y0ung 0nes
AA: but i talk to tr0lls wh0 are already dead
AA: 0ften tr0lls wh0 have been dead f0r s0me time and are s0mewhat calmer
AA: and s0metimes i can help them!
CG: WHOA.
CG: THAT SOUNDS PRETTY SCARY AND KIND OF AWFUL.
AA: n0 its 0k
AA: gh0sts are really m0re sad than scary
AA: especially since m0st 0f them are kids like us
AA: adult gh0sts m0stly fl0at ar0und in space 0r 0n 0ther planets since thats where they died
AA: except f0r the really 0ld 0nes but there arent many 0f th0se left
CG: I GUESS I NEVER REALLY THOUGHT ABOUT THAT.
CG: I MEAN THAT STILL SOUNDS AWFUL, BUT NOT THE SAME KIND OF AWFUL
CG: BUT HOW DO GHOSTS KNOW THE FUTURE, THAT STILL SEEMS PRETTY FUCKING DODGY.
AA: well s0me 0f them are psychic themselves!
AA: l0ts 0f them actually
AA: psychics seem t0 leave gh0sts m0re readily
AA: als0 time d0esnt w0rk the same way f0r the dead
AA: its n0t like pe0ple think
CG: OOOOOOKAY, NO. CAN WE NOT HAVE THE PSYCHO BULLSHIT CONVERSATION WHERE YOU TELL ME ALL ABOUT HOW CEILING GHOST IS WATCHING ME FONDLE MY SHAME GLOBES AND I NEVER GODDAMN SLEEP AGAIN?
AA: haha 0k
What feels like a million doors and puzzles and perverted guards later (you will always remember, with particular loathing, the one that ate all your shoes just before you reached the "walk over shattered glass" challenge, thank fuck Aradia figured out the pattern of safe spots before you did some really serious damage to your feet), you make it at last to what seems to be the final room, a high-vaulted chapel that looks weirdly like the one you landed in the one and only time you dared venture into LoWaA, only this one seems to be empty. No psychotic angels, no crocodiles, no indents in the walls, no treasure chests, no imps or ogres or basilisks... and, you note with growing apprehension, no other visible doors.
"Are you sure this is it?" You pad gingerly over to the opposite wall, squinting at it to make sure you haven't missed any subtle tracings that you're supposed to, fuck, you don't know, stick a llama skull in or something. Wouldn't surprise you by now. You're pretty sure whoever designed this game is certifiable. "Because it looks more like some idiot on the design crew forgot to dummy this room ou-"
The loud, grating noise behind you drowns out your voice, and what you see when you spin to face it turns your blood to supercooled nitrogen. The door is sliding shut, and your feet are moving before your pan's done telling them to, propelling you halfway back to the entrance before it closes and seals in front of you, and the part of your sponge that still thinks of this insane torture-world as a video game expects music to start up any moment because, "Fuck, how could I be so stupid, this is a fucking boss room, I thought you said there weren't any down here, fuck, Aradi..."
Your voice dies as you realise she should have interrupted you by now. She should have reminded you of your promise, made you recite the rules, spouted some more cryptic psychobullshit, even a ribbit would be music to your auricular sponge clots right now. But she hasn't said a word since you came in, and you turn, unable to breathe, to find her still and her eyes dark, and at last your sponge gets around to informing you that there in fact had been music, of a sort, an unholy symphony of crackling circuits and screaming gears, a sound you've only ever heard in your nightmares.
The sound of a robot unwillingly and abruptly shutting down.
Whatever happens in here now, you are seriously fucked.
AA: team charge is playing team sc0urge t0m0rr0w night
AA: well give vriska a pr0per beatd0wn f0r y0u!
CG: HAHA, THANKS, BUT I KNOW IT'S NOT ME YOU'RE THINKING ABOUT.
CG: YOU'RE TOTALLY BLACK FOR HER, ADMIT IT.
AA: i am n0t!
CG: YES YOU ARE.
AA: i have a healthy distaste for her bluebl00d arr0gance thats all
AA: y0u just see r0mance in everything
CG: THAT'S BECAUSE IT ACTUALLY IS EVERYWHERE, IDIOT. YOU JUST NEVER PAY ATTENTION.
AA: yes i kn0w hate actually is all ar0und
AA: im r0lling my eyes hard n0w
AA: since y0u cant see it
AA: but s0metimes i think y0u 0nly see what y0u expect t0 see karkat
AA: perhaps y0u sh0uld g0 talk t0 nepeta ab0ut y0ur shipping pr0blem
AA: im sure shed be happy t0 be a terrible influence 0n you
CG: ...
CG: ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME?
CG: IF I SO MUCH AS BRING UP ROMANCE EVEN OBLIQUELY SHE WILL RANT AT ME ABOUT HER DUMB SHIPS FOR A WEEK.
CG: OUR SYSTEMS AREN'T EXACTLY COMPATIBLE.
AA: n0?
CG: YOU MIGHT AS WELL TAKE ONE OF MY BRILLIANT DOOMSDAY VIRUSES, TUNE IT PERFECTLY TO THE SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS OF AN IMPERIAL BATTLESHIP, AND THEN TRY TO TEST THE PROTOTYPE ON A FIRST GENERATION IPAD.
CG: SHE TREATS THE QUADRANTS WITH ALL THE SCIENTIFIC RIGOUR OF STICKING HER PAW INTO A HAT AND PULLING OUT A RANDOM THEORY, ONE THAT TURNS OUT NOT TO BE NOT EVEN A THEORY BUT SOME SHITSCRAWL WRITTEN BY GAMZEE, AND THEN TRYING TO SUBMIT IT TO A FLEET-RUN JOURNAL AFTER HAVING IT PEER-REVIEWED BY A DEVELOPMENTALLY STUNTED CABBAGE.
AA: 0_0
AA: d0 y0u mean t0 ch00se y0ur quadrants acc0rding t0 lab0rat0ry testing then?
AA: can i be in the c0ntr0l gr0up?
CG: OH HELL WHY NOT.
CG: IT'S NOT LIKE I'M GOING TO LIVE LONG ENOUGH TO
CG: FUCK.
CG: I DIDN'T MEAN TO TYPE THAT.
AA: its 0k karkat
CG: NO, IT'S NOT
CG: THAT'S ALMOST AS BAD AS SAYING IT OUT LOUD.
