Work Text
DISCLAIMER: Not all the works I've written under "song ficlets" will appear here, but I've listed a bunch of them and compiled them for easier reading. Also, a lot of the work is like, two years old, and very short, so I apologize for the quality.Characters and relationships left untagged for the sake of not clogging up the tags with ficlet stuff. If you think I should tag things, please comment!Will tag warnings and ships per ficlet, though, in the following chapters.Thank you for reading this note!
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
You meet him in your favourite bar one night, and only because he's sitting in your favourite booth. Immediately you're aware that he isn't from around here, if only because he's wearing a biosuit knotted around his hips. Scars trace their way up his arms. A sword is propped up at his side. You can't see his eyes.
You sit down across from him and order a whiskey sour, and he looks at you over the rim of his glass as you take the drink. "You're in my spot." You say, and he doesn't even do you the grace of snorting. What you want to know is why he's wearing those ridiculous shades in a smoky, dim place like this. You know enough about humans to know that he should have shit night vision.
For a minute or so, he stares at you, not even drinking anymore. Then he speaks, and he has a weird drawl that you've never heard before, which only confirms your suspicions that he's from some far-off planet or colony or whatever. Humans are rare as it is, this one's rare among that. "Well fancy that. I don't recall seeing your name on it."
You smile, tight-lipped, and tip back your drink. "Do you want my name?"
"I have my own, thanks." He's sharp as the blade at his side, sharp as his pointed eyewear. "It's Dirk, by the way." Even his name sounds sharp, if only because you know a dirk is a type of blade.
"Cygnes." You answer the unspoken question, and you're not sure if it's a shadow trick or if his lip twitched up.
"Well, that's a weird name." He muses, and you raise an eyebrow, then both, as he continues. "Or I'm being a xenophobe in xeno-fuck-central, which is probably not the best course of action for a human all on his lonesome and faced by a troll. Psionic, right?"
You go cold and grip your glass tighter, but you see his eyebrow go over his glasses. "Didn't think that was a sensitive topic. I was pretty sure only psionics had eyes like that." And you relax a mite, but now you're curious.
"You know someone else with eyes like this?" You ask. You're guarded about it. You feel like you won't like the answer.
"Our helmsman." He said, and you were right. You finish your drink.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
I’m gonna get’cha, I’m gonna get’cha get’cha
I wanna taste the way that you bleed,
You’re my kill of the night.
This newly dead Cronus is different from the others. Taller, for one, dressed to the nines in the Alternian style, and you find yourself surprisingly... allured.
The fact that he’s still bleeding with the memory of death probably helps a lot. You lick your lips, tonguing at the piercing there, and slink your way over to him in such a way that he doesn’t hear you until you’re right next to his earfin and putting on your best not-quite-innocent purr. “Do you need some help?”
You don’t expect him to whip around so fast that his fins smack your cheek, and you yelp, affronted more than in pain. His eyes are wild and one is beaten into gore. The lust is diminished slightly and replaced with thirst. You want to lick up the blood and eye jelly a little.
But you’re not afraid, even if an angry, terrified seadweller is glaring at you through his good eye, now. You survived the game until Meenah decided you all had to die to survive, after all; you know you can hold your own. He doesn’t even look particularly stronger than Cronus, though you know that seadwellers are, in fact, pretty fucking strong.
You rein in your appetites just a little to smile disarmingly at him instead. Your throat is dry with need.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
You remember meeting him when you were much younger, before it was time for you to head to the brooding caverns. You’d never thought yourself the sort of troll who could get the attention of a
highblood,
but here he was, all horns and hair and sharp, lovely teeth.
He was distracting, but attractive. You were just before Ascension age, but he didn’t seem to care about that and bought you a couple drinks anyway, and you got to talking and laughing, telling each other about whatever was under the moons in your part of the neighbourhood. You’d never had Faygo before, the good kind made with real fruit and a little blood.
So you got to flirting and dancing, and he was tall and cool and could envelope you in his arms with ease. You were having a great time, and he would whisper sweet things in your ear, nipping the lobe gently. You were eventually swept into following him out, and he was impressed with the way you literally glowed in the darkness, something you couldn’t control when you were tipsy. He liked it though, and when you got on the pailing platform with him, traced your luminescent curves with his tongue.
