Chapter Text
gallowsCalibrator [GC] began trolling arachnidsGrip [AG]
GC: H4PPY 4LMOST 4NN1V3RS4RY 1 GU3SS
GC: 1TS DUMB BUT 1 ST1LL M1SS YOU
GC: 1F 1T W3R3NT FOR TH3 R3ST OF THOS3 DUMB4SS3S 1D ST1LL B3 OUT LOOK1NG FOR YOU
GC: 3V3N 1F TH3Y’R3 R1GHT 4ND YOU 4R3NT COM1NG B4CK
GC: WH1CH 4T TH1S PO1NT TH3Y… PROB4BLY 4R3
arachnidsGrip [AG] is offline
GC: UGH
GC: FUCK
GC: WHY DO 1 K33P TH1NK1NG TH1S 1S 4 GOOD 1D34
gallowsCalibrator [GC] ceased trolling arachnidsGrip [AG]
Your name is Terezi Pyrope, and five human ‘years' ago you and your friends saved the world. Two years ago you were out patrolling the edges of paradox space, where horrorterrors speak in their garbled tongues of unholy communion, looking for a girl.
(You have difficulty saying her name nowadays. It hurts too much.)
Now, though, due to the interference of your fellow ex-players, you’re stuck on Earth C, a grad student and TA at the most prestigious law school in the world, and living in a tiny apartment near the school. You could’ve gotten a better apartment, and you could’ve become a legislacerator (or a 'lawyer', whatever the humans call it) immediately, given that your Seer of Mind powers have allowed you to process and memorize information way more easily- jumped right back into the middle of the action- but you wanted some semblance of normalcy, the ability to forget the past even for a little while. And anyways, you like your little apartment. It reminds you of the room you slept in on the meteor, small and cozy and full of smells. Karkat says your room is an abomination of interior design, but you like the way you can’t smell any one color in here, a rainbow of comfort, something to hold onto.
It’s been a long time since they forced you back here, and you’re still unbearably lonely.
Earth C itself is nice enough. You hadn’t stuck around long after the opening of the door- there were other, more pressing engagements you had to attend to- but coming back had been a shock. You hadn’t expected the world to be fully populated again, full of mature humans, trolls, carapacians, and consorts running around. The others had explained this with a handwave and ‘Dave's time shenanigans’, and at this point that’s really all the explanation that you need.
Your husktop chirps and despite knowing that she’s not coming back, knowing that it won’t be her, you practically sprint across the room to lick the screen. You hate yourself for the way your stomach drops at the taste of text that isn’t cobalt. Even cherry has become a disappointment now.
It’s been five human years, you remind yourself. She’s not coming back.
turntechGodhead [TG] began pestering gallowsCalibrator [GC]
TG: yo rezi are you up
TG: been pestering you since eight am trying to get your attention
TG: i’m hurt
TG: do you have a new coolkid now are you cheating on me
GC: YOU KNOW YOU’R3 TH3 ONLY COOLK1D FOR M3, D4V3
GC: 4ND 1 H1GHLY DOUBT YOU H4V3 B33N UP S1NC3 3IGHT 4M B3C4US3 1 KNOW K4RK4T
GC: 3V3N 1F YOU W3R3 UP 4T 31GHT
GC: WH1CH 1 H1GHLY DOUBT
GC: H3’D STILL B3 FUCK1NG CUDDL1NG YOU
TG: that’s fair
TG: although it’s not like you’re not also a cuddler rezi
TG: i was on the meteor too yknow we all saw you
TG: anyways lucky you and your cancelled classes
TG: bet all the little baby lawyers in training are breathing sighs of relief
TG: they’re glad to have a week of respite from your terror
TG: meanwhile those of us tasked with feeding the masses their daily ironic and occasional unironic media don’t have vacation days
TG: it’s endless hell
TG: i haven’t left my house in three months. every moment im creating and producing content. i haven’t seen my family in days. i’m a hostage in my own home
GC: L13S 4ND SL4ND3R 1 4M 4 GR34T T34CH3R’S 4SS1ST4NT
GC: 3V3N 1F TH3Y 4R3 SC4R3D OF M3
GC: 4ND W3 4LL KNOW YOU LOV3 YOUR JOB 4ND TH3 4TT3NT1ON 1T G3TS YOU
TG: you’ve caught me rezi i guess i’m going to liar’s jail