CG: OR WORSE.
AA: n0 karkat its 0k really i promise
AA: really i didnt think y0u were that superstiti0us
CG: I'M NOT
CG: I
AA: n0 its fine y0u d0nt have t0 be scared
CG: STOP FUCKING SAYING THAT
CG: I'M GOING TO BE CULLED
CG: WHATEVER I DO
CG: WHATEVER I SAY
CG: NO MATTER HOW GOOD A SOLDIER I AM
CG: HOW THE FUCK IS THAT FINE????
AA: because i have a secret
AA: and my secret is that
AA: all the things y0u think are g0ing to kill y0u
AA: are things y0ure g0ing t0 0utlive
You grasp your sickle, take up position at her back, and wait.
And wait.
Nothing spawns in the middle of the room, or pours out of hidden hatches in the ceiling. The walls don't close in. Whatever shut Aradia down doesn't decide to encore by frying your sponge. The room continues to contain only shadows and silence, and a scared mutant trying to protect a broken robot from nothing at all. It'd be funny if you weren't so terrified.
Eventually you begin to wonder how much worse you could fuck up your situation if you just tried to fix her.
A lot, you decide, and go to make another pass of the stubbornly blank walls instead.
-- carcinoGeneticist [CG] began trolling apocalypseArisen [AA] --
CG: ARADIA
CG: HEY ARADIA ANSWER ME!
CG: TAVROS JUST TOLD ME SOME SHIT ABOUT VRISKA THROWING HIM OFF A FUCKING CLIFF,
CG: AND NOW I CAN'T CONTACT TEREZI OR SOLLUX,
CG: AND NO ONE ELSE KNOWS WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ON!
CG: WHERE ARE YOU?
CG: ARE YOU OKAY?
CG: ARADIA?
You wake from black, empty dreams in a room you now know to be the worst kind of trap, the kind with only one way in and zero ways out, and nothing's coming for you but starvation and thirst and boredom. ...and maybe cold, because for some reason you fell asleep propped against Aradia's legs, and now you're as cramped as this place makes your style.
None of this is how you meant to spend your wriggling day.
Your back spasms when you try to stand, and you have to crawl on all fours to the wall (it would have been more sensible to have slept there in the first place, but abandoning her seemed wrong) and brace yourself against it before you can stretch your muscles out enough to walk, and it doesn't help that your feet are still tender and you feel like you're being stabbed again every time you take a step. You start to reach for your husktop just in case the game's taken pity on you and let you call for help after all, when you see something new.
There's a box in the corner, and you know there was nothing there when you went to sleep. Either someone's been here and couldn't be fucked to either kill or help you, or LoQaM's finally decided to get off its sharp crystalline arse and give you your last challenge after all. Seems safe enough to go ahead and assume the second.
After a cursory search for traps, you lift the lid and find yourself staring at a jumbled pile of tools, sharp-edged scraps of metal, and dodgy-looking circuit boards. It almost looks like the game's provided you with...
Oh no.
NO.
You can't do this. You need Sollux, you need Equius, even Aradia herself could do a better job of this.
But she can't even get out of her body, and no one else can get down here to fix her.
---
It takes you about six hours of prying open access hatches in her skull and gingerly pulling wires out of their slots and putting them back in, to get absolutely nowhere, and you're about to give up when you stumble on something charred and black, and you try not to think, as you use the very tips of your fingers to unhook it and pull it out, that you're holding part of your friend's goddamn thinkpan.
There's just enough left of it to guess that it's probably her motherboard - a piece of it crumbles away as you poke at the corner, and you collapse to your knees, contemplating it glumly. You can't fix it, but you certainly can't put it back in her head, and hoping that just pulling it out might have been enough to free her spriteself was, you can now admit to yourself, really fucking stupid. She needs another one, and it takes you about five minutes of desperate searching in the box before you find one, clean and clear and when you try putting a test spark through it, it lights up happily enough.
It takes even longer to get it back into her pan, and when her eyes light up and her fingers twitch, you dare to feel relief. Then she shuts down again, and it's all you can do not to scream.
---
You dream of green fire, of Derse splitting apart like a cracked eggshell, and a ram-horned girl sleeping in its heart.
You dream of a demon, death on black wings that comes for you in your tower, and the girl's already too late when she rises from her own pyre on bright wings made of time, but she saves you anyway.
When you wake again in your shared tomb, all you remember is that you shouldn't remember any of this.
AA: hell0 karkat
CG: OH THANK FUCK.
CG: ARE YOU OKAY, WHAT HAPPENED OUT THERE, WHERE ARE TEREZI AND SOLLUX?
AA: theyre alive
AA: theyll message y0u sh0rtly
CG: OKAY I GUESS THAT'S A FUCKING START.
CG: BUT WHAT ABOUT YOU?
CG: ARE YOU
AA: im 0k
AA: thats all y0u need t0 kn0w right n0w
AA: and that this had t0 happen
AA: it was necessary
AA: y0u w0nt understand yet but thats 0k t00
AA: y0u d0nt need t0 understand
AA: because everything will happen the way its g0ing t0 regardless
CG: OKAY YOU'RE BEING SERIOUSLY TERRIBLE NOW.
CG: SERIOUSLY YOU NEED TO STOP, THIS IS CREEPING ME THE FUCK OUT.
AA: s0rry
The crabtop still doesn't work, no surprise, and the toolbox sits as you left it - obviously the game wants you to fix her, even though it was the game that broke her in the first place, and you wonder if she knew this was going to happen all along, and why the fuck she didn't pick Equius for this quest instead.
"I don't even know if you can hear me in there," you tell her as you run your hands awkwardly down her back in search of a way into her pump, "and I actually hope you can't. I hope you're out like a smashed lightbulb and not stuck having to listen to me snore all day, but in case you can, I just want to say... what the fuck were you thinking?"
You pause, indulging in stupid, superstitious hope that she'll be insulted enough to answer - it works in at least half the ghost stories you know, after all - but nothing happens, not even an angry attempt at sparkage. You open up her thorax and pray you won't have to do anything more.
TA: hey kk
TA: diid you hear from aa?
CG: YEAH, I GUESS.
TA: you "gue22"? what the fuck kk, ii thought you liiked her?
CG: I DO.
CG: OR I DID, IT'S JUST
CG: I CAN'T TALK TO HER ANYMORE.