You sighed against him and let him do that, and he let you drink from his wrist, watching you with hungry eyes. One hunger sated only let the fire higher in the other, and you two made a mess.
“Would it a thing I could be up and doing, I’d take you away.” He said while you drifted against his chest, listening to his slow slow heartbeat, the low rumble of his voice. “Be taking you to all them bitchtits new colonies on the Empire’s edge, let you see my ugliest work up close and have some fun on the side.”
You chuckled, tracing a scar on his chest. “I’m betting you say that to everyone you get on the platform with.” And he purrs, tracing the curve of your hookless horn.
“You’re a sharp one, sister.” He says. “But the offer stands, if you’re of a mind to run away.”
“I’ll think about it.” You answered, and he was content with that, falling asleep dry. You kissed him on the cheek, but as nice as it would be, you knew it would be the end of the freedom you craved more than the caverns would be.
Sometimes you wonder what it would have been like, to be swept away by the Grand Highblood himself. You wouldn’t have found your little red grub, and maybe he wouldn’t have grown up to be the Signless. But you saw the flash of recognition in his eyes when you were captured, and you wonder at the sort of things fate does.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
He stumbled into faith and thought
“God, this is all there is?”
Sollux reminds you of your family, particularly of the sharp terror you remember the Psiioniic had been. He isn’t quite him, though, which you keep finding out when you drop him mentions of Kankri and Porrim, of experiences shared by campfire light. He would never recognize them, not even a little.
It took a while for him to comfortably call you by name rather than The Disciple or DC, a while longer before he would listen to what you said about the Signless, about the Psiioniic and the Dolorosa and everyone else you’d met on your travels. It took longer still before
you
noticed the way he looked at you, and sly thing you are, what it meant.
So of course you used that. You aren’t heartless, you feel fondness for him, but he’s alive still, and you’re not; you’re nothing but memory now, while he’s flesh and blood, though you don’t know for how much longer. You stoke the fires in him, all the myriad flames of anger and injustice that, like the Psiioniic’s, would stay nothing but flickers without the sort of guidance someone else, someone who knows just what to say, can provide. A long time ago, it had been Kankri stoking that fire, for you and the others. You never did find Kankri in that dark after death, and while you ache for him, you will always ache for him, you can take comfort in this sharp little psion and what he can bring
It was a sad night when you learned that Alternia would never see the change you thought you’d been given a second chance to enact. But there was a vicious sort of thrill in you when you learned that, in the end, at least those who had destroyed everything you’d loved would be destroyed in turn, all because of a game he would play with your descendants.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
Yeah, with a boy like that it’s serious,
Senoritas, don’t go, please don’t go.
There’s really no helping the poor thing. Personally, you can’t see the appeal- perhaps out of your own, ugly experiences with highbloods and their tendency to be more trouble than they’re worth, no matter how good the sex- but her, your little greenblood, she’s completely smitten. Her choice of highblood leaves a sour taste in your mouth in turn; not a seadweller, a
highblood,
all sharp claws and painted smiles, murmurs of faith in the Mirthful Messiahs that you can’t hear but Meulin hears all too clearly.
She’s serious about him, she tells you as much, serious as a cluster-wide cull order. You cluck your tongue against your sharp, shredding teeth, and glare at him through the haze of your ruined eyes. If you could see his face properly, you would have sworn he grinned back at you so hard that the stitches of his lips tore.
So you curl around Meulin and joke to her just a touch too harshly; you’re smart enough not to tell her to stay away entirely, but you drop hints, you detail every awful thing you’ve heard about highbloods and their lawless gods, you give her hypothetical scenarios and hope it will be enough. It has to be enough.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
Sweet serial killer, do it for the thrill of the rush, love you just a little too much.
It’s probably cruel, what you’re doing to the sweet little thing. But if he’s going to look for love in all the wrong places, you don’t mind too terribly being those wrong places.
