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“Hey, invertebrother!” Gamzee said, opening the door of Tavros’s cell. “I been hearing that you’re up and walking now!”
“Oh, hey, Gamzee! Not well, but I’ve been doing exercises,” Tavros said, grinning. He was indeed standing, steadying himself with the table that stood in the middle of the spacious cell. He continued, joy exuding from his voice, “The doctor says I should be able to walk around like I used to before the accident, as long as I keep working hard. So, that’s what I’m doing.”
“Then you’re gonna be excited to hear this bitchtits wicked news I got for you, my bro!” Gamzee announced. “I’m all about to take you on a motherfuckin’ walk so you can exercise those miracle legs of yours!”
“You, uh...can you do that?”
“Fuck yeah, my good motherfucker! I got the permission and everything. All you need to do to get your motherfuckin’ stroll on outside this box of yours is to be putting on these clothes so as to let the highblood motherfuckers know what you’re about.”
“Clothes?” Tavros asked, taking the garments Gamzee offered him. They were extravagant, made of a light, richly purple cloth accented with gold, but their fanciness was undermined by their whimsical design. Tavros grimaced. “Uh...are these meant to make me look like a circus prostitute, or is that, um, just the way I think they look?”
Gamzee shrugged. “I didn’t pick them out for you, brother, so I can’t be all that motherfuckin’ sure. You got to be wearing them if you want to be out and about, or else Kurloz won’t be hearing none of that noise. You should be wearing these, too.” He handed him an outrageous amount of jewelry.
Tavros examined the jewelry and his face fell. He looked back at the clothes and examined them more closely as well. “They have his sign all over them,” he said. “Not that it’s, uh, a bad sign,” he added for Gamzee’s sake.
“No, brother, I know where all that hesitation is coming up from,” Gamzee said, also eyeing the garments. “I wasn’t all that chill with that idea either, but I did what all I could to let you out for some new scenery.” He looked at Tavros’s face, his eyes flitting briefly to the scar on his cheek before settling on Tavros's eyes. Tavros could see the sincerity in his expression, and he made up his mind.
“It’s okay,” he said, shaking the clothes out and dumping the jewelry on the table. “I guess...this is just the way things are now, so, there’s no use complaining. It’s worth it to get out for a walk with you.” He offered Gamzee a reassuring smile as he began to undress and slip into the clothes. Gamzee helped him put on the jewelry. They both assessed the result.
“...I look stupid,” Tavros finally said, feeling a blush heat his ears.
“It’s not...that bad, bro. It just don’t look all that much like something you’d think to be wearing if you were about what you wear.”
They both fell silent, and Tavros avoided eye contact, his blush deepening. Gamzee finally cleared his throat. “If you don’t wanna be walking all around the ship like that, brother, I can be all understanding about that.”
“No, no, it’s fine!” Tavros insisted, glancing up at him. “I just, uh...I think he’s trying to humiliate me.”
Gamzee’s expression darkened. “I think you’re right, brother.”
“But it’s okay,” Tavros said again. “It’s worth it. Even if I have to look stupid, it’s still definitely worth it. Because I can walk now, and that’s a big deal, and I, uh, I really want to go on a walk with you, now that I can.”
Gamzee looked him in the eyes and smiled. “You got it, bro. Let’s get our wicked walking selves up out of this box and work out your miracle legs.”
“Um...could you...?” Tavros asked, holding out his hand. Gamzee walked over and took hold of him, allowing him to steady himself against his body. Tavros blushed. “I’m, uh, not very good yet, at using my legs, I mean, since I haven’t used them in so long, and they’re really weak, so, um, I’m sorry if I go really slowly, and if I sometimes stumble or pull on you...”
“It’s all chill up in this shit, brother,” Gamzee assured him. “I got nothing I’d rather be doing than walking all slow with you and helping you get your wicked self up and strolling around like what you used to do.”
Tavros glanced at him, and, a pleased smile twitching on his lips, said, “Thanks.”