CG: I DON'T KNOW WHY, I GUESS SOMETHING HAPPENED TO HER IN THAT LAST GAME THAT NO ONE WILL FUCKING TALK ABOUT, AND SUDDENLY SHE'S ALL MORBID AND CREEPY AS FUCK.
TA: 2he ii2 diifferent ii gue22.
TA: ii feel liike that2 my fault but ii dont know why.
TA: ii cant remember much of that niight to be hone2t
TA: but iim not giiviing up on her.
The pump was already damaged, you realise as you lift it out of her chest, fingers delicately poised around the broken connectors, stained with something indigo that at first you can't identify. You dig a cloth out of your sylladex to wipe it off (it's a fucking miracle you manage to stumble on the code the first time, you really have to talk to Sollux about your fucking modus if you ever get out of this shithole), and gape at the cracked shell, the pieces fitted together clumsily inside as though...
"Did you try to reinstall this yourself? Fuck, Aradia, I thought you were the goddamn smart one... Whoa, wait, it looks like there's something missing in here. Did Vriska do this? Did she rip out a piece and not give it back?" You attempt to run a hand through your hair and sigh like the engineers all do in the movies, but it gets caught three times on knots before you give up and just stare at the mess that is your Maid's heart. "I don't think I can fix the shell, but I can at least put everything back in the right order, I think...? Except for whatever goes in that hole, but you seemed fine without it before. Sort of."
You only realise after a few seconds of silence that you're waiting for her to answer. You've got to stop doing that.
"And this is gonna take all night again, isn't it? If it even works. God fucking dammit."
Halfway through putting everything together, you realise what the blue stuff is, and waste half an hour throwing a tantrum that regrettably does no damage to the floor, walls, ceiling or still-sealed door whatsoever, because what kind of sick fuck builds a robot that runs on his own blood?
"Do you have any fucking idea how much I want to rip out his blood replacer right now?" you tell her through clenched fangs as you slide the broken pump carefully back into place and seal it into the pipes that you now know are veins and arteries. "Every time I think that arsefuck can't get any worse. There's just no goddamn bottom to that well of sweaty perversion."
---
When you seal up her chest hatch, you're rewarded with another finger twitch.
And then another.
A few breaths later, her eyes go dark again, and you drop, exhausted and despairing, to the floor. You fixed her brain and her heart as best you could, and she doesn't need to eat or breathe, what other broken vital parts can she have?
"Am I supposed to find your fucking courage somehow? Fucking help me," you plead, clawing at her unmoving feet with fingers far too small to make a dent.
She stands like marble, and holds her secrets the same.
AC: :33 < *ac crawls under karkat's chair and curls up miserably*
AC: :33 < did mew know aradia was a ghost, karkitty?
AC: :33 < *she says*
CG: ...WHAT.
AC: :33 < she was dead all this time!
AC: :33 < i feel really pawful...
CG: WHY THE FUCK WOULD YOU? YOU DIDN'T GODDAMN KILL HER.
CG: THAT'S IF SHE'S EVEN
CG: OH GOD.
CG: THAT MAKES WAY TOO MUCH FUCKING SENSE.
CG: WHY DIDN'T SHE TELL ME?
CG: WHY DIDN'T ANYONE TELL ME?
AC: :33 < meowbe they didnt know?
AC: :33 < i didn't know until she jumped into her sprite just meow!
CG: ...SHE DID WHAT.
CG: HOLY FUCKBAGS, WHAT KIND OF SHITTY CHEATING TACTICS ARE YOUR TEAM PLAYING AT???
CG: ALSO DO YOU ALL HAVE TO FIGHT TELEKINETIC IMPS WITH WHIPS NOW?
CG: THAT IS SO FUCKED UP.
AC: :33 < no, no its okay
AC: :33 < that was pawst-entry
AC: ;33 < oh yeah shes also a frog now!
CG: WHAT.
AC: :33 < yes! she dropped a frog head into her sprite and then pounced right in after it!
CG: ...
CG: OKAY REMIND ME NEVER TO GET KILLED BY A PSYCHOTIC SPIDERGIRL.
CG: BECAUSE BEING DEAD IS BAD ENOUGH BUT THAT FROGSPRITE THING?
CG: FUCKING
CG: GROSS.
It's stupid that you miss her when she hasn't even gone anywhere, and you wish you could just hate her instead - the herald of your failure, the lost girl condemned to spend her afterlife cleaning up your messes, and for no more than trying to avenge a friend you were too cowardly to help.
It'd be so much simpler.
---
You wake to a cool hand stroking your hair, and your first thought is, Huh. Must have accidentally fixed her heat settings, before you realise she shouldn't be able to move at all and freeze up in panic.
"Shh," she says, her speech unit grinding a little, and you think maybe you should get her to let you fix that before you remember that's how it always sounds. "It's ok, Karkat. You finished."
"No, I didn't." Your voice is harsh with grief, with the knowledge of your failure. "I didn't fix anything, I did everything I could do and nothing worked."
"That was the point."
You dare to look up at her. She doesn't look mad, so you say, "That makes no goddamn sense."
"That's the game. Paradox space doesn't always run on the same logic you think it does."
"I'm starting to think the designers of this shitfest have never even heard of logic." You haven't moved, and you're not sure why. "But we're still stuck in here."
"Not anymore." She holds you tight, and you try not to flinch as the world blurs around you.
AA: whats y0ur fav0urite c0l0ur karkat?
CG: THAT IS THE DUMBEST QUESTION I EVER HEARD.
CG: YOU'RE JUST FISHING FOR A HINT AT MY BLOOD COLOUR AND YOU'RE NOT EVEN SUBTLE.
CG: SO I'M GONNA SAY BLACK.
CG: ALSO FUCK YOU.
AA: sigh
AA: i wish y0ud accept that i h0nestly am n0t trying t0 trick y0u!
AA: and anyway i believe y0u
CG: YOU DO.
AA: it just feels right f0r s0me reas0n
AA: that y0u w0uld be s0me0ne wh0 likes black
AA: w0uld y0u like t0 kn0w a secret karkat
CG: ONLY IF I DON'T HAVE TO GIVE YOU ONE BACK.
AA: w0w
AA: y0u really are m0re paran0id than i remembered!
AA: but n0 y0u d0nt
CG: "REMEMBERED"?
AA: and the secret is that i really like black t00
CG: WAIT.
