Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

Silhouetted against the light of a giant sun, a small Subjugglator craft drifted through space, going nowhere in particular.  The lights were off inside. The two passengers were content to allow the red sunlight flicker through the cockpit window, where they spent most of their time keeping watch.  A radar beeped the news that nothing was in their range.

Gamzee was sitting in front of his husktop, browsing the troll internet, while Tavros snoozed against the cockpit window.  In the month they had spent on the craft, they had both exhausted the small number of things they could do to entertain themselves.  The ship was an escape pod built for quick transportation, not a ship made to pointlessly orbit stars, and it was barely big enough for two people and a respiteblock.  Boredom was a fact of their existence.  This was more a problem for Gamzee than for Tavros, who was already well acquainted with boredom after sweeps spent mostly alone in a sparsely furnished cell.  It was a blessing disguised as a curse for Gamzee. Although the uninterrupted hours of inactivity were sometimes almost unbearable, it gave him plenty of time to think, and he took advantage of the quiet hours to struggle against his madness and regain control of himself.  He had made progress, but it was bittersweet.  He could now stay lucid more often than not, but his lucidity also allowed him to understand the difficulty of their situation more clearly.  The problems facing them became more daunting as he became more capable of rational thought.  Gaining control was hard enough without the uncertainty of their future looming over him, and he could only handle so much inner turmoil.  As a result, he often found himself on his husktop, cycling through the same several websites.  It gave his mind a break.

He let his cursor scroll over the Trollian icon, which was becoming a sort of ritual.  Now that they were free, he ached to learn what had become of their friends, especially his moirail.  He hadn’t heard anything from most of them since Conscription Day two sweeps ago.  But Tavros had asked that they both stay off Trollian, and Gamzee couldn’t blame him for his caution.  As long as they stayed in a Subjugglator craft, it would be risky to open communication portals.  It would be too easy for one of their messages to get intercepted and tracked.  He knew that, but still he often found himself wondering if there really was such a need to be so cautious.  It had been so long since they had escaped, and they had put such a large distance between themselves and the Subjugglator mothership, maybe it wouldn’t be so harmful to check in.  Just for a few minutes.  But he knew that it would cause Tavros unnecessary anxiety, so he reminded himself to keep Trollian closed.

Sometimes Gamzee wondered if Tavros regretted their escape.  He often noticed a pathetic hopelessness settle into Tavros’s expression when he let his guard down, and the way Tavros watched the radar when he thought Gamzee wasn’t looking made Gamzee’s heart clench.  It was almost as though he expected to get captured, and he was already preparing himself mentally for it.  But he tried hard to stay optimistic for Gamzee’s sake.  He could tell how hard Gamzee was trying, even though he didn’t fully understand the nature of Gamzee’s struggle, and he kept a smile up to mask his heavy apprehension.  It wasn’t a perfect ruse. He couldn’t hide the rings under his eyes, the instinctual defensiveness of his posture, or the quiet tone of dread that edged his voice, and when he woke up from the nightmares that plagued him, there was no way either of them could pretend that he wasn’t still suffering from the curse of the Grand Highblood’s chucklevoodoos.  But he tried to stay positive anyway.

Gamzee tried to stay positive, too, but it hurt him to see the way Tavros looked at him after waking from a dream about the Highblood.  It reminded Gamzee how similar he was to the troll he hated most.  He had tried to fix it.  After they had escaped, he had ripped three jagged scars across his face in a desperate attempt to destroy his eerie resemblance to the Grand Highblood.  But it wasn’t something that could be fixed, and whenever he let his mind slip a little, allowing the whispers of the twisted harshwhimsies to seduce him, he could see mirrored in Tavros’s worried expression the truth of his existence.  He would never again be the person he was in his childhood.  He would never be rid of his ancestral legacy.  And he would never be able to earn the pity he desperately wanted.  The longer he spent with Tavros, the more he realized that the paradise he had hoped to make with him was an empty dream.  How could he expect Tavros to build a life with a troll who looked like the demon literally haunting his nightmares? 

