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Your feet take you on long paths down metal roads down the dark heart of the rock as it rolls through space, and you feel the strings of Her who you hate lifting you and putting you down. Her with the white eyes and blue lips—Her who has so many plans She makes use of you for but never tells you.
Her who sent Karkat away, and when you tried to rip Her apart for it She turned your claws to a soft hand, She had you say “thank you” and told you you would be fucking better now.
Now you go where She has you go—not like you got a fucking choice in it. You’ve pushed, you fight Her sometimes still but it’s out of your fronds. You hit the ground soft, and you knock on the wall one-two.
Fuck fuck fuck fuck FUCK no, shit no not this again.
Terezi turns back from her seat, sees you and is up on her feet in an instant. You come up to her, and you’re fighting Her now again for real because fuck no fuck no you’ve seen Terezi Pyrope kill kingdoms like stepping on skitterbugs and this is the very last of the things you want. Terezi circles around as your feet do, around you and back from you unspeaking, and you see her backing up against the wall before she feels it against her back.
You close up on her—she sniffs for some other where to be but finds no way out as doesn’t need going past you. For a second you stare at her and your face is yours as She keeps hold more on your body—you figure Terezi smells it, because she frowns up at you a different way, sniffs again—but then She has even that, and you’re smiling too wide as Her strings lift up your hand. Terezi snaps her fangs at it and you’d pull back if you could but She won’t even let you flinch. Your insides are all trembling, knotted, so fucking terrified you’re going to throw up.
…if She would let you.
Terezi doesn’t snap again, but her hands are on her cane and you know the steel in it’s sharp enough to slit you open. You’re pushed out and taken over, as your frond slides up Terezi’s warm cheek and then grabs just too hard at one horn.
“Hey bitch,” says your mouth, and your hands try to shake, try to weaken and are fucking disallowed. “Seen your little human freak-mate around?”
Seen is an attack, not in no way like the way you used to say it all accidental-like when you trolled her back home, and you know she scents that because she shows off her teeth at you again all white and sharp. The strings pull you forward again, your hand goes SLAM into the wall by Terezi’s head and She leans you in and makes your mouth to smile.
“I got some business to do at him,” your mouth says, and your throat feels bared and you are not fucking okay you’re not okay you don’t—
“Stay away from Dave,” she says, real quiet and sharp. “Or I will kill you.”
Yeah, you can’t say, yeah fuck sure, won’t go near him—you shrug instead. “We’ll see.”
“No, we won’t!”
“Well…” your mouth trails the word out all long and lazy, mocking, and Terezi bristles and draws her sword just a little bit, just enough you see the steel. Your fronds are all cold and slick, your voice tries to shake. “…you won’t, for fuckin’ sure. But fuck, I don’t see as how you can stop me, really.” You look at her, and She sees something through your eyes that you don’t because she steps in closer, and instead of carving you up and leaving you bleeding Terezi Pyrope—little Terezi with her teeth all cutting-sharp and her thinkpan sharper—she steps back from you. Presses back away from you against the wall. “…you scared of me, Terezi?”
She slaps you. Your body barely twitches of it. Goes to hit you again on the other side—this time your body moves fast as you ever have and you snatch up her wrist out of the air. She tries pulling it away, but you squeeze and squeeze and her bones grind together under your hands, run run run she’ll fucking kill you RUN
“I asked you a motherfucking QUESTION, sister,” you say, right up so close you can feel her breathing. “…what, you deaf too?”
She hits you again and this time it’s not so forgiving as a slap—dragon-head on her cane goes CRACK as it hits you, but laugh is all you do, all you’ll ever do when she hurts you, and you wait another second before you let go and watch her back away and run.
When Terezi’s gone She lets go of your body and you go straight to your knees. There’s pain all up one side of your face from Terezi hitting you. The hand you slammed against the wall aches up your arm. For a few breaths, you’re entirely yourself and your own.
Then your legs lift you up and walk you back to your vent. It’s safer in there, in the tight cool spaces you can just fit inside, but safe you are fucking not, and you miss how it was when there were warm hands on you, when Karkat made like to yell at you all nasty and then said nothing but sweet instead, when he’d smack you on the nugbone and then kiss the spot and clean up your hair with his fingers until you were all quiet inside—
You drop down in your secret room you found, the place all the vents come together what you cleaned out and made your own—before She did the same to your very own self. There’s your pile of stolen shit, all torn up from bad nights thrashing around without slime. Not much other.
You stand, because She hasn’t let you to motherfucking fall again, and wait for Her to do what She wants.
“Good job,” you say to yourself, but they’re not your words. Not your voice, for all it sounds alike, it’s Hers. The words aren’t ever ones you’d say, the way they’re said fits all wrong to your elocution flap but there’s not a choice for you in their making. They’re just there on your flap for you to spit out like poison. “Oh you poor thing, you’re shaking. I know, it’s hard sometimes, but I understand. Here.”