TG: charged with slander and denying my emotions
TG: chief character witnesses include rose lalonde karkat vantas and jade harley among others
TG: also charged with arson but who gives a fuck about that anyways
GC: H3H3H3H3H3
TG: anyways i’m here to extend an invitation to the annual victory anniversary party
TG: before you say no i promise it’s not gonna be like one of those big galas that me and rose attend all the time for publicity
TG: it’s lowkey and more like a big comforting group therapy session with no pressure and your friends
TG:
TG:
TG: now that i say it like that it sounds awkward
GC: UGH
GC: 1’LL COM3 BUT ONLY B3C4US3 1 KNOW YOU’LL G3T 4LL D1S4PPO1NT3D IN M3 1F 1 DON’T
GC: 4ND B3C4US3 *YOU* 4SK3D M3 4ND NOT 3GB3RT
TG: thanks rezi i appreciate it
GC: OF COURS3 YOU DO COOLK1D W3 4LL KNOW 1T’LL B3 BOR1NG W1THOUT M3
TG: ha
TG: anyways it’s at our place at five don’t be late
TG: were doing this bro
TG: were making this happen
turntechGodhead [TG] ceased pestering gallowsCalibrator [GC]
Lectures are cancelled today (and tomorrow and for another two days after that) in ‘honor' of the upcoming anniversary, so instead of distracting yourself with the clusterfuck that is the legal system and the even bigger clusterfuck that is your students, you go to your second favorite place to hang out- the dueling center.
A lot of the ex-players don’t like going to or participating in strifes, probably because of PTSD. You know that Jade and Dave don’t like seeing people strife- they say it brings back bad memories, which you can understand. Some of you watch it- Rose thinks it's delightful- but no one, including you, strifes for fun. Even if you wanted to, it would have wreaked havoc on your body. The Game had long-term consequences on all of you, after all, and there are chronic wounds and illnesses to think about. Rose has strange fits and scars that look like tentacle marks on her skin, Kanaya’s lower back aches regularly in memory of Eridan’s light skewering her, to the point that it can fuck her up enough that it makes it ‘Physically Impossible To Get Out Of Bed’, as she puts it. Dirk has neck pains; Dave has so many scars that it would take hours to count them all. One bad hit to your knee during the fight with Spades Slick meant your kneecap eventually needed to be replaced with a prosthetic.
But watching strifes is cathartic in its own way; almost nostalgic. Like home.
Today there are a variety of strifes going on- you sniff out the training strifes and sense one of the more experienced instructors, a grizzled veteran oliveblood, guiding a young Prospit carapace child, through the footwork of their first strife. The kid reeks of golden excitement that vibrates at the edges, fuzzy and uncontained, their center of balance slowly flushing pink with pride with every successful step, every quiet praise that the instructor bestows.
On the other side of the gym there’s a carapacian girl fighting wildly against a human boy. She’s good, you note, even if she does use more energy than necessary with her swings of her practice morningstar. You haven’t seen a good macekind strifer in a while. The boy is more economical with his movements but less steady on his feet, and it only takes a single misstep for her to smash the handle into his nose and knock him flat on his back. He gets back up and they shake hands, the boy having evidently accepted defeat. His nose drips an angry traffic light red into a Kleenex.
These are all known to you, and comforting in their own way. There is a familiarity to them- your first schoolfeed taught strife, all flailing uncontained limbs and bony edges, or early one-on-one FLARPs in the forest outside your hive, the swish of your swordcane against their ribs. But they are still foreign and impersonal enough that it doesn’t remind you of what came afterward, most of the time.