AA: its just really restful
AA: and kind of mysterious! :)
CG: WHOA
CG: WHOA WAIT.
CG: YOU JUST THREW A SPANNER INTO THE RAILS OF THIS ENTIRE CONVERSATION, WHAT THE FUCK IS UP WITH THAT?
CG: NOT THAT I MIND PERSONALLY, BUT AREN'T YOU BREAKING SOME KIND OF PERSONAL RULE HERE?
AA: sorry
AA: its just that were running out of time for you to remember on your own before you wake up
AA: and i wanted to at least say a proper hello while i was passing!
AA: <3
When the Green Sun goes nova, you think you finally get it. What you needed was a miracle. You just had to earn it first.
---
It turns out fairy lips are softer than robot ones, though that's nothing you couldn't have expected. "Please stay," you say, mimicking Rose's words unthinkingly and without hope in the light of the green sun, and she smiles.
"I've got things to do," she says, "but if you still want me once they're done, then I will! But don't worry, Karkat, I'll drop into your dream from time to time." She giggles at her own pun, and it's the sweetest sound you've ever heard. "Probably when neither of us expects it, the Furthest Ring is like that!"
Serendipity is like that, you remind yourself, and with one last kiss, you let her go.
Ships: Aradia<3Karkat
Summary: Karkat hates ghosts, cryptic arseholish sprites, and anything Equius Zahhak has ever touched, and he's not that fond of frogs either. But even when she drags him on the worst sidequest ever, he still can't manage to hate Aradia Megido.
Notes: Third fic for the fairytale challenge - March's prompts were The Frog Prince and black. ...I don't think this one should be any more upsetting than canon generally is? Though it may help to remember that Karkat has no idea what he's talking about when it comes to mental illness and related issues.
"Ribbit," she says, and the puzzle piece you're holding slips out of your hands.
"What the fuck?"
"Sorry." She sounds completely unapologetic, and for a moment you worry about what else that creep might've hidden away in her programming, before you remember she was just as bad when she was a ghost. "I'm part frog. I can't really control the ribbits."
You knew that. You did. But you've been trying not to think about it, and her calm acceptance of her condition makes you want to recoil.
"Yeah, about that." You take a moment to check your fingers for cuts before you gingerly pick the piece up again and hand it up to her where she hovers level with the outline's head, "I get that you being a sprite is important in some way you won't fucking talk about because you have some terrifying robot boner for being infuriatingly cryptic at every goddamn turn, but why the fuck did it have to be a frog? Why the hell would you decide that dumping a goddamn frog head into your sprite is so fucking important that you can't even trust Nepeta to prototype the damn thing for you? And then there's the fact that they're all over the fucking place - Kanaya even said her planet's covered in them, like crocodiles and salamanders aren't fucking awful enough."
She slots the piece into place with a soft whirr, and doesn't look down. "What did the Archagent tell you, Karkat? And I could use a piece with a sharp end now."
You hold back a snarl - it's not her fault this nookwhiffing piece-of-shit game climbed out of its shell early and stole every other game's share of jigsaw puzzles before they woke up - and hunt for it. "Mostly that the Queen took off her ring and went into seclusion, and that's where I should fucking be right now, on Derse getting it back, so remind me why the fuck I'm on your stupid crystal planet helping you open doors?"
"Because I told you to." Her voice is calm, cold and infuriatingly patient. But you did promise to obey her orders for the duration of this sidequest, and given the number of times her clones have saved you in the last day alone, that's far less than you owe her. "And why did she go into hiding?"
"How the fuck should I know? All Jack said is it was something we did. Something one of us dropped in the ker-" You stare up at her, failing to notice the new piece you're holding slide out of your hand until it hits the ground like the first. This time it shatters. "Holy fuck."
She glides down to land beside you, and you swear you feel the air ripple as she picks up the broken piece. In the half-second it takes her to look back up at you and twitch her mouth in something that, on a good night, might almost pass for a satisfied smile, it's whole. "Ribbit."
Can't control them, your arse.
It's really not that you hate frogs, or robots, or ghosts. Well, maybe ghosts. But you can't think about her being a robot without imagining Zahhak's sweaty fingers in all of her circuits, and as for frogs... well, there are reasons you've been bonding really well with Jack, and even if you do think his loathing for them is kind of over-the-top, you've still never been fond of them.
The first time you see her in person, though, less than a day into your quest, you're still startled by the strength of your revulsion. Maybe it's because even before she opens her mouth, you know her presence means you fucked everything up.
"So do I get to know the truth yet?" You attempt to brush the rock dust out of your hair as Aradia heaves the stone door open. Bad move. You're pretty sure you just look like you have grey hair now, and your scalp itches. "I mean, I know you're getting off on all this "blind obedience" hoofbeastshit, but I've seen way too many movies where the protagonist gets dragged into a fight he knows nothing about by some half-baked veteran and only finds out after he's blown up half the Imperial Fleet that his mentor was an insurrectionist the whole time, and you know what? They all suck."
You wait for her to say, That's because they're all Imperial propaganda, or, But you still keep watching them, but all she says is, "I'm sorry," and she drifts into the darkened passage in that eerie ghostlike waft that nothing made of metal and gears and circuits should be capable of, and you force down a shiver and follow.
The door slams behind you without the vicious red signature of her telekinetics, and you're left in the dark. "Fuck! It couldn't wait one second for our eyes to adjust?! Or mine, I guess, you can probably just shift to thermals or some shit."
Her hand brushes yours, the metal warmer than you expected, and you jump. "Equius hasn't worked out how to bring me down to a blueblood temperature range," she explains, and there are so many things wrong with that sentence that it leaves you breathless. "But maybe you should list the rules for me, Karkat."
You chafe against her tone of command, but you did give her your word, so you grit your fangs and say, "Fine. I do as you say until we get back to -" your hive, only she doesn't have one, just like she doesn't have a real body, fucking Vriska, Aradia was your friend, one of your better ones, and she ruined her - "a return node. I don't ask questions. I don't try to take control. And I don't complain about the way you're obviously going to be a cryptic fuckpan the whole time and let me walk into every trap without a scrap of warning, and can we please just fucking get on with it before I decide to eviscerate myself instead and leave my corpse to be eaten by whatever vermin are living in this temple?"
