Chapter Text
UU: so, in essence, yoU are the one who either invites destrUction throUgh Rage or the one who invites the destrUction of Rage.
UU: the yoU who raised me was the one who invited destrUction through Rage, bUt that was a Doomed yoU.
TC: AnD hE dIdN’t LeT uP oN tHe SoPoR.
UU: and he didn’t let Up on the sopor.
TC: sO lIkE, i’M nOt GoNnA mOtHeRfUcKiNg Be HiM eVeN iF i BeCoMe LiKe HiM?
UU: that is how it works, yes.
TC: ThAt’S gOoD. I’m SoRrY tHaT yOuR mE wAs A sHiTtY lUsUs. AnD tHaNkS fOr WaRnInG mE aBoUt ThE eNd Of ThE wOrLd, I gUeSs?
You lean back in your beanbag and stare up at the ceiling. So. The game. The Game. The one that Sollux had told you he was working on getting to a playable state. You’re fairly certain that nobody else, save for Aradia, even knew about it, nevermind how hard Sollux was working and how much it frustrated him, but, well. Everyone went to you with their problems. Even Nepeta and Equius, though in their case they mostly just wanted your advice on gifts and other such things that they had to hide from one another because they were for the other.
Feferi and Eridan, same as Vriska and Kanaya, weren’t an “even”. From the outside, their relationships were entirely fucked and it would do them all well to be forbidden from even speaking, but, well. It’s not like they ever took the advice they used you for, so your only option was to try not to tear your hair out, or your ears off, or fall back on getting high off your ass to calm down.
It wasn’t sustainable. Your one way of keeping yourself from going shithive maggots wasn’t sustainable. Your one way of coping with being your friend group’s confession booth was not sustainable.
You talked about it to Sister Madera, your Circus' Priestess, set to become a High Priestess after Ascension. You don’t have a single doubt about her passing the Trials, she was vicious, she had all of her quadrants filled, complete with auspisticizing some blueblood asshole and some violetblood asshole. Sister Madera was your mentor, as you were supposed to become the Priest after she Ascended. You got on decently well with the current ringleader, who was your peer, so it was set to work out.
Except it wouldn’t. Because the world will end in two bilunar perigees because of the damn Game that Sollux was working his ass off to get working, whether you would play it or not. So. You decide, then and there, that, when the Game is finished and Sollux gives you all copies, you will “accidentally” leak it. It’s not like any of the people who will play it will join your session, so there’s a good chance that none of your friends will even find out, and if they did, well… You were Gamzee. The benched option for when everyone else was busy, the funny drug addict, the pathetic excuse of a purpleblood, forever cursed with the troll disease called compassion.
The guy who secretly believed in the Sufferer’s teachings more than he ever did his own caste’s doctrine.
UU: Gamzee, are yoU still there?
TC: sOrRy, MoThErFuCkEr GeTs DiStRaCtEd, YoU kNoW hOw It Is.
TC: ThErE aNyThInG eLsE i ShOuLd KnOw?
UU: jUst one thing.
UU: I believe in yoU.
uranianUmbra (UU) has ceased trolling terminallyCapricious (TC)
Right. Sure.
***
You find yourself in the bathroom, sitting in the tub and waiting for your hair to bleach because you have completely lost the modicum of control you had over your life before. It took five boxes of hair bleach and about an hour to even get to this point because you just have that much hair. At least your hair texture is common among purples, so you found a video guide to go off of, because bleaching coils was not as straightforward as you thought it would be. You are already dreading the washing, and conditioning, and applying the dye, but you already got five boxes of that as well so might as well just spend the whole night in the tub, naked, dyeing your hair.
…Would this transfer to your dream self? You don’t want to do all of this again, like, ever. If it doesn’t, you’ll settle for some highlights or something, because your arms didn’t hurt this much even when you were first learning to pull yourself up on the aerial hoop.
You should borrow your hoop from the circus the day before the world ends. You’d very much like to take it with you. Tavros said he’d like to see you use it, and that could be plausible once you enter the game. You think he even could do some stuff on it himself; sure, a lot of tricks and routines involved lots of leg action, but you bet you could come up with something that only requires his upper body.
By the time you finally move on to putting purple dye in your hair, you are thinking about Karkat. You know next to nothing about him. You know that he, like you, doesn’t have any quadrantmates. You know that his name is Karkat, obviously, and that his lusus is very loud, and that he’s bad at coding and loves romcoms and that you have never seen him but you know that he has nubby horns. You wonder what moon he dreams on, UU said that the golden dreamy (hah) landscape, akin to a sprawling hivestem but not actually living, save for its inhabitants, with no groaning and pulsing and gurgling, is Prospit. It is very peaceful there, you wonder if, the next time you dream, you will finally be lucid enough to enjoy it to its fullest. Flying sounded wonderful.
You want to know more about Prospit, and more about Karkat, and Terezi, and just. Every person in your group who didn’t constantly run to dump all of their worries on you. You really weren’t that resentful, at the start. You’ve all known one another since about four sweeps old, and for the first two sweeps, you were too wrecked with longing for your lusus and too high all of the time to feel like they were using you. You felt needed, wanted, even, and that was the kind of feeling you longed for, so you let them, and it felt good when Vriska opened up to you a little. She was horrible, and she was your friend anyway, because she trusted you not to hurt her with what she’s entrusted you with.
Vriska barely tells you anything these days.
Since you turned six and UU first reached out to you, new understandings kept seeping their way into your bubble, and, little by little, it filled until it burst. You don’t hate your friends, of course not! You don’t even blame them, you know they have no one else to turn to, save for Nepeta and Equius, but they actually listened to the options you thought up, and they never bothered you with anything too personal, but Feferi and Eridan’s moirailleagance was festering, and Kanaya was flushing for Vriska and Vriska wanted Tavros so much that she could only keep hurting him and it made you sick because they were all your friends-
The purple dye that stained the skin of your knee looks like a bruise. Or a little diamond. Like a little diamond-shaped bruise.
It’s all just too much for just one guy. Sometimes you felt like you were everybody’s moirail, but your only moirail was sopor, and, well. You think you’ve earned the right to feel a little bitter.
Ever since you turned seven, you have felt primed for going insane in a moment’s notice. You think you could do it on command, at this point. You really don’t want to. You want to be compassionate and helpful and sane, you want to help your friends and play the game and you want help. You want to be helped, in a way UU can't give you because she isn't actually here, and you're so grateful to her, for her, truly, but you also want to be helped by someone holding you through a shaking spell, petting your hair as they let you, for once, be the one spilling their worries.
You were primed to look for signs your entire life, and so you trace the stain on your knee and pray.