Most of the time. Not today.
There are two troll girls strifing on one mat. They’re clearly both experienced and talented, so the match itself is good- a challenge for both of them. It’s also a match that’s liable to get ugly, and one of the overseeing instructors waits at the sidelines, ready to jump into the fight if need be. But as it is they’re matched enough that it’s almost impossible to get a good, clean hit, and so they dance around each other, leaving little nicks on each other’s gray-brown legs, nothing enough that one will yield. You scent the air, intrigued, and your bloodpusher stutters to a stop in your chest.
Blue and teal. Not exactly; one is tinted dark enough to be closer to indigo than cobalt, and her opponent’s aqua is greener than most tealbloods, but all you can think of is Vriska and yourself, your hundreds of strifes together- some serious, most of them playful- and that last strife, the coin on the rooftop, the sweat-slick grip of your sword in your hand, and the way that it almost ended.
The two girls circle around each other, brought to a temporary standstill, and for a moment the hurt of your aching heart lessens a little. Then the blueblood darts forward, arms high, and brings down her curved knife on her partner’s shoulder, the other knife directed at her partner’s stomach. It’s a good move, and a classic one for those with dualwield strifekinds- it works most of the time, and for a moment you think that this is going to end bloodier than it was intended.
It doesn’t work. In one smooth move the aquablood digs an elbow into her opponent’s upper chest, throwing her off balance and knocking away the knife intended for her shoulder, and moves her lance to block the blade at her stomach. Before the blueblood can react the lance’s tip is braced against her chest, the point gentle against her collarbone, and you are not seeing two teenage trolls who have never known true pain before but two girls on a rooftop and the memory of the sticky sweet smell of cerulean from a mind from another might-have-been timeline.
Just like that the strife ends, and the victor extends a hand down to help up her defeated opponent. The loser takes the hand, pulls herself up, and slings one arm over the other’s shoulder, presses a black lipstick kiss into her girlfriend’s cheek. They step off the mat together, their coiled, tense ferocity replaced by loud crowing laughter and grins and lewd jokes, and you are sick, sick to your stomach.
That should be you. That should be the two of you, now, instead of just you, alone, in your tiny apartment that feels too big because of her absence, sleepless nights and your futile calls out into the empty void that is her trollian, grading the papers of college students full of idealism and naivété and belief in justice, and her, languishing out in paradox space, either alone and abandoned or dead.
You don’t remember walking home, but you remember opening the door to your apartment and feeling like your head is full of fog. It doesn’t clear out fully until you’re taking a long hot shower, standing in your ablution trap under the flow of scalding water despite the pain, staying under until the smell of sweet berry laughter is nothing more than a long ago memory.
After the incident at the strifing gym, the prospect of going to the anniversary cookout is draining. You toy for a few moments with the idea of just skipping out on it like you have the last five years, but you promised Dave you’d come. If you don’t show up he and Karkat and Kanaya will get worried and they’ll come up to your apartment with the spare key that you never should have given him and walk in on you on the floor eating iced grubcake by the fistful in a ratty pair of sweatpants while watching an Alternian archive of a playthrough of In Which Three Wrigglers- A Goldblood, A Rustblood, And An Indigoblood- Are Sent To A Rehabilitation Camp And Meet The Handmaid and trying not to cry, and really once is more than enough!
So you put on your cleanest outfit, an old dress that Kanaya made you on the meteor when she wasn’t doing her dumb pining routine for Rose. It’s snug in the shoulders and it pinches at the waist, but it fits and it makes you look somewhat presentable, so you wash your face, put on your deliciously red boots, and catch a cab to Dave’s house!
You don’t go in the front door because that’s for absolute idiots who have no sense of style, so instead you sneak around the back and pick the lock on some old lady’s gate before climbing up the fence to get a look at what’s going on.
