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crabbygreymalkinTitle: And Always One More Time
Ship: Karkat<>Gamzee
Summary: Sifting through the lies can take longer than the romcoms tell you.
Notes: Unchosen submission for HSWC. Includes some disturbing content.
At the top of the highest hill in the city there stands a building with eight spires. You think it used to be a temple, back when there was anyone to worship in it, back before your people came strolling in, bringing with them a planetwarming gift of baked goods and genocide, and the natives' gods took one look at the Condesce with her legions and her fork and her impossible hair, and turned and ran. Now it's a ruin smothered in posters, plastered one atop the other as new slogans become old, and old slogans become obsolete.
The gods aren't all that have abandoned this place.
Nepeta's been busy, though, because there's a new poster over the crack in the main door, a trace of cerulean blood leaking from the edge, and you immediately regret stopping to read it. Not that you're not used to the rhetoric by now - the mutantbloods will steal your quadrants, ravish your descendants, convince your helmsmen to fly into the sun and visit such horrors upon your loved and loathed ones that even the seadwellers who dwell in the depths with the Emissary of the Outer Gods will only speak of them in hushed tones. (And they do, on the newsfeeds at midday when you're not supposed to be listening, though they're disappointingly unimaginative - most of them seem to involve flesh-eating viruses or parasitic fungus, and okay, maybe you considered unleashing a particularly nasty strain of cordyceps on Equius and Vriska once, but you were five and stupid and way overreaching, and Gamzee talked you out of it pretty quickly.)
Naturally, it's all hoofbeastshit. The real terrorist acts are far more subtle, and covered up as often as possible, except for the occasional show trial - no good giving the lowbloods ideas.
But worse than your bitterness, worse than the fact that they couldn't even bothered to say anything new this time (if the Morale Officers are so intent on making you into the goddamn devil, they could at least come up with some new lies), is the horribly familiar silhouette in the background, and you reach hastily to make sure your hood is fully covering your horns as you turn away. You'll never get used to seeing yourself on the posters.
"Who the fuck are they getting to write that shit now, a brain-damaged shellbea-" Your tongue halts mid-rant as the shadowy figure in the corner of your makeshift livingblock (formerly the vestibule, you think, but who really gives a fuck anymore, with the aliens all burned and gone) shifts into the light, towering over you in a way Nepeta never could manage, and with horns that spiral up like... "Oh fuck. Oh fuck."
"Fuck is right, my best motherfucker," says Gamzee, and his claws are hooked in your shirt before you can blink, and he shoves you so hard against the wall that your breath leaves you. "And ain't it the most miraculous stroke of motherfuckin' luck, Karkat," he goes on, his other hand stripping your hood back locust-fast and landing heavy against the stone as he leans over you, trapping you, "that I should be gettin' my wander on in some backwater fuckin' graveyard and find it smells all like my miracle bro and his wicked kittysis."
You swallow hard, try to force the lump out of your suddenly dry squawk blister, try to breathe, to loosen your tongue, you were so fucking stupid, this city's been nigh deserted for so long you let your guard down and oh god, where's Nepeta -
The hand at your thorax moves, twists, claws withdrawing from your shirt to be replaced by a palm pressing hard against your vascular pump, and he chuckles as you freeze. "Don't get at tellin' me that clever motherfuckin' twitcher's all out of motherfucking lies already, cos I'm gettin my know on at that you, my brother," and he leans over you, his laughter bitter and his eyes dark and dangerous, all purple now, without those last specks of grey he still had when you left, "are. Motherfucking. Bottomless."
The worst part is, you never lied to him, not once. You both fell for what the Empire fed you, though, right from the start, and that was only natural when you were eight sweeps old and applying to the Fleet, and he was approaching his ninth and starting to chafe with the waiting, and you both just wanted to be off that tiny cramped planet and flying free.
If you ever meet past-you, you're going to greet him with a sickle to the ganderbulb for being such a panrotted moron. Fighting for Alternian glory, your arse. But you had Gamzee, and he had you, and you dared to hope you were wrong about miracles and maybe your love would be enough of one to save you both.