Besides, you can’t deny that there’s a certain satisfaction in it; the sadistic rush of bringing your killer’s descendant to his knees, begging for whatever affection you may deign to grant him. Once you would consider this far too much for vengeance, but that was eons ago, hundreds of heartbreaks ago, and you’ve hardened since then.
If he declares he’ll do anything for you, you’ll make use of that. If he kisses your feet like you’re a goddess, whimpers your name when you finally touch him, you tell yourself it’s just a side effect of the hold you have on him, and it’s acceptable. He would die for you, a thousand different deaths for you. He’s come close.
He would, more importantly, kill for you, and that makes the hollow ache under your ribs worthwhile.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
Your name is Rose Lalonde and you’re dying in your mother’s arms.
Well, Roxy isn’t really your mother, but she’s as close as you have right now, and with your vision going blurry from the bloodloss and pain, you could imagine it’s her. They sound the same, even, though Roxy’s voice is higher, younger, and it strikes you that she sounds so much more sincere as well. You could be alright with dying to the sound of that voice.
Your words tumble out of your mouth in a blur that you can barely hear, but you know, distantly, what you’re saying, as though you were rehearsing the words. That you regret not telling your mother you loved her. That you regret not telling Kanaya you
love
her, or at least, regret not saying it enough. But with your dying breath, you tell Roxy as much, that you love her. Maybe more than you loved your mother. The world goes dark.
You wake up, and you see everything for what it is.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
You can feel him in your mind.
You feel him on the back of your neck and across your shoulders for seconds at a time, lingering and almost-warm against your skin, but his presence in your mind is a dark weight that settles on every thought like his misty breath. Kurloz picks through your memories and insecurities like someone picking up pieces of jewellery and holding them up to the light, watching the facets and curves and imperfections sparkle. He drags his fingers along the knotted scars across your middle and drags his thoughts across the memory of how they got there.
You shiver and try to lean away from his touch, but you look into his eyes and you feel like he’s crowding in from every side. Not just that, but you realize, you don’t really want to get away. He draws out more memory, the first time you’d ever seen Glb’golyb, the first night you’d spent without Skyhorse, the first angel you shot down during the game.
He draws out your anger, your loneliness, your fear. By the end of it you’re in tears, and he wraps you in his gangly arms and presses a scratchy kiss to one of your earfins. “I can’t,” You gasp, whimper, sniffle. “can’t- fuck- I can’t, stop,”
He grips you harder, runs his long-fingered hands over your waist, presses more kisses to the useless gills on your neck. You hold him close as he pulls you apart.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
Your name is Karkat Vantas and you're getting officially announced as the moirail of Her Imperious Reformation. You, personally, think it's insane. You think
she's
insane. You think the Empire can barely handle having you alive, and now she's announcing your quadrant after one of the shortest but most brutal usurpations the Empire has ever seen?
The Empire will probably rip itself to shreds in outcry, or at least moreso than it already has.
Even so, you remind yourself that you've known her since you were four. You hadn't gotten close until the past few seasons, when she'd mobilized her plots against the Condesce and spun what felt like half the Empire out of control, but that closeness makes up for the long sweeps you'd spent apart. You'd faced horror after horror with this woman that tried you and everyone you knew to bone and blood, and she's a fuchsiablood but she's more of a traitor to established mores than you are, and you're a mutantblood that was a pirate for a while.
Feferi Peixes is the kind of traitor to tradition that legends are sung throughout galaxies about. You have to admit, you want to make sure they're singing of her
well.
So here you are.
You stand before a shrine with her. Behind you, you can feel the eyes of every troll in the atrium and most of the trolls tuning into the ceremony through videofeed, but where once the thought would terrify you, Feferi squeezes your hand in her soft fingers and you hear the crackle of electricity right before Sollux pinches your ear with his psionics, reminding you that you're not alone. The whole crew and then some are here to see this in person. You can't let yourself falter here.
“Paler than snow and sugar.” You mutter, just for her to hear. “Paler than vapor and starlight and bone. I'm honestly, truly, so deeply diamonds for you, you royal pain, that I still have to tell you that you'll get us both fucking killed and I'm going to forgive you for it even as I scream at you that you're an idiot.”