The cookout is indeed lowkey, just like Dave said it would be- no reporters, no society people, just ex-players. Harley’s dancestor, whatever his name is (Jack or Jake or something?) is manning the grill, humming an old Earth song you don’t recognize; nearby, Dave and Karkat are listening to Roxy as she tells a story, one hand waving animatedly and the other wrapped around the cherub girl’s waist. Rose and Kanaya are attempting to introduce their tiny meowbeast to Jade’s dog, and Jane is making her way over to her girlfriends with two plates of cake in her hands and one balanced on her arm. Dave’s bro and John are sitting in Dave’s treehouse, which you note mentally, resolving to avoid him for the rest of the night. This is supposed to be a celebration, and you do not want to ruin the party with your issues. You’re a good guest, after all!
(Well. Historically speaking, you haven’t, but really you don’t think the fireworks did that much damage anyways. The reporters were overexaggerating!)
But that is of no importance! You are going to be a good guest, and one of the things good guests do is greet people.
You start to make your way over to Kanaya and Rose and are promptly bowled over by Jade’s dog. It’s gigantic- a German shepherd, you think. One of your human students has one that helps her with her 'epileptic seizures’, whatever those are, and she brings it into school with her. It’s a very quiet dog, too, always primed and at attention. Never barks randomly, unlike the furry who attended your first Introduction to Law class and was the catalyst for your school's rule that fursuits are not permitted in the classroom environment.
Jade’s dog is significantly less well-behaved in comparison to both of them, you think as the dog lavishes your face with its tongue full of love. But you are a perpetually dignified troll, so you get up, pat him on the back, and grin your signature sharktooth grin at Kanaya and Rose while trying to act as if you haven’t just been slobbered over.
“Hello dykes!” you say cheerfully. Kanaya barely represses a snort. “How is it banging?”
“Quite well,” Rose replies, the corner of her mouth upturned in a half-smile. “The sex is great.” Kanaya hits Rose in the arm playfully, but Rose continues to smile at you in her passive-aggressive way. “You look lovely, Terezi,” she adds.
A true mistress of passive aggressive snark. It’s almost disconcerting, or it would be if you couldn’t sense the underlying warmth in her voice, so you simply bare your teeth at her and reply, “Really, Miss Lavender Bath Salts? I hadn’t noticed!”
You had forgotten Jade Harley in your witty banter, which was a mistake. Harley, for her part, has none of Rose’s reservations regarding genuine displays of emotion, so you suppose you should've expect it when she throws her arms around your waist, squeezes the air out of your internal organs, and yells directly into your ear, “TEREZI I’M SO GLAD YOU’RE HERE HOW ARE YOU?”
You wheeze in response, because that is all that your lungs are currently capable of doing (it is thoroughly unfair how buff she is!). Your organs make a squishy noise that they aren’t supposed to make. “Oh, sorry!” Jade says sheepishly, and lets go of you.
“I forgive you, Miss Key Lime,” you gasp unconvincingly, “Long time no see, huh?”
“I wish she would realize the fact that the blindness puns haven't gotten any funnier over time,” Kanaya mumbles goodnaturedly, and you cut your eyes at her- or, well, you cut your shades at her- but Jade simply laughs and smiles up at you.
“Sorry about Rudy! He’s just excited to meet you, aren’tcha boy?” She punctuates the question by rubbing her dog’s ears, smiling dotingly when he leans into the touch. “How've you been? It feels like I haven't seen you in ages, I need to know everything about what's happened since I last saw you!"
And instead of telling them the truth, you start talking about your TA job and the dumb student papers you keep having to read, and they laugh, and you feel your heart swell with a strange warmth.
You lose yourself in the conversation. You’d forgotten how good it felt to laugh genuinely, to talk about the Game in a way that didn’t need explaining, to joke about old foes and have others laugh alongside you, and make fun of Dave because to them he’s just your friend instead of a creation hero.