Gamzee helped him set a rhythm for himself, and they slowly made their way down the obscure hallway that contained Tavros’s cell and the cells of other slaves of his kind. Tavros hadn’t left his room since he’d been taken there on Conscription Day. He looked around him as Gamzee led him down quiet, sparsely trafficked corridors, most of which were bare and metallic. The trolls they passed were lower on the hemospectrum, slaves working in the belly of the ship. Gamzee asked him several times if he was tired, but he always said no, never quite ready to return to his stifling cell where there was nothing to do but circle the room, trying not to touch the blood murals on the walls.
Slowly, the hallways became more extravagant, and they began to reflect the gaudy juggalo theme that colored Subjugglator vessels. Gamzee stuck to minor hallways, but they still began to see higher blooded trolls, such as teal blooded civil servants, blue and indigo bloods, and occasionally even other purple blooded Subjugglators. They eyed Gamzee and Tavros and smirked, clearly assuming exactly what the Grand Highblood had hoped they would assume from Tavros’s outfit. Tavros kept his eyes planted on the floor until they passed.
Gamzee was leading him down an unspectacular hallway when he stopped abruptly in front of a door. “Here’s my respiteblock,” he said. Tavros looked at him in surprise. “You wanna get a peek in at it?”
“Uh, yeah, that sounds cool!”
Gamzee smiled and opened the door. His room was much larger than Tavros had expected it to be. The ceiling was high, and large windows bowed out into space, giving them a broad view of the planet that the Subjugglator mothership was orbiting. “Oh, wow!” Tavros said with a gasp. “It’s fancy!”
“Just about anything’s fancy when you go comparing it to where you live at,” Gamzee said. “I got some wicked perks for the purple blood running all up through my motherfuckin’ veins, and Kurloz’s got me all set nice and pretty up in this motherfucker.”
“Wow...” Tavros said again, looking around the room. Gamzee helped him in and set him down in a pile of horns.
“Sorry, bro, I don’t got many visitors coming up in here so it’s a little motherfuckin’ messy.”
“That’s, uh, okay,” Tavros said, trying to get comfortable in the horn pile and making a lot of noise. Gamzee watched him shift his attention to the huge windows, which showed them the light of the stars. Several other ships could be seen glinting in the distance, circling the planet, which had been conquered sweeps ago by troll fleets and now served as a major port. Tavros let his mouth hang open, taking in the scene with wide eyes.
“You don’t get all that much to look at up in your little box, do you, brother?” Gamzee said, smiling at his expression.
“No,” Tavros responded. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen outer space. Even on Conscription Day, when maybe I could have gotten the chance to experience the first-hand viewing of outer space, I missed it, since he just put me in my cell, and I didn’t get to see us take off.” He looked at Gamzee, awe playing in his eyes. “You get to see this all the time?”
“Yeah, bro, this is where I get all my dwelling business on,” he replied.
“Having this truly choice view all the time must surely be one of the best perks of not being a slave.”
“When we get our selves up out of this motherfucker, you can look all up at the stars whenever you up and feel like it, brother,” Gamzee said. Tavros didn’t reply immediately, but something sad settled into his expression. They lapsed into silence.
“Gamzee?” Tavros ventured tentatively.
“Yeah, bro?”
“Do you really think...that we’ll, uh, leave someday?”
Gamzee looked at him, finally noticing the sadness. “What’s up, brother?”
Tavros stumbled over some mumbled phrases, searching for the right words, but finally he gave up, looking out the window and around the room with resignation. There was Gamzee’s one wheel device, his horns, his special stardust, all of his favorite possessions, strewn about as haphazardly as anyone could expect to find the belongings of someone perfectly at home where they were. He knew that Gamzee was important and could get almost anything he wanted with a few pulled strings. He was living the good life now, as befitted someone of his class.
“Are you really going leave all this?” Tavros asked, gesturing at the giant windows in front of them. “Because of me?”
Gamzee frowned. “All this don’t mean motherfuckin’ nothing to me, brother. I hate this motherfuckin’ place. It got me all twisted up where my heart’s at.”
“But...it’s so nice,” Tavros insisted. “Leaving would most certainly mean that you’d never get to have nice things like this ever again. Would you really be willing to give up all these nice things?”
“Fuck yeah I would.”
“But...”
“Tavros,” he said, and Tavros’s eyes rose to meet his, “what stole up your motherfuckin’ chill?”
