Chapter Text
Deep down, you knew.
“Just flip the fucking coin, Neophyte,” you snap, jabbing your finger at Terezi impatiently. Grim-faced, she obliges. As the coin arcs upward, a vague feeling of uncertainty and deja vu washes you, but you shake it off quickly, not letting Terezi see that she rattled you. Both you and her know that she can’t beat you, not at a simple coin toss, or much of anything else, really. Looking pathetic, maybe? She slumps slightly as the coin bounces–once, twice–and lands face down, fingers tightening around her silly little sword cane. You suppress a laugh, but allow your grin to widen at your victory, a foreshadowing of the greater victory to come, no doubt.
You raise a hand to give her a tiny, mocking wave and then turn away from her. That was fun, but you’re done with fun and games. Time to solve clean up your own mess. Time to kill Bec. You take a confident step forward, and flex your wings.
Less than a second later, a length of sharpened metal slips between your ribs and punches through your heart and sternum. You stare down at Terezi’s blade for a second in shock before she pulls it free, completing her cut. You take another step forward, stumble and topple unceremoniously to the ground. Slowly, in agony, you die.
You knew that all stories end, and that your story, the tale of Vriska the scoundrel, didn’t earn a special exemption by merit of your being its protagonist.
“Just flip the fucking coin, Neophyte,” you snap, jabbing your finger at Terezi impatiently. Grim-faced, she obliges. As the coin arcs upward, a vague feeling of uncertainty and deja vu washes ov-
No! Oh no, oh no no no no no. She did it, didn’t she? She stabbed you in the back when you trusted her. She killed you on the edge of your greatest triumph. How could she?! How dare she?! Rage fills your chest as the coin bounces twice and lands face down. To hell with this. Apparently, you’re getting a second chance, and you aren’t going to waste it repeating your mistakes. Still, it isn’t like you have to fight her. She can’t fly, so if you don’t let your guard down, there’s no need to worry about her.
Despite the fury boiling inside of you, you feel your mouth curl into your earlier smile. Again, you raise your hand in mocking farewell and turn away from her, stepping forward with a confidence you don’t feel. Terror blossoms in your mind as you flex your wings.
You don’t want to die, not again. Not agai-
It could have ended many ways ...
The scene repeats itself over and over, like a damaged, looping film of some sort. By the fourth repetition, you’ve found the encounter’s rhythm, allowing you to relax and think a little bit until the inevitable, painful end. Clearly, this being some sort of punishment or test, so you try to endure it as best you can.
“Just flip the fucking coin, Neophyte,” you snap, again jabbing your finger at the simulacrum of Terezi with non-existent impatience. Again she flips the coin, only this time, it lands with the undamaged side facing up. For a few moments, you simply stare at it in disbelief, and then you let out a sigh of relief. When you look up, Terezi is standing less than a foot away from you, grinning that massive, shark-toothed smile of hers.
Then she stabs you. Again.
She allows you to slide off of the end of her sword and stalks away, leaving you starting upwards, unable to move or breathe or do anything but silently roil with pain and fear and rage. As you lie there, you hear two pairs of footsteps slowly drawing nearer and nearer to you. One stops a little distance away, while the other continues its approach. Eventually, a human face, John’s face, comes into view. Even as you try to gather enough energy to wheeze out a plea for help, the small section of your think pan still devoted to logic starts throwing up warning flags, but you can’t focus enough to pay attention to them. Why won’t he help you? Can’t he see that you’re hurting? Dying?
He just stares at you, his expression sad, even pitying. It hurts and hurts and hurts and he just stands there.
You hear the other set of footsteps resume its advance, and another, paler human comes into view. Your suffocating think pan somehow manages to associate the impassive, feminine face with the Rose girl, the one you told John to kiss. You finally manage to gather enough breath to say something, only to waste it in a wet cough as something catches in your throat. You taste blood.
Darkness begins closing in on you, but you give it one last try and stare imploringly at John. He looks back, and just as you think he might buckle, Rose places a hand on his cheek. He glances over at you once more, then nods and walks away with her, leaving you to drown in darkness and blood.
... in violence and betrayal ...
You stand loosely, legs partially bent in preparation for the coming strife, dice clutched tightly in your fist. Eridan stands to your right, his face set in a grimace almost as tense and anxious as you feel. To your left, Gamzee smirks vacantly, his face marred by three ragged, purple cuts; blots of dull green splattered across his juggling club. Eridan loses his nerve first, swinging his wand towards you with fear and murder in his eyes. You move just a little faster than him, releasing your dice and hurling yourself to the ground. Despite your quick reaction, his bolt only barely misses your head, and its shockwave opens a small, stinging furrow in your cheek.
Your dice clatter to the ground, netting you a excellent roll: a quartet of eights and a run from one to four. Azure letters dance in the air, spelling out the words “Paradox Backlash” before splintering into strange, unfamiliar runes. Eridan screams as his wand turns black and explodes, riddling him with inky, insubstantial shards. Black veins spread from each tiny splinter-wound, and he collapses, writhing in agony.
You reach out for your dice, but a juggling club smashes down on your hand, shattering it. Gamzee. You try to pushes yourself up and backwards, but another blow comes down on the side of your right leg, breaking the knee. You scream and try to maneuver away again. Again, he strikes you, this time breaking your left foot. You get a glance at his calmly smiling face before he slams you in the chest, knocking you into the air from the sheer force of the blow. You land and roll a few feet, feeling your ribs twist and shift in your chest, seemingly with a life of their own.
Gamzee takes his time. When the darkness finally comes to claim you, you welcome it.
... or in silence and despair.