She smiles and ties the sash to your wrist, and shaking, you take your end and loop it over hers. “Trust me. That's part of being moirails, you know.” There's that sparkle in her eye and that quirk in her lip that tells you you’ll have to fight her on this.
“I appreciate you telling me, though.” And she smiles out at the crowd and roars it at the top of her lungs: you're her moirail, and any who dare raise a hand to you will meet her wrath until you so choose to quell it.
The outcry comes as you expect, of course, partly scripted and partly genuine, and Feferi holds up your bound hands like it can keep you from drowning, like you'd won a victory, like this isn't only the beginning of the greatest upheaval you know the Empire will ever see, like you'll see it alongside her.
And somehow the gesture is so genuinely pale that you join right in.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
You are supremely aware of the bathos of this moment and all that has led up to it.Here you stand in the nutritionblock, watching a nutrientdisk turn slowly in your junky old cookerifier with its half-busted bulbs and the faint smell of burning wire that it somehow manages to infuse all your food with. It would be heinous enough if there wasn't also the smell of slowly simmering genetic material and tomato paste wafting from the little cube of horrors; as it is you only have yourself to blame.Your name is Karkat Vantas and you stand in the nutritionblock, hungry and pantsless, bare toes tapping impatiently on the tile and one hand rubbing burn cream on your aching, scalded bulge because you were the idiot that fucked a hotpocket right after taking it out of the cookerifier.You can hardly even recall why you thought it was a good idea. Logically, you remember exactly how you got to this point: The breakup, the ensuing loneliness and depression, the touch-starvation, the regular starvation before one of your friends surreptitiously airdropped a box of hotpockets to your hive (which is ridiculous, but really, would you expect any less from Sollux?)And then you’d thought maybe heating one up and using it as a fucking fleshlight would be slightly more satisfying than your hand. It’s warm and gooey and doesn’t have calluses, it’s bound to feel more like a body than Palmer and her five hatchmates, right?You’ll be crawling back to Lucky Leftie as soon as your bulge heals. For now, well, you’re not wasting this fucking hotpocket just because you’re an idiot. You’re too poor for that shit.Besides. The taste of your own blisters and ill-fated genetic material will stand as a harrowing reminder of just why you should never do this ever, ever again. You deserve such punishment, in penance to your future self for how much of a fucking idiot your past self has been. You would commend the hotpocket for its sacrifice, tearfully tell it that it deserved better, but it’s a hotpocket and that would be dumb.Finally, the cookerifier pings to let you know that your hotpocket has finished being cleansed in mildly radioactive pseudofire. It’ll still taste terrible, but at least you won’t notice too much, you won’t be hungry, and you will have destroyed the last evidence of your buffoonery besides the pain in your bulge that just won’t retract back into its sheathe, like a beacon that says Karkat Vantas Is A Fucking Moron.You take it out from the cookerifier with careful fingers, and it’s blessedly only slightly warm on the outside, barely even reaching body heat. You consider it still, the hole on one end that slowly leaks cheese and what you tell yourself is just tomato sauce, even through the stink that tinges the smell of overcooked meat. It’s not a strong smell, thankfully, so you can almost ignore it.You steel yourself and take a bite....Your name is Karkat Vantas and you should just be your own damn kismesis because you despise yourself so much.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
Your title is Orphaner Sharpeye. On the one hand, you're mildly miffed that it doesn't sound that cool, but on the other, it's nice that it acknowledges your actual proficiency with a rifle rather than how marred your unfortunate mug is. Not all that marred, mind, but Dreadeye- which Draconia jokingly suggested- sounds more like some filthy traitor pirate to you, and you have an
image
to uphold, damnit.
Especially now, returning home from the deep voids of the outer reaches to the deadlier, more civilized dangers of the Empire proper. While technically you
are
a traitor, you're not about to make a huge show of it. Not when you're so close to having things come through and come apart. You readjust your gloves and the collar of your coat, run a hand through your hair and generally make sure everything is spic-and-span before you enter your own block as if you were simply paying your spade a visit and not discussing actual treason.
