crusthatecean | ♋ PCG 21; backdated to December 25

♋ PCG 21; backdated to December 25

[Phone; Action for 842 Hastings]

[Karkat has been staying at Sollux's ever since Gamzee lost his shit midway through the Christmas stuff. He's been keeping a low profile and avoiding everyone except Sollux. He's still sore and impacted by his injuries, which have been stitched and bandaged up but still have left him bruised and hurting. It's less the injuries than his mental state which has led him to keep to himself. But once he notices, the morning of the 25th, that things seem to have gone back to normal, he starts to feel a little better. It takes him until afternoon to make up his mind to make a phone call, but he eventually does.

He still doesn't feel great, but he at least sounds like himself over the phone, if slightly subdued and hesitant.]

So none of us were fakes all along. Imagine that. Imagine, Mayfield, playing games with your pans. There was no way to guess.

...No, sorry, okay, I did not actually make this transmission to give you attitude. Sorry.

I should probably filter this shit, but I have no idea who to filter it to, so if you didn't care about me disappearing, do me a favor and shut the fuck up. Or hassle me, I probably deserve it.

Anyway. I'm sorry.

You won't hear that from me often, so enjoy that, I guess. And now I have shit to deal with, so let's get the hassling over with, much like removing a bandage or taking a nail and driving it efficiently into my ocular globe.

[Filtered to Terezi]

I hope I won't be executed for the crime of calling.

...Okay, that was meant to be a joke, but it was stupid. Can we just pretend I didn't say that?

[Filtered to Gamzee]

I'm coming back to the hive. We really fucking need to talk, so I need you to stay lucid to the extent you can do that before you...before there are problems. How are you right now?

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

I can't tell you that. If it was me, I would want to know, but my decisions about the timeline have never been the best, and we're different. I like to be in control, and you like to sit on your ass and drink shitty soda.

[He puts an arm around his shoulder, in and of itself a sign that this is something serious.]

Haha, that's all being where the motherfuckin' dream life's at, yo.

[He snuggles in and sighs.] If I get my knowledge on about the shit going down in the future, can I all up and change it?

[Yeah, allowing this. He's frowning, though, not in the angry way he often is, but serious and concerned.]

I don't know how it works. It's possible. If you go back, and you remember somehow. But you would either be dooming your timeline or mine, and in a doomed timeline, everyone dies. Fuck, I think that would be worth it to me, though, even if it's some other shitpan asshole Karkat who reaps the benefits of it. Like I'll know.

In all likelihood, though, no. We probably can't change that future, and if I have my way we're not going back to it anyway. The only future we have any impact on is the one we have here. So maybe you'll change that, prevent the same thing from happening in Mayfield. I really have no idea, don't look to me for time explanations.

[yeah okay no, he doesn't understand any of this doomed timeline stuff]

So if I find out, everyone kicks the nasty shit? Uhhhh...I think I will keep on chilling in the wicked ignorance up on over this shit, then.

No, that's not what I mean. Fuck, at this point if anything changed it would pretty much have to mean fewer of us die, so forget it.

[He'd be from a doomed timeline, and he would die, but if it means less of them die in the alpha timeline, that's worth it to him even if it lets some other Karkat get all the credit.]

No one remembers anything when they go back, so let's just assume there is no way to change anything that happens back in the veil, but it doesn't matter because we're not leaving.

Equius and Nepeta all what done got panscrubbed though, yeah? You think they got their bad selves all up and kicked back to the Veil like Sollux and Terezi did? [not that anyone's told him what happens there, he just knows they returned for a bit]

Yeah. That's what happened.

[His tone changes a little, thinking of Equius and Nepeta. A little quiet, a little more sad.]

They're coming back sooner or later. All of us do.

[He doesn't really notice the tone change and just assumes that Karkat's down because they've been droned.]

I guess if all you motherfuckers are being all ahead of me and possessing the wicked knowledge on the future...[He scrubs a hand through his hair.] I dunno, is it really being all that motherfucking bad?

It is and it isn't.

[He sighs.]

That's not fair. It's bad, you'll think it's that bad. But it isn't as bad as I thought it was when I first got here. Someone I thought was dead turned out to be all right, and something else sort of seems to have resolved itself.

But yes, it's bad. When I said some of us died, I meant more along the lines of...most of us. Not you, that's not your thing. But that's bad, too.

[He doesn't look too shocked by that revelation; he already knew about Kanaya and Feferi, and he knows Karkat's still alive, and it's kind of hard to worry about what happens in the Veil in the first place when they're not even there anymore.]

But it's like you all motherfucking said, yeah? We're all being alive here in this miracle town, so that shit don't really matter none. [He shrugs.] Long as everything and everyone's being chill here, I don't gotta know who bites it there.

If only everyone else felt that way.

It's not about who dies, Gamzee, it's something else. Is that really how you feel?

I dunno. I just...[He sighs, tilting his face into Karkat's shoulder.]

I don't wanna ever be hurting my friends none. What do I gotta do to keep that sort of nasty business from all up and happening again?

You can't. Mayfield does that shit.

But you can have a moirail. Like Kanaya was when she stopped you, do you remember?

Uhhh...but I don't think I'm pale for Kanaya. Like I'm all being pretty motherfuckin' sure I ain't black for Terezi. That was real weird as fuck, yo.