The conversation lasts a while, drifting over to the grill as you pick up dinner and expanding to include Dave and a tipsy Karkat. Topics jump from your current day-to-day to the subject of the Game when Karkat grumbles that his editor dresses “exactly like fucking Doc Scratch, all neon green and shit,” so you’re joking about how the Condesce looked like she was about to “start spittin’ some sick fires with all that gold bling, fucking lay down some beats about murder and the end of the world and how difficult it is to get good jewelry when you’ve basically doomed the universe,” as Dave puts it, when things start going south.
“I don't think you have any right to judge, Mr. Cherrybomb,” you remark when you’ve caught your breath after a bout of giggling. “You and your god tier pajamas that you wore for literally two and a half sweeps on the meteor.”
“Hey, don’t look at me!” Dave protests as Karkat sniggers into his shoulder. “At least I had a cool ass color scheme, Rose had goddamn neon yellow and orange. Y’all complained about Kanaya glowing when you were trying to sleep but I swear she was the one who was emitting more light, wearing that getup!”
Rose rolls her eyes at the well-tread argument. This has been a long-debated topic, ever since the meteor when you met up with a bunch of your god tier selves and you'd gotten into a big long debate about the relative merits of the color schemes. “Shut up, Dave.”
“If I may,” Kanaya pipes up from where she’s now laying in the grass. Her head is nestled in Rose’s lap, and Rose’s long brown fingers are running through her hair soothingly. Looking at them makes your heart ache. “I happen to find the outfit quite attractive on Rose. However I fear I am biased considering that Rose is my wife and I find literally anything attractive on her.”
“We can all agree that John’s god tier outfit was the most pathetic, though,” Jade muses from her position flat on her back with Rudy on top of her stomach. “ That hood tripped him everywhere he went. I once saw him use his hood as a Kleenex. And he never washes it.” She shudders as the rest of you make disgusted faces.
“Hey!” John’s voice is loud and earnestly hurt. The sound of it makes you tense, and the sound of his feet shuffling through the grass twists your stomch in two. “My god tier outfit is cool! It’s super awesome and anyways Dirk says I look great in it!”
Dave wrinkles his nose in disgust, the way that he does whenever the fact that his ectotwin/alternate brother/whatever is dating his best bro since childhood is referenced. But you can hardly concentrate on that. Your mind is racing and all you can hear is the sound of John’s voice from two years ago, full of judgement and unable to understand.
He drops down to sit next to you and it’s too much. You bolt.
You can’t flashstep like the Striders can, but you are and have always been fast- ever since you were part of a FLARPing team, underestimated for your skinny ribs and arms and body at first and then later for your blindness. By the time that they’ve realized that you’re running, you’re swinging one leg over the far fence and dropping into the old lady’s vegetable garden, landing in the kale plants. They crunch under your feet. Behind you, Jade calls out your name and Dave sighs loudly in the put-upon way that only he can, and Karkat yells “WOW JOHN NICE JOB” and John says-
You refuse to hear what John says.
The subway ride home is empty and dark. You sit hunched in the seat and try to become so small that you stop feeling the ache.
Your apartment feels empty and cold when you stumble in the front door. The recuperacoon is an open embrace, and you’re crying when you submerge yourself in it, the sobor absorbing your teal tears.
Two years ago you’d been searching every crack of space for her. You’d found Aradia and Sollux drifting through the stars, being their typical, sickeningly pale selves. You’d directed them to Earth C just in case they wanted to stop by, and Aradia had lit up at the prospect of the archaelogical implications of a planet with trolls and humans and carapacians. They’d left in a hurry, and you’d kept searching.
You were emerging from the ruins of a broken dreambubble, having only found a pretentious Kankri attempting to lecture you and a Dirk who’d somehow gotten some weird black and red AI getup who called himself Hal, when Jade had appeared in front of you and knocked you out.
You’d woken in Kanaya’s spare room in a big recuperacoon that had clearly been bought from Target to the sound of a whispered argument outside your door. There were snatches that you’d caught- stuff about malnourishment and sickness and exhaustion- before the sheer need for rest had overtaken you.