He glanced at Tavros, watching him twitch against the window, and then he turned back to his computer.  They were probably going to stay trapped in their tiny space pod forever, circling around the universe with nowhere to go and nothing to do but run away from their pasts.  Just him and the troll he wished were his matesprit, hanging out into a paradise-less eternity.

He let the cursor pass over the Trollian icon again.  This time, it hovered and, as if by its own accord, clicked.  Gamzee smiled slowly as it opened into a familiar screen, and his smiled widened into a grin once he saw who was on.

Karkat could hardly believe it when Gamzee’s message popped up in his Trollian window.  He considered the message for a second, ignoring Terezi, who had been pestering him before Gamzee interfered, and weighed whether to alert the others.  He chose to see what he had to say.

Karkat paused for a moment, startled by the change in Gamzee’s tone.  He had never seen Gamzee type like that before.  The conversation had taken a turn for the weird, and Karkat didn’t like it.

Karkat switched his chat window to answer Terezi, who had been blowing up his computer for the past several minutes while he dealt with Gamzee.

He swiveled around in his chair.  He was sitting in the bridge of a modest, unmarked spaceship that Feferi had let them “borrow.”  Sollux was at the helm but was clearly not much interested in navigating.  He was probably still working on the mysterious virus he intended to use against the highbloods, insisting it would be the beginning of what he referred to as JUDGEMENT DAY.  Karkat wanted badly to look over the code, but Sollux didn’t like to be disturbed.  Kanaya was the only other person in the room.

“Gamzee’s on Trollian,” Karkat announced and waited for a response.  Both members of his audience looked up.

“...And?”

“Am I seriously the only one here who thinks this is a big fucking deal?” Karkat asked, looking between them.  “He says he’s running from the Grand Highblood.  What should we do?”

“Nothing,” Sollux said, returning to his code.  Kanaya didn’t respond.

“We can’t just let the Subjugglators track him down like a fucking animal.”

“Can’t we?” Kanaya asked.  “Maybe he deserves it.”

“What the fuck is that supposed to mean?”

“Karkat, I know this must be hard for you, but Gamzee isn’t the moirail you used to know.  He’s a Subjugglator now.  He’s like the rest of them.”

“How do you know that?  Maybe he’s changed!  There has to be some reason they’re chasing him down, right?”

“Put your pale feelings aside and think.  What if this is a trap?”

“A trap?”

“Yes.  Don’t you think it’s too convenient?  We’ve been involved in several skirmishes in the past sweep, and this ship is rather distinctive despite its lack of markings.  On top of that, Sollux has been hacking into highblood databases regularly.  Perhaps we’ve been discovered?”

Karkat paused for a moment, considering her point but still searching for an alternative explanation.  Kanaya sighed.  “Did he tell you why he’s suddenly on the run?”

“No.”

“Athk him, dumbath,” Sollux said.

Karkat, grumbling, returned to his screen.

Karkat repeated Gamzee’s message out loud, word for word.

“Tavroth...ath in Tavroth Nitram?” Sollux asked.  “Ithn’t he dead?”

“Yes, and Gamzee’s just carrying around his corpse, suffering from grief-induced delusions,” Karkat responded.

“It’s a likely story,” Kanaya said, frowning.

“What?  Wait, no, I was fucking joking!  Goddamn, Kanaya.”

“But what if he is lying?” she asked.  “It’s not likely Tavros survived conscription, and even if he did, why would he be so closely guarded by the Grand Highblood?  It doesn’t make sense.”

“But what if he’s telling the truth?”

“I don’t believe it,” Kanaya insisted.  “I want nothing to do with him.”

“I’m not so much of a heartless prick that I’d let my moirail die.  Okay, yeah, he’s basically a backstabbing psychopath who’s probably murdered over a thousand trolls and keeps their heads hideously stacked in his respiteblock, but he’s still my fucking moirail.”

“Maybe you could try referring to him as your ex-moirail.”