Bec lunges at you again, slashing downwards at you. You angle your sword up, catching the blow neatly. He delivers another trio of slashes towards your legs and lower body follows, but you’re ready for them. The two of you have been at this for five minutes, and you’ve gotten a pretty good handle up on his style. He attacks with brief, erratic bursts of extreme aggression, then partially retreats–either teleporting or flying out of reach–before attacking again from another angle.
However, despite the addition of the Octet’s power and Mindfang’s expertise to your own, impressive capabilities, the fight is starting to wear you down. You need to end this, one way or another.
So, as always, you gamble. The next time Bec whirls on you to begin his attack again, you slightly relax your guard. Bec takes the bait and lunges forward, perhaps not recognizing it as a trap, perhaps not caring. At the last moment, you dart forward as well, ducking under his sword. You grip Mindfang’s sword tightly and drive it, two-handed, into his chest.
The two of you jerk to a stop, only inches apart. Bec’s eyes widen in surprise, then narrow again as his rage returns. You realize, a little too late, that he still has a one option left. He snaps at you, but you manage to pull away quickly enough to prevent him from tearing out your throat. Instead, his jaws close on your right shoulder, teeth scraping against the bone. Can’t pull away now. Not if you want to keep your arm.
You grit your teeth and slam head against his as hard as you can. He reels back slightly, and you manage to yank your shoulder out of his mouth. You close your left hand around Mindfang’s sword again and wrench it out of his chest, ripping open his ribcage with its hooked tip. He tumbles to the ground, blood pouring from the gaping hole in his chest.
You consider saying something pithy before he dies, but your eyes wander over the bodies and the urge vanishes. You take his head off with a left-handed swing of Mindfang’s sword and then toss the sword to the ground. You toss Bec’s body off the edge of the platform, make yourself a bandage out of what small scraps of clean fabric you can scavenge from the bodies and tidy them up as best you can. They’re just bodies after all. You’ve seen a lot of bodies, both living and dead. No problem. You can handle this.
It doesn’t work. You cry for a while, and eventually you feel a bit better, but that relief fades, soon enough.
For an eternity, you wait in the silent stillness of the dead Incipisphere. Sometimes you sleep, sometimes you don’t. It matters little. You are alone.
Of course, you knew better than to hope for a happy ending. Rather, you sought one out, as aggressively and directly as you knew how to.
That didn’t work. Instead, you got this.
Pain, fear, suffering, defeat, death, failure, misery. Again and again. Sometimes, it drops you into scenes from your past, corrupting them and turning their resolution against you. When that stops working, it invents new scenarios to torment you:
Tavros runs you through and wipes your blood from a lance made of wind and shadows, chuckling to himself at your idiocy, your weakness.
Kanaya spits at you and knocks you to the ground. Her laughter, cold and mocking, follows you as you scramble to your feet and flee her, tears streaming down your face.
Aradia reaches out towards you, her hand tensing slightly. You try to explain, to ask for mercy, but a band of force closes around your neck, crushing your throat and spine. Satisfied, she tosses you aside like a discarded toy.
Again and again. Every time, the darkness finds you again. More and more, you accept it, even anticipate it eagerly, for the momentary reprieve it offers. You want to keep fighting, keep resisting, but despite yourself, you fell your defiance slowly ebbing away.
But hope, like love, is a strange thing, often found in the last place you look.
“You’re a hard girl to find, Vriska.”
Aradia’s voice startles you, and you cringe away and squeeze your eyes shut, anticipating another round of torture.
“Jegus, it’s worse than I guessed,” she says quietly. “But don’t worry. We’re going to fix this.”
Eventually, you get the nerve to open your eyes again. Aradia hovers before you, face set in a concerned but determined frown. She’s decked out in full God Tier garb, red on red with red wings. It looks good on her. Gathering your wits, you ask, “I ... What are you talking about?”
“Your dream bubble,” she explains, matter-of-factly. “Something broke it; warped it. Nothing gets in, nothing gets out, and it does ...” She gestures at you vaguely. “... this. I grazed myself on the edges getting in here–metaphorically, of course. But you’re here in the middle of it, and you don’t have anything to protect yourself with, so it’s tearing you to pieces.”
You start to reply, but she cuts you off with a wave of her hand. “I found you, and now I need to get out before it starts reacting to my presence. Just breathe.” She not-quite-turns and moves in a direction your eyes can’t follow, vanishing.
Before you can react to her departure or start to ponder her words, something catches in your chest and-
And, together with a bit of luck (one might even say all of it), they can transform even the bitterest of endings into a new beginning.
-you gasp for air, arching your back as, for the first time in a long, long time, you truly breathe. The movement sends little flickers of pain ricocheting through your body, quickly followed by a cascade of other, little discomforts: sore, stiff arms and legs, dry throat, aching eyes, stuffy nose. They aren’t exactly fun, but after your hellish escapades, you almost enjoy them.
“Man, I was really worried that wouldn’t work.” You open your eyes, squinting and blinking as they adjust to the light. John grins down at you tiredly, his face dripping with sweat. You start to move, and he places a hand lightly on your shoulder. “Hey, hold on,” he says, “We ... uh ... the green troll ... whats-her-name fixed you up pretty well, um, on the inside and stuff, but I think you should just rest for now. I don’t want you to hurt yourself by accident.”
That actually sounds like a pretty good idea. You close your eyes and lie back, letting out a tired sigh. A few moments you hear John rustling around close by. “Mind lifting up your head for a moment?” he asks. You comply, and he tucks a soft, satiny-feeling object under your head. You plop your head back down.
Quite quickly, consciousness slips away from you, but this time, no suffocating darkness swallows you. This time, you dream.