When they let him speak for you at your trial, you were still young and stupid enough to believe it.
Something harsher than fear is burning its way through your sponge now, and it shakes your tongue loose. "Bottomless? Who the fuck did you go and let into that sick goddamn pan of yours while I was gone? Because I never once told you a fucking thing I knew wasn't true, and you fucking know it, Gamzee."
He hisses, his breath cold against your cheek, and you choke on the stink of greasepaint and stardust and just a hint of sopor, and you realise with a pang in your vascular pump that no one's been taking care of him at all.
You were on permanent probation, of course, everyone from your squad leader to the rustblood maintenance crew on your ship made that clear at every opportunity. But at least you could fight off the midday ambushes without having to worry that you might bleed, and being shoved hornsfirst into a load gaper now and then was better than having to miss training sessions to nurse a papercut, and the night your transfer papers arrived was better still, even if being assigned to a black ops squad reporting directly to the subjugglators seemed too good to be true. Only the best of the best were allowed this close to the highbloods, everyone knew that. And naturally the Grand Highblood's heir could accept only the most loyal, the most sure of heart.
You should have been wary. But all you ever wanted was to serve the Empire, and for the first time, the Empire actually seemed to want your service. And besides, it put you near your moirail. How could you resist?
"Then you tell me, bro," he breathes into your ear, "why the Mirthful Prophets are screaming in my motherfuckin' pan about all those wicked promises you went and motherfuckin' broke."
You could reach his shoulder, easy, you know well how the two of you fit together, but you're dizzy with his scent and besides, you still can't bring yourself to raise a hand to him.
That's why they sent him, of course. How much more glorious to be able to report that the Second Signless came back unresisting, cowed and contrite, to his execution. How much better a message to send to the lowbloods when you offer yourself up to the gallows in penance to the Empire, and you can hear the whispers start up in the back of your pan again, reminding you how much you wanted to serve, so why not offer up the one last service you have left to give...?
But it was the Empire you wanted to serve, not the highbloods, and you understand now that you can only choose one or the other.
You were managing, for a while. You'd wipe the blood from his face after battle, soothe his nightmares, do your best to contain the rage his highblood brothers seemed intent on stirring up in him and keep him from turning it on you and your squad, and in return he'd... well, that was the trouble - you could never quite remember. It was enough, you told yourself, that he made you feel better, even if it wasn't the same as the feelings jams you had when you were six and getting each other through broken kismessitudes and neighbourhood cullings and the nights when one or the other of you just wanted to burn down the whole motherfucking galaxy...
Besides, this is how rust-purple moirallegiances always worked in the movies, right? You keep him from going feral, he keeps you following orders, and neither of you fuck up any of the other cogs in Her Condescension's badly oiled machine.
One night you woke to news of a shuttle shot down above one of the outer colonies (sixteen rebels killed, a glorious victory for the Empire) and paid it no attention. You had work to do.
It was only several hours later that you paused in the midst of clearing a battlefield, fingers soaked in black alien blood, and wondered why you felt nothing at all.
The section of the wall behind you isn't stone - it's a fragile papier-mache composite of dead posters that you used to cover up the hole when you and Nepeta first moved in (the current top layer is a several-weeks-old spiel on mutant genetics and how you're attempting to undermine the slurry by filling it with as much of your genetic material as you could, and holy fuck, you'd thought at the time, couldn't they find enough reasons to kill you?) and you're afraid if he shoves you any harder you may go right through, but you can't move. Not until you talk him down. Not until he understands.
"That wasn't me, you useless shitsponge." Your voice is harsher than you meant, harsher than you thought you could be with him, and you want to scream, but you don't. You won't. "I haven't been me for a really fucking long time and gosh, I wonder whose fault that was."