Afterward you’d learned that Aradia and Sollux were ‘concerned' about your health and had talked to the others about you, and they’d all grown equally concerned. And so there’d been a rescue mission.
How could they, you’d thought. So what if you weren’t sleeping much! So what if you were running out of provisions! You were Terezi Pyrope, Seer of Mind extraordinaire, and things like that did not matter to you! You needed to be out there looking for her. You needed to bring her home. Once you woke, you tried to leave the house, go back out to looking, and they’d shut you down. Rose and Kanaya had taken you aside and spoken to you.
“If you left again, would you keep taking care of yourself?” Rose had asked, and you’d told her yes, yes you would, anything she wanted to hear if it meant you could go. Rose might have believed you, but you had grown up with Kanaya, an ashen expert who to this day is supernaturally gifted in regards to lies, and she was not fooled.
"I don’t think it’s a good idea for you to go back,” Kanaya had said in her grave, sympathetic way, and you’d raged at the notion of not going back- you’d smashed a lamp and broken one of Rose’s knitting needles in half before you collapsed from exhaustion again and they took you back to the room.
It had taken a long time to understand how worried they were, how unhealthy you’d become- colds and coughs that had become something far worse as your body shut down from malnourishment and lack of sleep. You had forgotten that you were supposed to be able to feel your feet and fingers. The idea of living without some mild persistent hunger had become foreign to you.
After, they’d apologized for the circumstances, the way it had happened, and you had forgiven them for doing what they thought was right in your own time. For some the forgiveness had come quicker than others.
But John-
There had been a conversation outside your door during the first days after you’d fought off the sickness and you had begun to feel well again. Outside the bedroom, John and Roxy had been talking, and you hadn’t been listening until they said your name.
“-worryin my ass off about her,” Roxy had said. “She was really sick for a while there, yknow? Reminds me of Game Over, TeeBeeAch.”
“Yeah,” John had replied. “Like, okay, I don’t know how much you knew about Vriska, the girl Terezi was looking for?”
“Bits n pieces.” There had been an undercurrent of wariness in Roxy’s voice. “Heard she was a total bitch, but I mean she did save the world, so-“
“Okay, like, that’s true,” John had interrupted. “But Vriska was really messed up, okay? She was my patron troll for a while so I’d like to say we knew each other pretty well by the end there, and I saw her do and talk about some awful things. She basically had me killed so I could reach god tier, and she was responsible for Bec Noir, and she paralyzed her boyfriend Tavros and later killed him and she was a serial killer. She killed hundreds of people. She’s the reason that Terezi is blind! She would’ve killed Terezi and Karkat and Kanaya just for the chance to be a hero and fight Bec Noir. She hurt so many people and Terezi just refuses to accept that she deserves better than Vriska. She can’t see how much Vriska hurt her.”
“Prob’ly more complicated than that, Johnny-boy,” Roxy had replied, and you stumbled back onto your ‘coon, unable to stem the flow of teal that dripped from your eyelids.
How dare he think of Vriska like that? How dare he blame her for her FLARPing days? He had not been there the way that you'd been. He hadn’t seen Vriska’s monstrous lusus, hadn’t heard Vriska’s voice tremble and break when she offered up the bodies of trolls just like her who were barely past wrigglerhood, hadn’t heard Vriska talk in the dark of night about never being good enough, had never heard Vriska mumble under her breath when Spidermom crept into her mind and belittled her, trying to tell herself she wasn’t a worthless piece of trash. How dare he judge her for her survival? He didn’t know about Vriska’s desperate need to atone for her sins, to be a hero, to redeem herself, to be loved.
The way that Vriska had treated Tavros had been inexcusable, and you had never condoned it. “I was trying to make him strong,” Vriska had said in one of your feelings jams, “so he wouldn’t get hurt. Trying to make him tough the only way I knew how.” It hadn’t changed what she’d done.
