Chapter Text
Alone and neglected since hatching, left to his own devices and the unfeeling machinations of a cold and merciless world, Gamzee Makara knows all too well what it is to feel the slow unraveling of self in the absence of others. He no longer remembers when he first fell to pieces - two or three pieces, he can't tell, and when he reaches that state he no longer cares anyway - but he does remember the first time he ate the slime and felt the world soften around him, settling into colorful shapes he felt no need to understand. When he feels that stability slipping, draining the beauty from the world to reveal an ugly lack of control beneath, he knows exactly what to do. He eats of the green ambrosia, drinks deep of the Lethean waters, until the minute the slime runs out and control slips away. His world blurs, vague and hideous without the nectar that sustains him, until he finds himself trapped, restrained, and confused.
Exposed beneath the bright lights, leather cords biting into his wrists as he tries to come to terms with endless ugliness, Gamzee feels for the first time that there could be other ways to delineate the world. Arranged naked in a humiliating position, head down in a flowerpot and legs trapped in shackles hanging from the metal ceiling, he stares with an air of revelation at the red petunias around his face. "Honk," he says softly, wonderingly, before biting off a flower and gnawing on it with a louder, angrier series of honks. His mind races in conflicting circles, in turns furious and anxious as the blood rushes to his head.
"Let a brother out," he beseeches in a high voice, horns buried in the dirt. "Let a motherfucking brother out!" The sharp snap of a whip, the shock of thin leather curling around his ribs, sends him into a frenzied storm of honking. As he hangs upside-down, unable to see anything but dirt, petunias, and terra cotta, feeling nothing but the lash and the cool air tenderly stroking the welts across his ribs, Gamzee finds quickly that the world is far simpler than he believed. Subjected to capricious whims, not needing to think, he is at once given to his own reactions and the desires of others. The helplessness is terrifying, yet there emerges a sick relief at the loss of control; a world without decisions, without complexity, opens up before him with strange brilliance. He honks quietly to himself in an uncontrollable verbal tic, deprived of sight and senses.
He wants to spite the one who imprisons him, who so carelessly toys with his status and demeans him, and yet at the same time he is paradoxically compelled to please and to nurture this power that overrides his own desire and clarifies the world. "Honk," he whispers after a time, surrendering unequivocally to a mysterious power far greater than his own. The rage subsides slowly in his heart as it gives way to submission. "Hooooonk," he sighs.
"Meow," answers Jaspers, judiciously toying with the end of the leather whip between his paws. Feline eyes narrow in a slow, victorious blink as he rumbles deep in his throat. His delicate ears angle to catch every faltering honk, every testament to his strength and willpower as he kneads the leather with fastidious claws. Years spent curled on Rose's lap, learning psychology and the subtle art of interpersonal manipulation, have at last served him admirably. Satisfied, he licks one paw. "Purrrrr."