Tavros stuttered out a few syllables, and then finally said, “M-maybe the way things are now is, uh, better, in the long run...if you consider the issue objectively...”
Gamzee eyes widened in shock. “How can you up and say that?” he asked. “Look at what you’re all motherfuckin’ wearing, brother. Look at your motherfuckin’ face. This ain’t what’s all meant for you, bro. You’re too motherfuckin’ good to be wasting all your life up in this shithole. There are better things everywhere but here, bro, but there’s no motherfuckin’ better here.”
“B-but, uh,” Tavros said, looking away from him, “they were going to cull me. I was basically so useless they were going to cull me, and if you hadn’t said anything, I would definitely be dead. I’m not saying that this is, uh, you know, the best thing, because it’s most definitely not, and sometimes I really hate it, but...it’s still more than I deserve.” He looked up at Gamzee, whose face was set in a non-expression, but he could feel something unholy emanating from his eyes. He looked away again. “I-I can walk now, Gamzee, which is, uh, nice, nicer than being physically handicapped and, uh, certainly much nicer than being dead. If I weren’t here, and if it weren’t for the Highblood, both of those things, the not being physically handicapped and the not being dead, those things wouldn’t have happened. And maybe the Highblood is, uh, a little cruel sometimes, but I owe him for giving me my legs back, and also for not culling me, and you owe him, too, if you think about it, for, uh, setting you up so well and giving you such a good start...I mean, look at your respiteblock, it’s like, wow...”
“I don’t owe that motherfucker a fuckin’ thing,” Gamzee said. Tavros eyes snapped up to his, and he felt something terrible shudder through him.
“Gamzee?”
“And you don’t owe him a motherfuckin’ thing either, brother. Not a motherfuckin’ thing. He’s fuckin’ with your motherfuckin’ think pan, bro. That motherfucker’s got you all playing up into his motherfuckin’ games. He be playing his sick motherfuckin’ tunes for you and you’re straight up dancing like it was all what you were made to motherfuckin’ do, motherfucker, and things aren’t that way.”
Tavros fidgeted beneath his steady gaze, unable to look away, feeling a wave of panic as Gamzee’s eyes drug up memories that sat heavily in his mind. An image of the Highblood momentarily imposed itself over Gamzee’s physically similar form, and in his mind he could almost hear the echo of the Highblood’s favorite command, “Look at me, motherfucker.” So, listening to instincts he did not consciously realize he had, he kept his eyes on Gamzee, resisting the urge to drop them.
“I just...” he tried to say, and finding his mouth dry, he swallowed and tried again, stuttering, “I just, uh, think that, if we left, it would be worse, maybe. E-even though it’s surely been hard, I, uh—just walking around, I mean, with you, I feel better than I have in a long time, and, uh, maybe...maybe it’s all been worth it, for this. For my legs. Maybe even just a little bit, it’s all been worth it to have my legs back. And if, um, if we did run away, you’d have to give up everything, and he would chase us down, and his chucklevoodoos—we would never be free again. Um, not that I’m free now, because I’m pretty much not at all, but you are, and your life is good because of your blood, and, um, maybe you deserve that...and maybe, uh, this is what I deserve, for my blood, and for my, um, general uselessness...and I guess it’s not that bad, being his, uh, possession, it’s not the worst thing that could’ve happened to me—“
“Stop,” Gamzee said. Tavros immediately stopped talking and realized that at some point he had looked down and was watching himself wring his fingers. He looked back up at Gamzee, who had finally let his expression give. His face was dark with anger, betraying something savage wrestling for expression beneath his barely controlled exterior. Tavros felt the panic ripple through his body again. “Just fuckin’ stop all that motherfuckin’ noise. I don’t wanna ever hear you up and say any of those motherfuckin’ things again. For as long as we’re motherfuckin’ alive until the day we motherfuckin’ kick the shit, you best never make anything like that motherfuckin’ noise what just came out your protein chute. You motherfuckin’ hear me, motherfucker?”