But John had no right to pass judgement on your relationship. He had not been around during your wrigglerhood, he hadn’t been on the meteor. He hadn’t been there for Gamzee, or the late morning cocoa drinks in your recuperacoons, or Vriska’s brisk but gentle shooshpaps, your exploration trips into the heart of the meteor.
How dare he presume to know either of you?
You hadn’t said a word about it to anyone until much later, and then it was to Dave, who had commiserated about how much of a tool John could be, how oblivious and judgemental and blunt he was. You had kept that anger inside you and now, two years later, you could hardly look at John without anger.
ectoBiologist [EB] began pestering gallowsCalibrator [GC]
EB: hey are you okay?
EB: you ran off and i’m almost entirely sure it was because of me.
EB: you’ve been really distant lately, and i’m worried you’re mad at me.
GC: YOU 4R3 4N 1D1OT JOHN 3GB3RT
EB: yeah, i know :B
GC: DON’T M4K3 TH4T STUP1D TOOTH F4C3 4T M3 1 4M FUR1OUS W1TH YOU
EB: oh.
EB: you are?
GC: Y3S!
EB: okay i know i’m kind of a doofus on most subjects but i really don’t know why you’re mad at me.
EB: what did i do?
GC: DO YOU R3M3MB3R BR1NG1NG M3 B4CK FROM MY S34RCH FOR VR1SK4
EB: yeah
EB: is that why you’re mad at me? because i apologized to you and also i wasn’t even the master mind of that operation, so why are you mad at me in particular?
GC: NO 1 4M T4LK1NG 4BOUT TH3 CONV3RS4T1ON YOU 4ND ROXY L4LOND3 H4D OUTS1DE MY DOOR WH3N YOU THOUGHT 1 W4S 4SL33P
EB: oh my god you heard that?
EB: terezi i absolutely don’t have any romantic feelings for roxy anymore. we talked it out and now we’re just original time line buddies
EB: also i am dating dirk and she is dating callie and jane! we are both over it.
GC: WH4T TH3 FUCK NO TH4T’S NOT WH4T 1’M T4LK1NG 4BOUT?
GC: OH MY GOG YOU FL1RT3D W1TH ROXY. YOU THOUGHT ROXY W4S 1NTO YOU. YOU 4CTU4LLY 4SK3D H3R OUT
GC: SH3’S TOT4LLY 1N LOV3 W1TH J4N3 4ND C4LL13????????
EB: i know that jeez! i was in the middle of a sexuality crisis at the time
EB: wait. so you weren’t talking about that?
GC: NO? WHY WOULD 1 3V3N C4R3 4BOUT TH4T 3XC3PT FOR BL4CKM41L1NG PURPOS3S?
EB: i don’t know! that’s the clearest memory i have from that time period and i don’t know what else you would be talking about.
GC: 1’M T4LK1NG 4BOUT TH3 CONV3RS4T1ON YOU H4D 4BOUT VR1SK4 D1R3CTLY OUTS1D3 MY DOOR
EB: you heard that?
GC: Y3S JOHN 1 H34RD TH4T
GC: HOW COULD YOU
GC: YOU H4V3 NO 1D34 OF WHO SH3 W4S 4ND WH4T SH3 M34NT TO M3
GC: YOU D1DN’T GROW UP ON 4LT3RN14. YOU H4V3 NO 1D34 OF WH4T 1T W4S L1K3
GC: YOU D1DN’T KNOW H3R LUSUS. YOU D1DN’T KNOW 4BOUT HOW TH4T SP1D3R TORM3NT3D H3R.
GC: 1 W4S ON TH3 M3T3OR. NOT YOU, 3GB3RT.
GC: YOU DON’T KNOW WH4T G4MZ33 D1D TO M3. 1 R3M3MB3R TH3 OR1G1NAL T1M3L1N3 TOO, YOU KNOW. 1 R3M3MB3R H1M HURT1NG M3. 1 R3M3MB3R WH4T H3 S41D TO M3.
