Archive of Our Own ^beta

“Ahaha!! Keep up, slowpoke, the sun’s gonna rise soon!” A young troll girl, no older than four sweeps old, makes a mad dash for her hive. A shorter troll trails behind her, concealing her tired breathing.

The shorter troll moves her legs faster, pulling up ahead of the taller one. “Who’s the slowpoke now, Spinneret?” The tall one laughs bold and loud before retrieving a pair of red flaming boots. The shorter girl pouts.

“Come on, Vriska, no fair!”

“Hurry up, Terezi!!” Vriska swoops down, latching her hands on her friend’s before flying with her in tow towards her tall castle of a hive. Terezi feels her skin heat at the first contact of the intense Alternian sunrise. Terezi catches her breath and begins to cackle.

“That was so dangerous!!” Terezi is close to rolling around on the floor, her eyes starting to leak with teal-tinted tears of laughter. “We almost got turned to crisp!”

“Nah, it wasn’t that bad! Are you getting soft on me, Redglare?” Vriska pulls Terezi into a standing position.

Terezi snorts. Vriska stares into her eyes and for just a moment, Terezi’s vision warps like a watercolor that got smudged. Terezi rubs her eyes hurriedly and shrugs it off. “You wish!”

Terezi takes a step forward, shifting into a new place, a new time. She is angry.

“Vriska, listen to me! I know your lusus is… your lusus, but you need to stop this!”

Vriska rolls her eyes. “You don’t know, so stop pretending.”

Terezi narrows her eyes but says nothing.

“Honestly! You give me shit on not killing people, when I literally have to , and then you go and help me because it’s a fun little game? Hypocrite.”

“You have fun with it, admit it!” Terezi snaps.

“Pff, yeah, so?” Vriska balances a hand on her hip. “So do you.”

“Not when we were killing people! This is too far, Vriska, even for you!”

“Listen to me, Redglare.” Vriska pokes a sharp finger to Terezi’s chest. “I eliminate the losers of this shitty little game called life. If it weren’t me, it’d be someone else, and then we wouldn’t be here now, because I’d be fucking dead. I need you to listen ,” Vriska flicks the bottom of Terezi’s jaw. “When I say that I do what I have to do to survive. If you can’t accept that, you don’t deserve the things I give you.”

Terezi scoffs. “You’re right, Mi-… Vriska. I don’t deserve this.” Terezi grabs her flarp papers and her share of their loot and dunks it on the ground. “I’m done.”

“Done? What do you mean, done?!” Vriska's voice borders a shriek.

“I mean I’m fucking done with this, Vriska! I’m tired of having to justify with everyone else why I’m still your friend! I’m the only one that can’t see you for what you are, a controlling, gaslighting, manipulating little bitch, and I am done being friends with you!”

Vriska laughs. The tiniest twinge of hurt hides behind her eyes that she works to conceal. “Go then! All you ever did was slow me down and nag, I’m thrilled to have you off my back.”

Terezi’s anger melts into despair at losing her closest friend. The world shifts again, just a moment, to blackness and pain. Terezi screams, clawing at her eyes that burn like they were set on fire. Flashes of white and red and yellow flood her retinas until all she can do is smell the pastels of Prospit. Wait. Smell?

That’s right. The dragon was teaching her. How could she forget?

The scenery switches again, spiraling into a platform in a dark void. Vriska stands with her back facing Terezi, the scratched coin, and the sword cane that was slowly sliding out of its sheath. Terezi’s muscles tremble and she hopes desperately that Vriska wouldn’t turn around to see her. Not the sword to be stuck through her heart but the liquid weakness flowing out of Terezi’s bloodred eyes.

She didn’t.

Of course she didn’t.

Terezi wills herself to move a foot forward. Then another. The sharp end of the blade sinks into Vriska’s chest and resurfaces on the other side. An awful wet cough rises from Vriska’s lungs and Terezi holds back from screaming, fainting, vomiting, anything but watch as Vriska's now soaked blue form crumples to the ground. Her mouth opens and for a moment a breath escapes Vriska’s paling lips, forming either the words “I loved you,” or “Oh, fuck you.” 

Fuck.

No.

God, no.

Terezi doesn’t feel Karkat’s arms wrap around her until she smells him several seconds afterwards. She doesn’t respond, instead trying to plug her nose from the smell of tears and blood.

Terezi is in someplace new again, a small room on an asteroid. Why was she on an asteroid?

The room is coated in horns.

Oh, no.