You didn't have much of a plan. Just steal a shuttle, find the nearest planet that wasn't a warzone or an important colony, as far from the front lines as you could, and maybe, if you survived long enough, try to figure out if there was still anything left of you.
Nepeta showed up a few perigees later. You don't know how she found you, but you had to trust someone, and at least she wasn't psychic. Plus you were grateful for the company even if it did mean indulging her games now and then.
She didn't ask about Gamzee, bar the few times you brought him up on the bad nights, and you didn't ask about Equius. Instead, she told you stories, of a candyblooded rebel who damn near shooshpapped half the Empire into submission, and you told her about your fantasies of being the most feared Threshecutioner of all time. Neither her stories nor your dreams ever included hiding out in a mudstrewn temple on a forgotten planet under the leavings of stray antimutant terrorvangelists, and you don't want half the Empire anyway. Just one goddamn troll, and you can't have him.
"Wasn't it? I didn't put the motherfuckin' thought into your head to up and take to your cute little heels, now did I, bro?" His lips twitch upward and your blood turns to antifreeze. Rage you can deal with, you have been for sweeps and you know your way around the currents of his fury like it was your own hive. It's mirth that leaves you lost and scared and itching to run. "Did I?" he repeats, and your edges fray at his smirk, and the only word you can call to your lips is:
"Why?"
It was a sweep and a half after deserting that you woke from a dream - an old one, one of the ones where you're running from invisible enemies in dark corridors, laser blasts lighting up the path behind your feet, blood soaking into your trail - only this time you woke with his voice echoing in your pan, and fuck, you thought you'd gotten all of him out.
Only when Nepeta asked, troubled, if he sounded angry, did you realise: "No. He sounded fucking terrified."
"I don't -" He's quiet now, smirking down at you as you try to filter enough of your scattered thoughts through your chitinous windhole to put them back together, and you don't know whether he's going to kill you or pap you. "It doesn't - because I know you believed it, didn't you? When they told you I was a menace, an abomination, a threat to the purity of the race." Your voice is shaking, and you don't try to stop it. If you're lucky, he still pities you enough to leave you here alive. You don't dare hope he still pities you enough to stay. "You believed I needed my fucking pan scoured of my wicked rebellious notions or I'd destroy you all with my disgusting blood."
"No, brother," he says. "I believed them when they said they'd up and spill your bright miracle paintjuice all over the motherfuckin floor if all I didn't."
He leans down to plant a soft kiss on the tip of your horn, and you stare at him, and your own surprise is worse than the fear, worse than the blood. You thought you trusted him more than this. You should have known, and it's true that in all the sweeps you were hiding here you never found any of yourself missing, never felt an urge to walk into the garrison and surrender, never had the cold and the bloodthirst return... You hadn't been his puppet. He'd been doing his best to cut your strings.
"Gamzee... you..." You raise a hand slowly, place it to his cheek. "You pathetic idiot, why didn't you just fucking tell me, I thought..."
He tilts his head, and his smirk widens, making him look more wicked than ever, and fuck, whatever's happened to him out there, you'd better take care of first thing. "Had some righteous heresy to take care of up there first, palebro. But I'm motherfuckin' here now... if you want me." The hand by your head quivers, and suddenly the grin's gone and he just looks lost, and god, fuck, you're both such idiots, you moreso because you're going to fucking believe him, and you lean forward to nuzzle his throat as you drop the last of your defenses and open up to him all your fears.
"Always, Gamzee." You lose yourself in his answering hug for a moment, before you remember something you've got to do and wriggle out of his arms, ignoring his disappointed growl. "One goddamn second, okay, just gotta leave a message." His gaze follows you over to the corner where Nepeta keeps her most precious possession, and you flash him an apologetic smile as you flip the shipping board over, snatch up the white chalk, and start to draw.
When Nepeta comes home, she'll find you together, asleep under the altar in a pile of slanderous posters. She won't wake you, but she'll smile, draw up a new grid in her notebook, and start scribbling.
After all, when the Empire catches up to the three of you again - and they will - someone has to leave something behind to tell the truth.