GC: SH3 W4S TH3R3 FOR M3 WH3N H3 PROPOS1T1ON3D ME. SH3 W4S TH3R3 WH3N 1 R3M3MB3R3D WH4T H3 D1D.
GC: SH3 W4S 4 H3RO, OK4Y. TO M3 1F TO NO ON3 3LS3.
GC: 4ND SH3 W4S N3V3R P3RF3CT. 1 KNOW TH4T MOR3 TH4N MOST. BUT SH3 D1D MOR3 GOOD TH4N B4D. 1 LOV3D H3R SO MUCH
GC: 1 M1SS H3R.
EB: oh.
EB: jesus, terezi, i'm sorry.
EB: this is because of my dumb feelings about vriska.
EB: vriska and i had a complicated relationship. she mentored me through out the game and i thought that she was super cool. i looked up to her.
EB: and then she killed me.
EB: or i guess it’s fairer to say that she had me killed at jack noir’s hands. she knew what was going to happen. and sure, i came back as a god tier, but it still really sucked, and then there was the whole tavros thing. and then she died. in my time line.
EB: i didn’t know her that long. all i really knew was that she liked nicholas cage and she was a killer and she liked me. and she never really talked about her childhood. when i heard that she’d killed so many people i didn’t think there were other reasons. i thought she was just a bad person.
EB: we met in the dream bubbles later on, and she seemed happier and nicer. she was less of a jerk about everything. she’d accepted herself, i think. i really liked that vriska.
EB: when we rewrote the time line, i thought the vriska who lived would be like the ghost vriska. which was dumb in hind sight, but it’s what i thought. and then we met on the meteor, and vriska was just like she was before. or at least she was acting kinda similar.
EB: i sort of gave up on her then. i told my self, ‘okay, vriska’s a jerk again’ but it hurt that she wasn’t the same. i really got to be friends with the other vriska.
EB: i think i was projecting those hurt feelings onto your relationship with vriska. i assumed your relationship was like the one that i had with her, which it obviously wasn’t, and i’m sorry.
EB: if she ever comes back… she’ll have a lot to apologize for. but so did a lot of people when the game was over. jade and jane did some messed up stuff when they went grim bark and crocker tier, and dirk had his issues to sort out with jake. and all of us said some pretty messed up stuff to one another at some point.
EB: we all did some bad things we weren’t proud of, and yeah, vriska’s actions were pretty high up there on the shittiness scale. but she wasn’t evil, and i shouldn’t have talked about her like that.
EB: so. i’m sorry.
GC: …
GC: NO, 1’M SORRY.
GC: 1 SHOULDN’T H4V3 JUST GHOST3D YOU L1K3 TH4T W1THOUT TRY1NG TO T4LK 1T OUT 1NST34D OF 1GNOR1NG YOU L1K3 4 WR1GGL3R.
EB: it’s okay, really.
EB: when dirk & i were first dating we had some pretty serious problems with communication ourselves. lots of ghosting happened, and not the fun kind with ectoslime and bill murray.
EB: it took us a while to learn how to be honest with ourselves and each other, but we got there.
GC: 1’M H4PPY FOR YOU TWO
GC: YOU’R3 LIK3 OR4NG3 CR34MS1CL3S 4ND THOS3 OFF3NS1V3LY SUG4RY BLU3 DONUTS
GC: WH1CH 1S TO S4Y, S4PPY 4S FUCK.
EB: thank you, i think! :B
GC: YOU’R3 W3LCOM3 >:]
gallowsCalibrator [GC] ceased trolling ectoBiologist [EB]
You go to sleep feeling happier than you have in a long time, and for the first time in months, you don’t check your messages obsessively looking for cobalt.
arachnidsGrip [AG] began trolling gallowsCalibrator [GC]
AG: Terezi? Are you there?
AG: Terezi, we need your help.