Feferi’s face beams at you from the glassy, inverted pyramid of the holoprojector. It’s a wonder that you ever thought you were red for her, and an embarrassing wrigglerhood story that you ever tried to be
pale
.
Not that she wouldn’t be a good match in that quadrant for someone else. If she weren’t as passive-aggressive and impatient as she was under all that sweetness, and as she likes to remind you, “if you didn’t take yourself so
sea
riously all the time and took some time to consider other people’s troububbles”, you’d have been glad to take her red. As it is, you snarl as soon as you see her and toss your horns in fond contempt, and she titters a she smiles with all her bright, lovely teeth.
“By that look on your face, I take it the Cascade slipped your nets again?” She says it like anyone else would admonish a wriggler on an abyssal net forum. “I feel like you take that
wave
too
sea
riously for a cover mission, you know; and you know who’s on it, too!”
“Well
someone
has to be
searious
around here, an’ you know full fuckin’ well that it’s not gonna be any a’ these loutish
squid.
” She makes an appalled noise and you grin back. It’s mildly refreshing, almost as refreshing as letting your accent come through without worrying about it. The stutter is almost gone with adulthood and barked orders, but you still slightly extend the syllables at the w’s here and there, pronounce v’s too softly.
“Eridan, no, you don’t get to in
salt
squid like that, or your crew for that matter! Where would you be without them?”
“Probably schmoozin’ with the Condesce’s cohorts, where I
should
be. You
know
she only sent us after the Cascade because she’s probably onto you.” Your tone turns serious now. No more puns and no more petty jibes. “Which is why I, as your actual fuckin’ kismesis no less, have to tell you to get your fuckin’ shit together an’ get movin’ away from that actual
midden
o’ a planet you’re based on.”
“This ‘shitheap’, as you’re
pretending
to be too polite to put it, is going to be the seat of my power when I come into it, just to spite you.”
“Be serious, Feferi.”
“Fine.” Her expression darkens, vicious and sharp, and you almost see the Condesce in her smile. You wish she’d gotten a moirail by now; you’re almost afraid of her now, and actually afraid of what she could be.
But it’s not your place to say so.
When you leave your quarters and delete the logs, you’re pale and shaken- and not just because of the plan she’s relayed, either; no she had to call you ‘Erifins’ and show you her rumblespheres at the end, too. It leaves a dark sort of warmth in your gut at the memory.
You will see her on the throne yet. And you will
fuck
her on it.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
You’ve only lived in your new apartment for a month or so yourself, so you’re still packing up Bro’s weird shit that’s managed to get mixed in with your own weird shit when you hear about someone new moving in across the hall. You’d somehow managed to move into one of those weirdly welcoming, sitcom-y apartment buildings, too, so you’re familiar enough with the song and dance that come right in with a newcomer.
Mostly because you
were
that newcomer, but that doesn’t really matter to the tight-knit cadre of weirdos who also make their homes here. The difference, however, lies in the fact that these weirdos (plus Rose, who moved into the apartment beside yours a month prior “to scout things out” but really to get away from her mother while getting herself a degree in Literature) are really fucking shit at Charades.
The girl you're all trying to welcome doesn't seem very impressed by it either. She yawns as Karkat explodes at Equius for what has to be the hundredth time tonight that no, insert disgusting Karkatism here, for the last goddamn time, he won’t play this game if Equius continues to mime obscene furry tableaus for this game.
“Some party, huh?” You mutter to her, and she just yawns again and throws a nearby plush toy at Karkat, which only incenses him further, really. She frowns and beans him with another one, which draws a little chuckle out of you.
“What the fuck are you doing?!” He shrieks at her, and she crosses her arms without flinching even a little. You get the impression she either grew up around trolls, children, or animals.
“I’m trying to tell
you
to shut the fuck up!” She says. “I don’t really care about charades anyway, this was dumb game to pick if you knew that it was just going to devolve into this, and anyway, you’re no master of nonverbal communication, either!”