Ship: Karkat<>Gamzee
Summary: Sifting through the lies can take longer than the romcoms tell you.
Notes: Unchosen submission for HSWC. Includes some disturbing content.
At the top of the highest hill in the city there stands a building with eight spires. You think it used to be a temple, back when there was anyone to worship in it, back before your people came strolling in, bringing with them a planetwarming gift of baked goods and genocide, and the natives' gods took one look at the Condesce with her legions and her fork and her impossible hair, and turned and ran. Now it's a ruin smothered in posters, plastered one atop the other as new slogans become old, and old slogans become obsolete.
The gods aren't all that have abandoned this place.
Nepeta's been busy, though, because there's a new poster over the crack in the main door, a trace of cerulean blood leaking from the edge, and you immediately regret stopping to read it. Not that you're not used to the rhetoric by now - the mutantbloods will steal your quadrants, ravish your descendants, convince your helmsmen to fly into the sun and visit such horrors upon your loved and loathed ones that even the seadwellers who dwell in the depths with the Emissary of the Outer Gods will only speak of them in hushed tones. (And they do, on the newsfeeds at midday when you're not supposed to be listening, though they're disappointingly unimaginative - most of them seem to involve flesh-eating viruses or parasitic fungus, and okay, maybe you considered unleashing a particularly nasty strain of cordyceps on Equius and Vriska once, but you were five and stupid and way overreaching, and Gamzee talked you out of it pretty quickly.)
Naturally, it's all hoofbeastshit. The real terrorist acts are far more subtle, and covered up as often as possible, except for the occasional show trial - no good giving the lowbloods ideas.
But worse than your bitterness, worse than the fact that they couldn't even bothered to say anything new this time (if the Morale Officers are so intent on making you into the goddamn devil, they could at least come up with some new lies), is the horribly familiar silhouette in the background, and you reach hastily to make sure your hood is fully covering your horns as you turn away. You'll never get used to seeing yourself on the posters.
"Who the fuck are they getting to write that shit now, a brain-damaged shellbea-" Your tongue halts mid-rant as the shadowy figure in the corner of your makeshift livingblock (formerly the vestibule, you think, but who really gives a fuck anymore, with the aliens all burned and gone) shifts into the light, towering over you in a way Nepeta never could manage, and with horns that spiral up like... "Oh fuck. Oh fuck."
"Fuck is right, my best motherfucker," says Gamzee, and his claws are hooked in your shirt before you can blink, and he shoves you so hard against the wall that your breath leaves you. "And ain't it the most miraculous stroke of motherfuckin' luck, Karkat," he goes on, his other hand stripping your hood back locust-fast and landing heavy against the stone as he leans over you, trapping you, "that I should be gettin' my wander on in some backwater fuckin' graveyard and find it smells all like my miracle bro and his wicked kittysis."
You swallow hard, try to force the lump out of your suddenly dry squawk blister, try to breathe, to loosen your tongue, you were so fucking stupid, this city's been nigh deserted for so long you let your guard down and oh god, where's Nepeta -
The hand at your thorax moves, twists, claws withdrawing from your shirt to be replaced by a palm pressing hard against your vascular pump, and he chuckles as you freeze. "Don't get at tellin' me that clever motherfuckin' twitcher's all out of motherfucking lies already, cos I'm gettin my know on at that you, my brother," and he leans over you, his laughter bitter and his eyes dark and dangerous, all purple now, without those last specks of grey he still had when you left, "are. Motherfucking. Bottomless."
The worst part is, you never lied to him, not once. You both fell for what the Empire fed you, though, right from the start, and that was only natural when you were eight sweeps old and applying to the Fleet, and he was approaching his ninth and starting to chafe with the waiting, and you both just wanted to be off that tiny cramped planet and flying free.
If you ever meet past-you, you're going to greet him with a sickle to the ganderbulb for being such a panrotted moron. Fighting for Alternian glory, your arse. But you had Gamzee, and he had you, and you dared to hope you were wrong about miracles and maybe your love would be enough of one to save you both.