Those stupid clown hands pull at Terezi’s hair, pulling her towards him. Terezi kicks him off so hard a spurt of purple lands from his mouth onto her cheek. Terezi runs, hides, and cries. If Vriska were still alive she would hate who Terezi had become. Terezi hated who she had become. She could practically hear Vriska’s voice in her ear, calling her a weakling, a murderer, a piece of dogshit that deserves to be rotting in a shallow grave.

Another shift. Terezi is sleeping.

The world she dreams of is so unusual, full of the sleeping and deceased. Bits and pieces of memory swirl in her brain, and her eyes flick around inside her closed lids. There’s a blackness that she hasn’t had in years.

Her eyes shoot open, and she sees Karkat in front of her. She sees him.

Karkat sees her too, clothed in nothing but boxers, a T-shirt, and a dragon hood that tangled around her feet. The dozens of faygo bottles as evidence of the crime scene she was.

Is.

Karkat sits and tries to help. He calls her nice things, comforts her the best he can. He can’t help her. No one and nothing can help her.

“Oh my god, Karkat, you are such a tool, you know that?” A figure steps out from the shadow of a corner of this room.

“Hey, I, wait, what the fuck?!” Karkat wheels his head around. Terezi looks up.

What the hell?

“Just… get out of here. It’s time for you to wake up.” Vriska stood next to Karkat. Alive.

This isn’t now it happened.

Wait, no, this didn’t already happen, did it?

Of course it didn’t. That doesn’t make sense.

Karkat looks confused before looking at his hands, sighing, and closing his eyes. His form blinks out of existence.

“What the fuck! Vriska?!”

“That’s me…!” Vriska says with an almost tired flourish.

“Why are you he- actually, no, better question, how are you here?!”

“What do you mean?” Vriska picks at one of her nails.

“I k-” Terezi can't bring herself to say it. “I ki-” she inhales. “You’re dead.”

Vriska narrows her eyes before taking a step back. She blinks once, then again. Her form shifts out of her long jacket and shirt and into her godtier outfit. A patch of blue leaks from her heart, making a drip-drip on the floor. Her skin is sickly pale.

“Oh.”

“Okay, seriously, what is going on right now!” Terezi stands up, not remembering her attire. She paces the room and finds a red scarf. A knife. The knife is covered in purple blood. She used this. Not in the past, but she would use it. No, she already did. Wait.

“Hang on…” Terezi looks back at Vriska, who cups her hands and holds the blood that spills from her chest. “I’ve been here before.”

“Sure you have. You’ve been living here for about a sweep now, right?”

“No, no I mean…” Terezi picks up the scarf and traces her finger down the face. Words start to appear in her handwriting, in her blood. “Huh. Is this a dream bubble, am I dreaming?”

“Yes and no.” Vriska's form shifts back to the jacket and shirt, the blood forgotten. “This is a dream bubble. But you’re not asleep.”

“Oh…” Terezi feels a sharp pain in her chest. A dull one on her jaw. A pounding one in her stomach. Pain erupts on every inch of her body. She looks down but realizes she can’t see through a cloth covering her eyes. She smells the blood trickle from a dozen different spots, and she starts to rock with a sudden dizziness. Oh. Oh fuck.

“So I’m…” Terezi removes the blindfold.

“You’re in the same boat as me, sister.”

The memories hit Terezi more painful than her wounds. She looks down at the blood pooled on the floor, at the blue chalk outline sketched on it.

“I’m dead.”

“We both are, bro.” Vriska guides Terezi’s head upward with a gentleness lost to time. Terezi looks up at the void above her. Blinding colors leak from cracks in reality. “And we’re about to die again.”

“What…”

“Some monster is hellbent on destroying this place. So yeah. End of the line, for real this time.”

Regret sinks into Terezi’s chest. “You wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for me, Vriska, I- I’m so, so sorry.”

“Pff, who are you and what have you done with my Terezi? Hehe.”

“I’m serious!!” Terezi feels a familiar spark in her. A spark that resembled life so much she’s surprised she’s dead. “Man, you never will stop infuriating me, you know that?”

Vriska punches Terezi in the arm. “Backatcha. ‘Till death do us part?’ Fuck that, am I right?”

Terezi snorts, starting to giggle.

“Man, anything’ll set you off, huh? You’re the most insane friend I’ve ever had.”

Terezi looks over at Vriska. She jumps up so she can reach and lays a short kiss on Vriska’s cheek. “Backatcha.”

Vriska smirks. “You missed me.”

“No I didn’t!” Terezi retorts.

“I can do better. Watch.” Vriska bends down, picks Terezi up, and presses a firm kiss on her lips. Terezi wraps her legs around Vriska’s torso and leans in, laying her hands on Vriska's cheeks. Cracks spread above them, but neither Terezi nor Vriska move an inch. They’re going to go out with a motherfucking bang.