You don’t think it went over his head, for once. Karkat sputters, but you’re mostly hiding your grin. Before he can launch into another tirade, though, she smiles disarmingly, like she’s holding a gun up to his head, and puts on a perfectly commanding bad-dog-no-treats tone.
“Everyone out now! I’ve got a lot of putting stuff away to do, and this has been fun but it’s been a long day!” It’d be pretty shitty to argue at this point, and you don’t think anyone really wants to stick around for this shit anyway, though you do find her oddly compelling.
You’re ushered out last and you turn at the end to try and get a word in edgewise but she keeps chattering in a way that’s obviously meant to keep you from saying a word. You have to respect that, it’s a tactic you’ve used more than once, and if nothing else, you learn that her name is Jade Harley and it’s been nice meeting you but she moved her a few days ago from an island and is still suffering jetlag, goodnight, it was nice meeting you, you were the only person who was just as uninterested in the shenanigans as she was and maybe that’s a good thing.
She closes the door in your face. You are definitely coming over without everyone else getting involved next week.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
You remember him.
The Psiioniic, he was called; the Helmsman now, or he will be for as long as you allow his memory to stay alive outside the dripping walls of the Battleship Condescension’s writhing gut. But that’s not what you remembered, no; you remember his
name
now.
Mituna. You remember him from when you were wrigglers-
No, no, not wrigglers. He wasn’t alive when you were a wriggler. But you
remember
him, clear and cutting as daylight. You remember the- the game, you remember the game now, you remember the meteors falling from the sky like you saw them on the videofeeds as they crashed into Alternia.
But it wasn’t Alternia in the memory, and this isn’t- no, none of this makes sense. You’ve never lived through this-
But you have, in the raving of a mad heretic screeching his dying obscenities on a flogging jut. And you have the last living remainder of his clade locked up in your helmsblock, screaming for mercy and murder as the wires tear him apart to power the ship faster-
Mituna.
The name echoes in your pan like a hammerblow and you growl, tearing past the convulsing, dying crew of your ship as your lusus’ death wail kills them all from lightyears away, echoed in the squelching glubs of the ship’s flesh itself. You tear past doors and alarms and pools of multicolored blood, bodies piled in the halls as the psychic backlash fries everyone beneath you from the inside out. You make it to the helmsblock and he screams at you in your lusus’ voice,
Kill me, Kill me, I’m so close,
“Don’t you fucking dare,” You hiss in his face, squeezing his jaw in your fingers. Your gift, your only natural-born gift as a fuchsiablood, trickles into his body from the contact, rewriting DNA, rebuilding ruined flesh. “Don’t you die on me now, Tuna; don’t you
fucking
die on me,”
He laughs, and juxtaposed with the gigglesnort in your memories it’s one of the only things that’s ever come close to haunting you in the ages you’ve been alive.
Very quietly, even with the world and his own body coming apart around him, he whispers to you.
“F-fuck you.”
And the wail that erupts from his throat- it’s close, so very close; you may as well have stood by your lusus while the meteors tore Alternia apart, that was how bad it hit you. You black out screaming with him, and you wake in silence so complete it’s deafening.
The block is dark. The videofeeds on the screens around you show nothing but static. In the eerie glow of it, you look up, and you expect him to spit in your face, call you chumbucket,
anything, don’t leave me here you bastard, I need
answers
But he hangs limp and smiling and dead, his eyes burst and leaking down his cheeks like tears. You punch the body in frustration, again, again, feel bones break and blood splatter under your fists, use your power and- nothing. The flesh doesn’t heal. You feel the ship lurch out of warpspeed and you know it’s too late.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
You’re sure you’re hallucinating, dying perhaps, when you meet her.
Why wouldn’t you be? You’ve been lost at sea for long enough to watch the moons turn, burning under the merciless sun and freezing as you curse the moons. At first you think she’s a seadweller come to tip you out of your boat and put you out of your misery, but in the gleam of the waves lapping at her scaly skin, you realize, her hue is all wrong.
Even under the starlight you see her skin is too bluish for a seadweller, her mouth too wide, her eyes burning like sunrise. Eridan’s stories come to mind: A landdweller who made a deal with the sea, a drowned soul come for vengeance, a deepdwelling daymare.