When they let him speak for you at your trial, you were still young and stupid enough to believe it.
Something harsher than fear is burning its way through your sponge now, and it shakes your tongue loose. "Bottomless? Who the fuck did you go and let into that sick goddamn pan of yours while I was gone? Because I never once told you a fucking thing I knew wasn't true, and you fucking know it, Gamzee."
He hisses, his breath cold against your cheek, and you choke on the stink of greasepaint and stardust and just a hint of sopor, and you realise with a pang in your vascular pump that no one's been taking care of him at all.
You were on permanent probation, of course, everyone from your squad leader to the rustblood maintenance crew on your ship made that clear at every opportunity. But at least you could fight off the midday ambushes without having to worry that you might bleed, and being shoved hornsfirst into a load gaper now and then was better than having to miss training sessions to nurse a papercut, and the night your transfer papers arrived was better still, even if being assigned to a black ops squad reporting directly to the subjugglators seemed too good to be true. Only the best of the best were allowed this close to the highbloods, everyone knew that. And naturally the Grand Highblood's heir could accept only the most loyal, the most sure of heart.
You should have been wary. But all you ever wanted was to serve the Empire, and for the first time, the Empire actually seemed to want your service. And besides, it put you near your moirail. How could you resist?
"Then you tell me, bro," he breathes into your ear, "why the Mirthful Prophets are screaming in my motherfuckin' pan about all those wicked promises you went and motherfuckin' broke."
You could reach his shoulder, easy, you know well how the two of you fit together, but you're dizzy with his scent and besides, you still can't bring yourself to raise a hand to him.
That's why they sent him, of course. How much more glorious to be able to report that the Second Signless came back unresisting, cowed and contrite, to his execution. How much better a message to send to the lowbloods when you offer yourself up to the gallows in penance to the Empire, and you can hear the whispers start up in the back of your pan again, reminding you how much you wanted to serve, so why not offer up the one last service you have left to give...?
But it was the Empire you wanted to serve, not the highbloods, and you understand now that you can only choose one or the other.
You were managing, for a while. You'd wipe the blood from his face after battle, soothe his nightmares, do your best to contain the rage his highblood brothers seemed intent on stirring up in him and keep him from turning it on you and your squad, and in return he'd... well, that was the trouble - you could never quite remember. It was enough, you told yourself, that he made you feel better, even if it wasn't the same as the feelings jams you had when you were six and getting each other through broken kismessitudes and neighbourhood cullings and the nights when one or the other of you just wanted to burn down the whole motherfucking galaxy...
Besides, this is how rust-purple moirallegiances always worked in the movies, right? You keep him from going feral, he keeps you following orders, and neither of you fuck up any of the other cogs in Her Condescension's badly oiled machine.
One night you woke to news of a shuttle shot down above one of the outer colonies (sixteen rebels killed, a glorious victory for the Empire) and paid it no attention. You had work to do.
It was only several hours later that you paused in the midst of clearing a battlefield, fingers soaked in black alien blood, and wondered why you felt nothing at all.
The section of the wall behind you isn't stone - it's a fragile papier-mache composite of dead posters that you used to cover up the hole when you and Nepeta first moved in (the current top layer is a several-weeks-old spiel on mutant genetics and how you're attempting to undermine the slurry by filling it with as much of your genetic material as you could, and holy fuck, you'd thought at the time, couldn't they find enough reasons to kill you?) and you're afraid if he shoves you any harder you may go right through, but you can't move. Not until you talk him down. Not until he understands.
"That wasn't me, you useless shitsponge." Your voice is harsher than you meant, harsher than you thought you could be with him, and you want to scream, but you don't. You won't. "I haven't been me for a really fucking long time and gosh, I wonder whose fault that was."
You didn't have much of a plan. Just steal a shuttle, find the nearest planet that wasn't a warzone or an important colony, as far from the front lines as you could, and maybe, if you survived long enough, try to figure out if there was still anything left of you.