Tavros slowly nodded. Neither of them spoke. Tavros hung his head and plucked at a horn, and Gamzee sat watching him, brooding, his expression remaining hard. The horn Tavros was messing with let out a loud honk and they both jumped, and Tavros glanced at Gamzee, who seemed to suddenly realize that he was still there.
“Bro,” he said.
“Um...yeah?”
“You don’t got a recuperacoon up in your little box, do you?”
“Uh, no...only a bed...”
“You can sleep up in my recuperacoon tonight, brother. I got some motherfuckin’ business up in my schedule that needs some attending to.”
“Is that, uh...okay?” Tavros asked, growing nervous.
“I’ll be getting someone to stop by tomorrow to get you all back in your box when you wake up.”
He stood up and, without saying anything else, turned to leave. Tavros called after him, but he ignored him and let the door shut behind him.
Without thinking, Gamzee walked down the hallway and navigated himself to the busier sections of the ship, where the Subjugglators conducted their business with the variety of civil servants and battle fleets working beneath them. He did not pause to speak with anyone, and trolls who saw him coming stopped what they were doing to let him pass, sensing something dangerous in his demeanor. He made his way to the ship’s gigantic dock, which was always bustling with activity as groups of trolls prepared to leave on assignments and other groups arrived with criminals to be put on trial. He followed the whims controlling his mind until they stopped him in front of a group of trolls led by a gruff blue blood.
“What’s up, motherfuckers,” he said, commanding their attention. They fell before him in a hasty bow. He glared down at them, prodding the blue blood with his foot as a command for him to stand. He did, careful to avoid looking Gamzee in the eyes.
“What can I do for you, sir?” he asked.
“Where all you motherfuckers headed to?”
“Uh, Planet A72, sir.”
“To do what, motherfucker?”
“Well, sir, the capital city there’s been overrun with pirates. That planet is particularly rich in resources, so we need to maintain control. We’re going to clear them out.”
“Not anymore.”
“Uh, sir?”
“You motherfuckers get to take a day off. Go get your chill on and throw back some wicked elixir with your quadrant partners. I got my motherfuckin’ ache on for some motherfuckin’ pirate slaughter.”
They dared not argue with him, and he boarded a small vessel by himself and set the coordinates. He returned weeks later.
He didn’t want to talk to Tavros when he got back. His anger hadn’t subsided. If anything, it grew as he spent hours alone repeating the conversation to himself in his head, provoked by dreams that plagued him when he slept. They wrung his mind, heavy with feverish images that tore at his deepest insecurities, clawing into his loneliness and need for affection, and he only vaguely recognized the bitter mental residue of another troll's chucklevoodoos when he woke. His rage-induced insanity distorted the memory of his conversation with Tavros until it was nothing more than a jumbled mess of confused emotions. Tavros had said that he deserved what he got, that he even liked it, that he didn’t want to leave—wasn’t that right? Whispered words from nowhere told him awful things about Tavros, Kurloz, and himself, wrapping them all together and ripping them apart, filling him at one moment with hot jealousy and another with crippling despair. He didn’t want to trudge the familiar path to Tavros’s cell when he returned, but at the same time, it was the only thing in the universe he wanted to do.
He passed rows of doors hiding the shameful hobbies of prominent highbloods, making his way to Tavros’s room. He froze. The door had been left ajar. He approached it, listening, hoping maybe Tavros had been let out for some reason, but he could hear sounds escaping from inside. There was scuffling and heavy breathing, and a sudden, desperate sob was quickly stifled. The cries continued to break in whines beneath ragged panting, lengthening slowly into low moans, and someone began shushing and cooing in a way that almost sounded pale. There was another sob and a low, dark chuckle.
Gamzee turned and walked away, black sludge and dirty words working through his mind. Was this what Tavros wanted to stay for? This was the cost of his legs? This was what he thought he deserved?
Let him have it, then, the voices said. Maybe Kurloz was right about him. Maybe he was nothing more than a rustblooded whore who existed to serve his betters. As the thought passed, Gamzee felt a wave of overwhelming hate plow through him and then terrible, terrible pity echoing back in response, and his mind shut itself down.
Some ungodly impulse inside Gamzee told him to pay Equius a visit. If people existed for him to use, he would use them. And Equius was the kind of troll he would be more than happy to use.