Are you sure? Kanaya is good at that kind of thing.

You...you think I should ask? I mean, I guess I could be all giving it a shot if you think it's a good idea....[Karkat what are you doing no Gamzee is the least romantic person ever and will actually do this if you tell him to no...]

It's not what I think, it's what you fucking think! Surprise, letting someone else make your romantic decisions for you is a terrible idea! I just...you obviously need someone to keep you in line and I would do it, but Kanaya is good at this kind of thing.

Shit, I don't wanna be what done making a motherfucker to be getting their moirailing on if they ain't pale for me though. That just sounds like a nasty recipe for bad business.

God. Your idiocy must grow exponentially, it's the only way you could shock me with it so consistently.

I asked Kanaya and she said she's not but she could be, so it's not such a crazy idea. And as for me, I was offering, and I obviously wouldn't be if I wasn't okay with that, unless you think I'm that fucking magnanimous, which I am not.

[Yeah, Gamzee sort of missed the 'I would do it' part in there, so this takes a few seconds to sink in.]

Uhhhhhhhhhhhh....

...wait, what?

What about that is hard to understand?

...all of it? [this is a very confusing conversation okay, he is not even used to the idea that he needs a moirail yet]

[He'll pull his arm away and use it to rub at his face, frustrated. It's not easy for him to come out and say how he feels, so he was hoping Gamzee might make it easier for him by picking up on the hint. Clearly that isn't going to happen. He'll speak slowly, in a tense tone implying he's exasperated, but a little nervous, too.]

I can't see how you don't understand what I'm saying, but I'll explain slowly so maybe even you will get it. Since every other fucking person seems to understand, including you during all of that awful bullshit last week.

It isn't just Mayfield making these things happen. I don't want to get into this exactly, and it sounds like you don't, either. There is someone awful who did something terrible to us. All of us. To hurt us, to serve his own purposes. And the long and short of it is I have not been asking you to eat your shitty pies because they don't disgust me but because you need to eat them, because of this awful person who can make you act like you were acting last week. That doesn't make sense because it's only a half explanation, but I need you to accept it because it's the best I can do.

I don't really think shit that fucks your pan and can disappear whenever Mayfield wants it to is necessarily a good and lasting solution to our problem. What you need is someone to keep an eye on you and make sure you're all right and not let fucking awful things like last week happen. That's what I've tried to do, but frankly I'm not very good at it as it turns out.

What I'm saying to you is that what I think we are doesn't have to be what you think we are, and it needs to be what you think we are and what you think you want and need, but what I think we are is a pale thing, and that is the point I am trying to make.

[It takes him a few moments to process everything Karkat's saying. The bit about someone out there manipulating all of them is kind of weird and he wonders briefly who it is before deciding that he can worry about it later if he needs to. And he doesn't get what his pies really have to do with anything, but hey, if Karkat wants him to eat them, he's certainly not going to say no.

Them being a pale thing, though...that makes his breath stutter for a second. And Gamzee's never been much of a romantic, as much as he supports love in all quadrants; he doesn't spend time fantasizing about finding the perfect partner or wondering who his soulmates will be or imagining blissful futures with whoever he fills his quadrants with. Quadrants are confusing and no one's ever really explained them to him - well, other than Karkat on one of his many romantic advice rants that Gamzee tends to tune out - but he's always figured that the messiahs would lead him to who he needed to be with and he'd somehow just know once that happened, and until then he wasn't going to bother stressing out about it.

Except when he thinks about it, really thinks about it (as hard as that is for him), they've been on this path for long enough that even he's starting to feel like a bit of an idiot for having somehow missed all the signs. Every time Mayfield pulls something horrible on them, every time someone's been injured or killed or worse, Karkat has always been there for him whenever things just got too much and even the sopor didn't help. And he'd just assumed it was just because Karkat was the greatest best friend to ever exist...but friendship wasn't quite the right word, was it? Hasn't been for a while, not when what he feels around Karkat is so different from what he feels around his other friends, that level of warmth and calm and trust. He's never really thought of the two of them as moirails before, but the word tugs at something in his chest and it almost hurts how widely he's smiling right now.]

Shit, that would just be motherfuckin' bitchtits. [It's a bit stale compared to everything he's feeling right now, but he's never been exactly great with words outside of awful rhymes.]

Did you even think about it? This is a serious decision, you know.

[He doesn't mean it, not really. He'd come into this afraid Gamzee would make a frivolous decision, just wanting to please him or go along with whatever he wanted for whatever nebulous reasons he always wanted to go along with what Karkat wanted. But those reasons could just be as simple as moirallegience, couldn't they? Although he said he felt it was a pale thing, and although he knew it would be in the future, he hadn't been sure, not really, that this wasn't some one-sided or at least lopsided arrangement borne of guilt.

But he can tell that Gamzee really does consider it, and he can tell as soon as Gamzee understands what he's asking, and even if his words aren't saying much, he can tell from everything else that Gamzee does feel the same way he does. This doesn't come close to solving their problems but it's such a relief, such a warm and overwhelming feeling to finally be certain that this is really real. He smiles in return; it's a much smaller smile, but it's also a genuinely happy and very open expression compared to the way he normally looks that the distinction is pretty stark.]

Whatever, I guess we can say that's settled, then.

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