Nepeta showed up a few perigees later. You don't know how she found you, but you had to trust someone, and at least she wasn't psychic. Plus you were grateful for the company even if it did mean indulging her games now and then.
She didn't ask about Gamzee, bar the few times you brought him up on the bad nights, and you didn't ask about Equius. Instead, she told you stories, of a candyblooded rebel who damn near shooshpapped half the Empire into submission, and you told her about your fantasies of being the most feared Threshecutioner of all time. Neither her stories nor your dreams ever included hiding out in a mudstrewn temple on a forgotten planet under the leavings of stray antimutant terrorvangelists, and you don't want half the Empire anyway. Just one goddamn troll, and you can't have him.
"Wasn't it? I didn't put the motherfuckin' thought into your head to up and take to your cute little heels, now did I, bro?" His lips twitch upward and your blood turns to antifreeze. Rage you can deal with, you have been for sweeps and you know your way around the currents of his fury like it was your own hive. It's mirth that leaves you lost and scared and itching to run. "Did I?" he repeats, and your edges fray at his smirk, and the only word you can call to your lips is:
"Why?"
It was a sweep and a half after deserting that you woke from a dream - an old one, one of the ones where you're running from invisible enemies in dark corridors, laser blasts lighting up the path behind your feet, blood soaking into your trail - only this time you woke with his voice echoing in your pan, and fuck, you thought you'd gotten all of him out.
Only when Nepeta asked, troubled, if he sounded angry, did you realise: "No. He sounded fucking terrified."
"I don't -" He's quiet now, smirking down at you as you try to filter enough of your scattered thoughts through your chitinous windhole to put them back together, and you don't know whether he's going to kill you or pap you. "It doesn't - because I know you believed it, didn't you? When they told you I was a menace, an abomination, a threat to the purity of the race." Your voice is shaking, and you don't try to stop it. If you're lucky, he still pities you enough to leave you here alive. You don't dare hope he still pities you enough to stay. "You believed I needed my fucking pan scoured of my wicked rebellious notions or I'd destroy you all with my disgusting blood."
"No, brother," he says. "I believed them when they said they'd up and spill your bright miracle paintjuice all over the motherfuckin floor if all I didn't."
He leans down to plant a soft kiss on the tip of your horn, and you stare at him, and your own surprise is worse than the fear, worse than the blood. You thought you trusted him more than this. You should have known, and it's true that in all the sweeps you were hiding here you never found any of yourself missing, never felt an urge to walk into the garrison and surrender, never had the cold and the bloodthirst return... You hadn't been his puppet. He'd been doing his best to cut your strings.
"Gamzee... you..." You raise a hand slowly, place it to his cheek. "You pathetic idiot, why didn't you just fucking tell me, I thought..."
He tilts his head, and his smirk widens, making him look more wicked than ever, and fuck, whatever's happened to him out there, you'd better take care of first thing. "Had some righteous heresy to take care of up there first, palebro. But I'm motherfuckin' here now... if you want me." The hand by your head quivers, and suddenly the grin's gone and he just looks lost, and god, fuck, you're both such idiots, you moreso because you're going to fucking believe him, and you lean forward to nuzzle his throat as you drop the last of your defenses and open up to him all your fears.
"Always, Gamzee." You lose yourself in his answering hug for a moment, before you remember something you've got to do and wriggle out of his arms, ignoring his disappointed growl. "One goddamn second, okay, just gotta leave a message." His gaze follows you over to the corner where Nepeta keeps her most precious possession, and you flash him an apologetic smile as you flip the shipping board over, snatch up the white chalk, and start to draw.
When Nepeta comes home, she'll find you together, asleep under the altar in a pile of slanderous posters. She won't wake you, but she'll smile, draw up a new grid in her notebook, and start scribbling.
After all, when the Empire catches up to the three of you again - and they will - someone has to leave something behind to tell the truth.