“Fuck that!” Karkat said.  “Sollux?”

Sollux kept his eyes on his computer.  “I don’t agree with it either,” he said.  Karkat slumped.

“So, what?  We’re just going to ignore him?”

After a second, Sollux responded, “Where ith he?”

Karkat perked up.  “I’ll ask him.”

A few seconds passed while he waited for Gamzee to respond.  He read aloud, “’Circling the biggest motherfucking star in the galaxy, bro.’”

Sollux typed some things down.  “That’th near A13-QV8,” he said.

“So how far is that?”

“Too far...but Feferi’th in that area.”

“Feferi?” Karkat repeated.  “So, what, are you suggesting that she pick them up?”

“I can athk,” he said, continuing to type.

Tavros awoke with a start, a shiver running down his spine as the ghosts of the nightmare faded into memory.  He sat up, knocking his horns against the wall.  He heard Gamzee typing on the computer.

“I hope you’re all feeling better after getting your nap on, invertebrother,” Gamzee said, unusually happy, “’cause I got the best motherfuckin’ news you’ll ever up and hear in your motherfuckin’ life.”

“News?” Tavros asked, looking at the computer screen.  His eyes widened as he recognized the Trollian window.

“Now I motherfuckin’ know what’s up in your motherfuckin’ think pan, bro, but just hear a brother out.  The things that just up and happened, they can’t be anything but motherfuckin’ miracles.  Motherfuckin’ miracles, bro!  Not the false noise those motherfuckers spit out, but the real motherfuckin’ miracles of the mirthful messiahs, like that they’re born again.  It’s so motherfuckin’ beautiful.”

“That, uh, sounds like it could qualify as good news, theoretically,” Tavros said, choosing his words with care, “as the presence of miracles tends to be a good thing, and so I guess are born again messiahs...but maybe this isn’t the best time for that, since we’re on the run from a powerful maniac, who probably wants to do really terrible things to us.  Who are you, uh...who are you talking to?”

“It’s the best motherfuckin’ time, brother!” Gamzee said with glee.  “Karkat is all about makin’ plans for us to get Feferi into picking our motherfuckin’ asses up out of this gravitation!”

“Oh, um, what?” Tavros said.  “Should we...do that?  I mean, Feferi is great, I really like her, but isn’t she heir to the throne?  Don’t we want to avoid highbloods?”

“Feferi would never up and rat us out, bro!  She got motherfuckin’ goodness where her heart’s up in.  And if there’s a better place to all be than with the motherfuckin’ highest of highbloods, who knows where that motherfucker is at!”

Tavros looked over to the computer and read a bit of the Trollian conversation.  “I...guess that’s alright, then, if you think it’ll be okay,” he said. Karkat’s grey words popped out at him.  “Are you glad that you got to talk to Karkat?”

“Fuck yeah, brother, I feel so at chill up in here right now.  Karkat calms my motherfuckin’ shit down like no motherfucker can.  I feel like my heart’s all up in the right place like it hasn’t motherfuckin’ been, you know?”

“Yeah.  It must feel really nice to talk to your moirail again after so long.”

“Motherfuckin’ yeah, bro.  It’s beautiful.  Like being back on Alternia before all this motherfuckin’ shit up and stole the magic all out of my miracles.  I feel motherfuckin’ fresh, all checking in where my best bro is at like we was all just like little wigglers not motherfuckin’ caring about shit, waiting for the capricious minstrels to come and bring the holy motherfuckin’ ruckus up at us with the Vast Honk.  Not the blasphemous honk, brother, the real honk like I was feeling in my heart when I was young was gonna come.” 

“That’s, um, great, Gamzee,” Tavros said, smiling.  “It sounds like you’re feeling better about your religion again, even if it’s just a little bit, and that’s most definitely a good thing.  So I guess it’s okay that you talked to Karkat, since maybe he’s the one you really needed to talk to after all.”

“Yeah, my bro,” Gamzee said with a peaceful sigh. "Motherfuckin' yeah."