"Ok." She curls her fingers inbetween yours, and you don't want her to touch you, but you want even less to spend the rest of your sidequest walking into walls. You let out a frustrated breath and let her lead you through the dark, seething silently at your helplessness.
-- apocalypseArisen [AA] began trolling carcinoGeneticist [CG] --
AA: hell0!
CG: WHO THE FUCK ARE YOU AND HOW DID YOU GET MY TAG?
CG: DID SOLLUX GIVE IT TO YOU?
CG: IS THIS PART OF HIS "BETRAY KK'S EXISTENCE TO AS MANY OF HIS FUCKED UP FRIENDS AS POSSIBLE IN A MISGUIDED ATTEMPT TO STOP HIM BEING A HERMIT" SCHEME?
CG: BECAUSE IF IT IS, LET ME TELL YOU I AM QUITE FUCKING HAPPY LIVING AS A HERMIT.
CG: IT'S PRETTY AWESOME ACTUALLY.
AA: c00l!
AA: i bet y0u can tell me all kinds 0f interesting things ab0ut being a hermit
AA: and y0u sh0uldnt be mad at s0llux
AA: hes just trying t0 l00k 0ut f0r y0u
CG: OH FUCK YOU'RE ONE OF THOSE.
AA: 0ne 0f what?
AA: psychics?
CG: THAT TOO? FUCK. YOU WOULD BE ANOTHER OF HIS FREAKS.
CG: BUT AS LONG AS YOU STAY OUT OF MY SPONGE I DON'T ACTUALLY GIVE A SHIT ABOUT THAT.
AA: w0w
AA: y0ure pretty weird
CG: SHUT UP, I'M STILL RANTING.
AA: 0k
AA: ...well?
CG: ...YOU MADE ME LOSE TRACK OF MY FLOW, OKAY?
CG: I KNOW YOU'RE LAUGHING OVER THERE, STOP GODDAMN LAUGHING.
CG: WHAT I WAS GOING TO SAY IS, IF YOU'RE ONE OF THOSE DOUCHES WHO THINKS THEY'RE ENTITLED TO JUST WALTZ INTO MY SPACE AND EXPECT ME TO TRUST YOU WITH THE SECRETS OF MY INNERMOST PSYCHE JUST BECAUSE SOME SCHIZOPHRENIC NOOKWHIFFER WITH NO GODDAMN SENSE OF BOUNDARIES GAVE THEM MY NAME AND SAID "HEY, GO MAKE FRIENDS!" THEN FUCK YOU.
CG: FUCK ALL OF YOU.
CG: AND DON'T EVEN THINK ABOUT TRYING TO READ MY MIND,
CG: ITS INNER SANCTUM IS FULL OF HUGE VENOMOUS SERPENTS,
CG: EACH ONE MORE PISSED OFF THAN THE LAST.
AA: 0_0
AA: y0ure just as intense as he said y0u w0uld be
AA: als0 hes n0t schiz0phrenic but 0k
AA: why did it have t0 be snakes th0ugh!
CG: WAIT, WHAT.
CG: ...DID YOU JUST QUOTE TROLL HARRISON FORD?
AA: maybe i did!
AA: if thats a pr0blem then y0ull just have t0 put up with it!
CG: NO, IT'S
CG: ACTUALLY THE ONLY REASON I PROBABLY WON'T BLOCK YOU YET.
CG: BUT YOU HAVE TO ANSWER ME ONE QUESTION.
AA: 0k sh00t
CG: MARRION OR ELLSAR?
The creepily sassy plant-monster guarding the next door wants blood in exchange for letting the pair of you pass, and you're the only living troll in the room, and no fucking way are you doing this.
"Okay, here's the point where I have to ask," you snarl, after retreating to a safe - well, safer - distance from the unholy offspring of a corrupted copy of the Empress's Sweeps Eve Message and a triffid. "Did you have any fucking idea this thing was down here? And why me? Why not anyone else on our whole fucking team?"
She glares at you, and you remember too late that you weren't supposed to ask questions.
"Fuck, sorry."
Her anger fades a little, accompanied by a faint soundtrack in the form of the whirring of a fan and the faint grinding of an overclocked optic drive, and you'd almost rather she stayed mad at you, because it looks less disturbing on her robotic face than sorrow. Or pity. "You don't have to show me."
You look at her, and at the plant, humming mockingly in its alcove. The blood has to be troll, it's already told you. And it has to be yours. And if that shitty green fucker does another cheery retro dance number about chopping your friends up, you think you'll rip out your own spleen, and somewhere in the back of your pan you're starting to wonder if this is really her quest at all. "Yeah, I do."
When you pull a broken puzzle shard from your sylladex (you don't want to sully the Homes Smell Ya Later with your foul ichor while you can avoid it) and slice open your palm, she doesn't even blink. In fact, she doesn't react at all, and you're shaking as you follow her into the next room.
She can't tell anyone - both your computers shut themselves quietly down as soon as you stepped into the temple above, and you can't get them to reboot - but that's slight comfort when she could snap your neck with no weapon but her brain.
AA: y0u have it all wr0ng karkat
AA: im n0t like s0llux
AA: he hears pe0ples last th0ughts
AA: and dying tr0lls are really angry and scared
AA: especially y0ung 0nes
AA: but i talk to tr0lls wh0 are already dead
AA: 0ften tr0lls wh0 have been dead f0r s0me time and are s0mewhat calmer
AA: and s0metimes i can help them!
CG: WHOA.
CG: THAT SOUNDS PRETTY SCARY AND KIND OF AWFUL.
AA: n0 its 0k
AA: gh0sts are really m0re sad than scary
AA: especially since m0st 0f them are kids like us
AA: adult gh0sts m0stly fl0at ar0und in space 0r 0n 0ther planets since thats where they died
AA: except f0r the really 0ld 0nes but there arent many 0f th0se left
CG: I GUESS I NEVER REALLY THOUGHT ABOUT THAT.
CG: I MEAN THAT STILL SOUNDS AWFUL, BUT NOT THE SAME KIND OF AWFUL
CG: BUT HOW DO GHOSTS KNOW THE FUTURE, THAT STILL SEEMS PRETTY FUCKING DODGY.
AA: well s0me 0f them are psychic themselves!