She’s a sailorkiller. Eridan called them mermaids, but you’re more concerned about the more descriptive moniker.
And she rests on the prow of your little lifeboat while you huddle in the far end with a suncloak around your shoulders in the middle of the night. Your eyesight is bleary from all the sun poisoning you’ve suffered, but you could see her blinking wetly at you, examining you with a bloody grin on her mouth, untrollish, unsettling, bright as the burnt red of her eyes. It says something that the color matches your own hue, and you shiver.
“Go away.” You croaked. “Leave me here to die. I don’t want to deal with this right now.”
The boat bobs and you hear a little splash as she lets go. You can’t see her anymore, so you assume that’s that. You relax very slightly and tilt your head back against the edge of the boat.
‘Course, you being you, things can’t be that easy, because the next moment you hear a chuckle to your left and feel something wet on your ear.
“Jegus
fuck!
” The boat rocks wildly as you scramble to get away from her, but you don’t get far before she grabs you. This is it, she’s going to pull you under, say goodbye to any hope you had of washing up on some shore and getting out of this mess-
She hauls herself onto the boat in one, smooth motion instead. Her fishlike eyes glow faintly as she regards you, her hand still on your upper arm. She’s
cold
, colder than the surrounding air and water at least, and you have to resist pulling away because those claws look sharper than any troll’s you’ve ever seen.
“That’s a hell of a name.” She says, chuckling.
You blink. “What?”
“Jegus Fuck. That’s a hell of a name.” She pulls up your hand and sniffs, and for a horrifying moment you think she’s going to bite down. “Mine’s Terezi.”
“My name isn’t Jegus Fuck, that’s a stupid name.” She’s still holding your hand. You’re starting to realize that you don’t really want her to let go, you’ve been alone in this godforsaken boat for too long. “It’s Karkat. Karkat Vantas.”
That must amuse her even more, because she laughs raucously then. “Okay, Karkat Karkat Vantas, but I think Jegus Fuck was the better name because it has Fuck in it. What are you doing all the way out here?” She gestures at all the open sea around you. “Last I checked, landdwellers weren’t welcome here.”
“I’m lost.”
“No shit.”
“No, really, I didn’t want to be here; the bigger boat I was on- and fuck you for laughing, I fucking hate boats, every single one of them, and this little one especially- the bigger boat got raided by pirates and I was a stowaway anyway so I hightailed it out of there as soon as I realized nobody noticed I was there.” You sigh. “I probably should’ve stuck around. I might have at least gotten back on land. I’m a fucking idiot like that, apparently.”
“Tell me about it.” She drawls, and before you can say more, she smacks a hand across your mouth and keeps it there. You make a muffled, indignant sort of noise as she speaks. “Also, be quiet, for a second, I want to ask you something.”
You remain silent for exactly a second and then lick her hand. It tastes salty and slimy and she doesn’t even seem to notice, or if she does, it makes her grin wider. “Where were you headed?” She asks, and finally lets go of your mouth. “I’ll get you off this boat if you tell me, and you can get me something from land as payment.”
“Why?” You’re not exactly eager to trust her to get you off the boat. For all you know, that means dunking you underwater until your aeration sacs give out. “And what kind of things do you want from land?”
“Something that’ll last. Metal, stone, something trolls made.” She grins wider and squeezes your face. “I’d take you, but I’m tired of bones and horns. They start to look the same after a while.”
You shudder, brushing her hands from her face. “And the reason why?”
“For my collection, of course.” She says. You think about it.
“I’ll give you an ‘I spade Troll Mexico’ mug.” You say. You’ve been meaning to get rid of that thing, you’ve never even been to Troll Mexico and neither have your friends. You don’t even remember where you got it, you’re pretty sure it was from the previous owner of your hive. “Will that do?”
“What’s a Mexico?” She asks.
“I’ll tell you if you get me safely to land.”
“Deal.” She claps you on the back, jumps back into the water, and before you can realize just how fast she can move down there you’re already clinging to the back of the boat and wondering what the
hell
the next few hours are going to be like.