Your hand touches your own face, and with you unknowing of where and how the touching comes it’s like Her hand is there instead, like your own fronds are strangers to you. She uses them and touches at your face, the softest places of you at your neck and your eyes and pets your own fucked-up half-fins until She lets you make a noise that’s half a purr but mostly crying.
“That’s it,” She soothes with your mouth, and your eyes burn hating and your thorax aches with a purr you don’t want to allow. “Let it out. You’ve almost got a kismesis and you’re helping me at the same time, isn’t that nice? Shooosh.”
“Fuck you,” you get out on the air She means you to purr with, and then your mouth closes off from you again. Her grip’s tight on you again—She’s pissed off.
“You are still just so…ungrateful,” you say, and your legs move, walk you forward off to the place you’ve curled up to sleep and kneel you down. “Somebody needs to rest and think about gratitude, I think.”
She sets your hands in on your horns, down at the base where She’s done so many fucking times before there’s bruises down to the bone. Keeps them squeezing and moving and leaves the rest of you free of Her—free to shake and try to breathe as your fronds squeeze too hard and you ache and hurt and hate and push yourself under.
You lie there time uncountable. Your dream self goes off and far off, still too weak to do more than watch a dream bubble pass through with eyes half-open. It’s harder with your own two hands but that press at the skull and horn’s got you put too hard under to move, and you see little red shoes, white legs and a blue skirt. You can’t even growl.
“Look how peaceful you look like this,” She says, and your thinkpan twists to Her command, remembers your paint off you for Her to see. It’s an old humiliation but a humiliation it fucking remains and you close your eyes and try not to feel it when She kneels down and touches you like She fucking owns you.
You wake up tired and sick and shaking, and your body has moved while you were sleeping, moved without your knowing or consent, crouched down in a vent watching. See Karkat watching some shitty-ass human piece of junk movie. See the human with the dark glasses come sit down, put his legs up on your moirail’s lap and hold out the grubcorn bowl for him, and Karkat almost-smile and take some.
“Stop it,” you tell her, but your eyes stay on Karkat’s face and your chokeblister knots up like you’re going to fuck up and cry and that would be something beyond bearing. She lets your voice free, and you know She laughs somewhere when you raise your voice all cracked and broken, “—fucking stop.”
She listens. It’s not often that She does as you’re telling (asking begging) her to and it’s a surprise so strong you don’t hardly know what to do. In the space of you not knowing She takes you down out the vents into the halls, walks you forward like being out here open don’t make you shake.
“What the fuck are you doing?” you say to the air, and She doesn’t answer but She does close your mouth, tight as stitches. Leaves your wind-tunnel free to make the sounds of your anger, but you think She thinks it fucking cute when you fight. Likes you struggling, like a spider likes watching a fly, fuck fuck—
The blade slides in at your throat and you know She was expecting, because She just laughs and says “…hey sister. Didn’t smell you coming.”
Terezi’s sword jerks at that—nicks your choke, a little star of pain you can’t shy back from.
“You reprehensible fucker,” she says, and She is satisfied to hear that rage in her voice, to hear Terezi Pyrope motherfucking unraveled. “I know you were in my block.”
“Nice place,” says your mouth, and you can’t think on when you were ever at her block but you know as sure as anything that you not remembering doesn’t make a single fucking inch of difference. There are times, always times, you wake up not where you went to sleep. “…smells like you. Gives a brother something to…work off of.” Something hits you in the guts—a touch unexpected, unwanted, as you half-turn back to Terezi and wink, grope between your legs like a dirty fucking joke.
You see Her meaning hit Terezi same time it hits you—your acid sac turns over and She has to work fast to choke off how you gag on bile. Terezi’s going to kill you this time she’s going to fucking kill you and maybe you’re a terrible coward, may be you always did sit that way but you don’t want to fucking die.
But when her mouth goes up against your neck it’s not to tear out and make you bleed, it’s sudden and hungry and sucking and kissing at your skin and it’s a sick and hateful thing but the moan that comes out your mouth might well be your own. Terezi growls hungry and you’re not to pull away, whatever she does you’re to stand still for—
Terezi bites down on your shoulder fucking hard and it makes you want to scream from the burn and stab of it—but your mouth's not your own and it laughs instead; you laugh like there ain’t such a thing as pain, grab at her by her hair and sock her one in the ganderbulb so she lets got of you. She goes swearing and shaking off the punch; pulls back and away and looks at you and for a second she’s frowning, like she sees something—smells something, fuck. Like she smells you still crying out at the pain as your body goes laughing and rubs your blood on your fingers to make trails on the walls.
“…you are…different,” she says, very quietly. “You are different from what I…”
Your body moves forward—She kisses Terezi with your fangs and tongue and you close your eyes and wish you could run the fuck away.