AA: l0ts 0f them actually
AA: psychics seem t0 leave gh0sts m0re readily
AA: als0 time d0esnt w0rk the same way f0r the dead
AA: its n0t like pe0ple think
CG: OOOOOOKAY, NO. CAN WE NOT HAVE THE PSYCHO BULLSHIT CONVERSATION WHERE YOU TELL ME ALL ABOUT HOW CEILING GHOST IS WATCHING ME FONDLE MY SHAME GLOBES AND I NEVER GODDAMN SLEEP AGAIN?
AA: haha 0k
What feels like a million doors and puzzles and perverted guards later (you will always remember, with particular loathing, the one that ate all your shoes just before you reached the "walk over shattered glass" challenge, thank fuck Aradia figured out the pattern of safe spots before you did some really serious damage to your feet), you make it at last to what seems to be the final room, a high-vaulted chapel that looks weirdly like the one you landed in the one and only time you dared venture into LoWaA, only this one seems to be empty. No psychotic angels, no crocodiles, no indents in the walls, no treasure chests, no imps or ogres or basilisks... and, you note with growing apprehension, no other visible doors.
"Are you sure this is it?" You pad gingerly over to the opposite wall, squinting at it to make sure you haven't missed any subtle tracings that you're supposed to, fuck, you don't know, stick a llama skull in or something. Wouldn't surprise you by now. You're pretty sure whoever designed this game is certifiable. "Because it looks more like some idiot on the design crew forgot to dummy this room ou-"
The loud, grating noise behind you drowns out your voice, and what you see when you spin to face it turns your blood to supercooled nitrogen. The door is sliding shut, and your feet are moving before your pan's done telling them to, propelling you halfway back to the entrance before it closes and seals in front of you, and the part of your sponge that still thinks of this insane torture-world as a video game expects music to start up any moment because, "Fuck, how could I be so stupid, this is a fucking boss room, I thought you said there weren't any down here, fuck, Aradi..."
Your voice dies as you realise she should have interrupted you by now. She should have reminded you of your promise, made you recite the rules, spouted some more cryptic psychobullshit, even a ribbit would be music to your auricular sponge clots right now. But she hasn't said a word since you came in, and you turn, unable to breathe, to find her still and her eyes dark, and at last your sponge gets around to informing you that there in fact had been music, of a sort, an unholy symphony of crackling circuits and screaming gears, a sound you've only ever heard in your nightmares.
The sound of a robot unwillingly and abruptly shutting down.
Whatever happens in here now, you are seriously fucked.
AA: team charge is playing team sc0urge t0m0rr0w night
AA: well give vriska a pr0per beatd0wn f0r y0u!
CG: HAHA, THANKS, BUT I KNOW IT'S NOT ME YOU'RE THINKING ABOUT.
CG: YOU'RE TOTALLY BLACK FOR HER, ADMIT IT.
AA: i am n0t!
CG: YES YOU ARE.
AA: i have a healthy distaste for her bluebl00d arr0gance thats all
AA: y0u just see r0mance in everything
CG: THAT'S BECAUSE IT ACTUALLY IS EVERYWHERE, IDIOT. YOU JUST NEVER PAY ATTENTION.
AA: yes i kn0w hate actually is all ar0und
AA: im r0lling my eyes hard n0w
AA: since y0u cant see it
AA: but s0metimes i think y0u 0nly see what y0u expect t0 see karkat
AA: perhaps y0u sh0uld g0 talk t0 nepeta ab0ut y0ur shipping pr0blem
AA: im sure shed be happy t0 be a terrible influence 0n you
CG: ...
CG: ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME?
CG: IF I SO MUCH AS BRING UP ROMANCE EVEN OBLIQUELY SHE WILL RANT AT ME ABOUT HER DUMB SHIPS FOR A WEEK.
CG: OUR SYSTEMS AREN'T EXACTLY COMPATIBLE.
AA: n0?
CG: YOU MIGHT AS WELL TAKE ONE OF MY BRILLIANT DOOMSDAY VIRUSES, TUNE IT PERFECTLY TO THE SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS OF AN IMPERIAL BATTLESHIP, AND THEN TRY TO TEST THE PROTOTYPE ON A FIRST GENERATION IPAD.
CG: SHE TREATS THE QUADRANTS WITH ALL THE SCIENTIFIC RIGOUR OF STICKING HER PAW INTO A HAT AND PULLING OUT A RANDOM THEORY, ONE THAT TURNS OUT NOT TO BE NOT EVEN A THEORY BUT SOME SHITSCRAWL WRITTEN BY GAMZEE, AND THEN TRYING TO SUBMIT IT TO A FLEET-RUN JOURNAL AFTER HAVING IT PEER-REVIEWED BY A DEVELOPMENTALLY STUNTED CABBAGE.
AA: 0_0
AA: d0 y0u mean t0 ch00se y0ur quadrants acc0rding t0 lab0rat0ry testing then?
AA: can i be in the c0ntr0l gr0up?
CG: OH HELL WHY NOT.
CG: IT'S NOT LIKE I'M GOING TO LIVE LONG ENOUGH TO
CG: FUCK.
CG: I DIDN'T MEAN TO TYPE THAT.
AA: its 0k karkat
CG: NO, IT'S NOT
CG: THAT'S ALMOST AS BAD AS SAYING IT OUT LOUD.
CG: OR WORSE.
AA: n0 karkat its 0k really i promise
AA: really i didnt think y0u were that superstiti0us
CG: I'M NOT
CG: I
AA: n0 its fine y0u d0nt have t0 be scared
CG: STOP FUCKING SAYING THAT
CG: I'M GOING TO BE CULLED
CG: WHATEVER I DO
CG: WHATEVER I SAY
CG: NO MATTER HOW GOOD A SOLDIER I AM
CG: HOW THE FUCK IS THAT FINE????
AA: because i have a secret
AA: and my secret is that
AA: all the things y0u think are g0ing to kill y0u
AA: are things y0ure g0ing t0 0utlive
You grasp your sickle, take up position at her back, and wait.
And wait.
Nothing spawns in the middle of the room, or pours out of hidden hatches in the ceiling. The walls don't close in. Whatever shut Aradia down doesn't decide to encore by frying your sponge. The room continues to contain only shadows and silence, and a scared mutant trying to protect a broken robot from nothing at all. It'd be funny if you weren't so terrified.
Eventually you begin to wonder how much worse you could fuck up your situation if you just tried to fix her.
A lot, you decide, and go to make another pass of the stubbornly blank walls instead.
-- carcinoGeneticist [CG] began trolling apocalypseArisen [AA] --
CG: ARADIA
CG: HEY ARADIA ANSWER ME!
CG: TAVROS JUST TOLD ME SOME SHIT ABOUT VRISKA THROWING HIM OFF A FUCKING CLIFF,
CG: AND NOW I CAN'T CONTACT TEREZI OR SOLLUX,
CG: AND NO ONE ELSE KNOWS WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ON!
CG: WHERE ARE YOU?
CG: ARE YOU OKAY?
CG: ARADIA?
You wake from black, empty dreams in a room you now know to be the worst kind of trap, the kind with only one way in and zero ways out, and nothing's coming for you but starvation and thirst and boredom. ...and maybe cold, because for some reason you fell asleep propped against Aradia's legs, and now you're as cramped as this place makes your style.
None of this is how you meant to spend your wriggling day.
Your back spasms when you try to stand, and you have to crawl on all fours to the wall (it would have been more sensible to have slept there in the first place, but abandoning her seemed wrong) and brace yourself against it before you can stretch your muscles out enough to walk, and it doesn't help that your feet are still tender and you feel like you're being stabbed again every time you take a step. You start to reach for your husktop just in case the game's taken pity on you and let you call for help after all, when you see something new.
There's a box in the corner, and you know there was nothing there when you went to sleep. Either someone's been here and couldn't be fucked to either kill or help you, or LoQaM's finally decided to get off its sharp crystalline arse and give you your last challenge after all. Seems safe enough to go ahead and assume the second.
After a cursory search for traps, you lift the lid and find yourself staring at a jumbled pile of tools, sharp-edged scraps of metal, and dodgy-looking circuit boards. It almost looks like the game's provided you with...
Oh no.
NO.
You can't do this. You need Sollux, you need Equius, even Aradia herself could do a better job of this.
But she can't even get out of her body, and no one else can get down here to fix her.
It takes you about six hours of prying open access hatches in her skull and gingerly pulling wires out of their slots and putting them back in, to get absolutely nowhere, and you're about to give up when you stumble on something charred and black, and you try not to think, as you use the very tips of your fingers to unhook it and pull it out, that you're holding part of your friend's goddamn thinkpan.
There's just enough left of it to guess that it's probably her motherboard - a piece of it crumbles away as you poke at the corner, and you collapse to your knees, contemplating it glumly. You can't fix it, but you certainly can't put it back in her head, and hoping that just pulling it out might have been enough to free her spriteself was, you can now admit to yourself, really fucking stupid. She needs another one, and it takes you about five minutes of desperate searching in the box before you find one, clean and clear and when you try putting a test spark through it, it lights up happily enough.
It takes even longer to get it back into her pan, and when her eyes light up and her fingers twitch, you dare to feel relief. Then she shuts down again, and it's all you can do not to scream.
You dream of green fire, of Derse splitting apart like a cracked eggshell, and a ram-horned girl sleeping in its heart.
You dream of a demon, death on black wings that comes for you in your tower, and the girl's already too late when she rises from her own pyre on bright wings made of time, but she saves you anyway.
When you wake again in your shared tomb, all you remember is that you shouldn't remember any of this.
AA: hell0 karkat
CG: OH THANK FUCK.
CG: ARE YOU OKAY, WHAT HAPPENED OUT THERE, WHERE ARE TEREZI AND SOLLUX?
AA: theyre alive
AA: theyll message y0u sh0rtly
CG: OKAY I GUESS THAT'S A FUCKING START.
CG: BUT WHAT ABOUT YOU?
CG: ARE YOU
AA: im 0k
AA: thats all y0u need t0 kn0w right n0w
AA: and that this had t0 happen
AA: it was necessary
AA: y0u w0nt understand yet but thats 0k t00
AA: y0u d0nt need t0 understand
AA: because everything will happen the way its g0ing t0 regardless
CG: OKAY YOU'RE BEING SERIOUSLY TERRIBLE NOW.
CG: SERIOUSLY YOU NEED TO STOP, THIS IS CREEPING ME THE FUCK OUT.
AA: s0rry
The crabtop still doesn't work, no surprise, and the toolbox sits as you left it - obviously the game wants you to fix her, even though it was the game that broke her in the first place, and you wonder if she knew this was going to happen all along, and why the fuck she didn't pick Equius for this quest instead.
"I don't even know if you can hear me in there," you tell her as you run your hands awkwardly down her back in search of a way into her pump, "and I actually hope you can't. I hope you're out like a smashed lightbulb and not stuck having to listen to me snore all day, but in case you can, I just want to say... what the fuck were you thinking?"
You pause, indulging in stupid, superstitious hope that she'll be insulted enough to answer - it works in at least half the ghost stories you know, after all - but nothing happens, not even an angry attempt at sparkage. You open up her thorax and pray you won't have to do anything more.
TA: hey kk
TA: diid you hear from aa?
CG: YEAH, I GUESS.
TA: you "gue22"? what the fuck kk, ii thought you liiked her?
CG: I DO.
CG: OR I DID, IT'S JUST
CG: I CAN'T TALK TO HER ANYMORE.
CG: I DON'T KNOW WHY, I GUESS SOMETHING HAPPENED TO HER IN THAT LAST GAME THAT NO ONE WILL FUCKING TALK ABOUT, AND SUDDENLY SHE'S ALL MORBID AND CREEPY AS FUCK.
TA: 2he ii2 diifferent ii gue22.
TA: ii feel liike that2 my fault but ii dont know why.
TA: ii cant remember much of that niight to be hone2t
TA: but iim not giiviing up on her.
The pump was already damaged, you realise as you lift it out of her chest, fingers delicately poised around the broken connectors, stained with something indigo that at first you can't identify. You dig a cloth out of your sylladex to wipe it off (it's a fucking miracle you manage to stumble on the code the first time, you really have to talk to Sollux about your fucking modus if you ever get out of this shithole), and gape at the cracked shell, the pieces fitted together clumsily inside as though...
"Did you try to reinstall this yourself? Fuck, Aradia, I thought you were the goddamn smart one... Whoa, wait, it looks like there's something missing in here. Did Vriska do this? Did she rip out a piece and not give it back?" You attempt to run a hand through your hair and sigh like the engineers all do in the movies, but it gets caught three times on knots before you give up and just stare at the mess that is your Maid's heart. "I don't think I can fix the shell, but I can at least put everything back in the right order, I think...? Except for whatever goes in that hole, but you seemed fine without it before. Sort of."
You only realise after a few seconds of silence that you're waiting for her to answer. You've got to stop doing that.
"And this is gonna take all night again, isn't it? If it even works. God fucking dammit."
Halfway through putting everything together, you realise what the blue stuff is, and waste half an hour throwing a tantrum that regrettably does no damage to the floor, walls, ceiling or still-sealed door whatsoever, because what kind of sick fuck builds a robot that runs on his own blood?
"Do you have any fucking idea how much I want to rip out his blood replacer right now?" you tell her through clenched fangs as you slide the broken pump carefully back into place and seal it into the pipes that you now know are veins and arteries. "Every time I think that arsefuck can't get any worse. There's just no goddamn bottom to that well of sweaty perversion."
When you seal up her chest hatch, you're rewarded with another finger twitch.
And then another.
A few breaths later, her eyes go dark again, and you drop, exhausted and despairing, to the floor. You fixed her brain and her heart as best you could, and she doesn't need to eat or breathe, what other broken vital parts can she have?
"Am I supposed to find your fucking courage somehow? Fucking help me," you plead, clawing at her unmoving feet with fingers far too small to make a dent.
She stands like marble, and holds her secrets the same.
AC: :33 < *ac crawls under karkat's chair and curls up miserably*
AC: :33 < did mew know aradia was a ghost, karkitty?
AC: :33 < *she says*
CG: ...WHAT.
AC: :33 < she was dead all this time!
AC: :33 < i feel really pawful...
CG: WHY THE FUCK WOULD YOU? YOU DIDN'T GODDAMN KILL HER.
CG: THAT'S IF SHE'S EVEN
CG: OH GOD.
CG: THAT MAKES WAY TOO MUCH FUCKING SENSE.
CG: WHY DIDN'T SHE TELL ME?
CG: WHY DIDN'T ANYONE TELL ME?
AC: :33 < meowbe they didnt know?
AC: :33 < i didn't know until she jumped into her sprite just meow!
CG: ...SHE DID WHAT.
CG: HOLY FUCKBAGS, WHAT KIND OF SHITTY CHEATING TACTICS ARE YOUR TEAM PLAYING AT???
CG: ALSO DO YOU ALL HAVE TO FIGHT TELEKINETIC IMPS WITH WHIPS NOW?
CG: THAT IS SO FUCKED UP.
AC: :33 < no, no its okay
AC: :33 < that was pawst-entry
AC: ;33 < oh yeah shes also a frog now!
CG: WHAT.
AC: :33 < yes! she dropped a frog head into her sprite and then pounced right in after it!
CG: ...
CG: OKAY REMIND ME NEVER TO GET KILLED BY A PSYCHOTIC SPIDERGIRL.
CG: BECAUSE BEING DEAD IS BAD ENOUGH BUT THAT FROGSPRITE THING?
CG: FUCKING
CG: GROSS.
It's stupid that you miss her when she hasn't even gone anywhere, and you wish you could just hate her instead - the herald of your failure, the lost girl condemned to spend her afterlife cleaning up your messes, and for no more than trying to avenge a friend you were too cowardly to help.
It'd be so much simpler.
You wake to a cool hand stroking your hair, and your first thought is, Huh. Must have accidentally fixed her heat settings, before you realise she shouldn't be able to move at all and freeze up in panic.
"Shh," she says, her speech unit grinding a little, and you think maybe you should get her to let you fix that before you remember that's how it always sounds. "It's ok, Karkat. You finished."
"No, I didn't." Your voice is harsh with grief, with the knowledge of your failure. "I didn't fix anything, I did everything I could do and nothing worked."
"That was the point."
You dare to look up at her. She doesn't look mad, so you say, "That makes no goddamn sense."
"That's the game. Paradox space doesn't always run on the same logic you think it does."
"I'm starting to think the designers of this shitfest have never even heard of logic." You haven't moved, and you're not sure why. "But we're still stuck in here."
"Not anymore." She holds you tight, and you try not to flinch as the world blurs around you.
AA: whats y0ur fav0urite c0l0ur karkat?
CG: THAT IS THE DUMBEST QUESTION I EVER HEARD.
CG: YOU'RE JUST FISHING FOR A HINT AT MY BLOOD COLOUR AND YOU'RE NOT EVEN SUBTLE.
CG: SO I'M GONNA SAY BLACK.
CG: ALSO FUCK YOU.
AA: sigh
AA: i wish y0ud accept that i h0nestly am n0t trying t0 trick y0u!
AA: and anyway i believe y0u
CG: YOU DO.
AA: it just feels right f0r s0me reas0n
AA: that y0u w0uld be s0me0ne wh0 likes black
AA: w0uld y0u like t0 kn0w a secret karkat
CG: ONLY IF I DON'T HAVE TO GIVE YOU ONE BACK.
AA: w0w
AA: y0u really are m0re paran0id than i remembered!
AA: but n0 y0u d0nt
CG: "REMEMBERED"?
AA: and the secret is that i really like black t00
CG: WAIT.
AA: its just really restful
AA: and kind of mysterious! :)
CG: WHOA
CG: WHOA WAIT.
CG: YOU JUST THREW A SPANNER INTO THE RAILS OF THIS ENTIRE CONVERSATION, WHAT THE FUCK IS UP WITH THAT?
CG: NOT THAT I MIND PERSONALLY, BUT AREN'T YOU BREAKING SOME KIND OF PERSONAL RULE HERE?
AA: sorry
AA: its just that were running out of time for you to remember on your own before you wake up
AA: and i wanted to at least say a proper hello while i was passing!
AA: <3
When the Green Sun goes nova, you think you finally get it. What you needed was a miracle. You just had to earn it first.
It turns out fairy lips are softer than robot ones, though that's nothing you couldn't have expected. "Please stay," you say, mimicking Rose's words unthinkingly and without hope in the light of the green sun, and she smiles.
"I've got things to do," she says, "but if you still want me once they're done, then I will! But don't worry, Karkat, I'll drop into your dream from time to time." She giggles at her own pun, and it's the sweetest sound you've ever heard. "Probably when neither of us expects it, the Furthest Ring is like that!"
Serendipity is like that, you remind yourself, and with one last kiss, you let her go.