dandelioneater

You wake up.

Everything shines. Shit is all like to being so many stars, so many suns and lights all shining down on into your peepers and making you get your blink on hard and rapid-like. Except that it don’t make you feel too much of any kind of good. Like plastic food all served up fancy and similar but only to taste terrible what to try and bite. Only to taste like chewing up your own mouth bits and getting to bleed all up in it.

Your chest has got an ache. An ache what has not stopped since your not-gramps left and now is feeling so many shades worse. Karkat's words get to ringing, "I'm never fucking leaving you. Promise. Wherever we go next we go fucking together, okay?" You want to gut yourself to get it all out, all the bad motherfucking things what get to not going away while the good up and gets gone. But since you can’t be about doing that—you promised Karkat you’d stay human, you promised you’d live this way, human for him, for Karkat, and it's the only motherfucking promise you up and got left, the only thing you got of him—and since your mouth is all tasting metallic anyway, you chew on your cheek instead and swallow the blood what spills.

You remember how the people on the island looked at you and you sort of remember how everyone else did too. These guys look at you like you’re meat. Worse, that you’re boring. They sit all up on high and look down on your ass, what’s half being Her Holy Self’s, and they are mother fucking bored. You want to scream with rage and so you do. You want to tear everything apart and so they offer weapon on weapon what to do it with- but you pick out what look most like clubs.

They tell you numbers. Shit about a score or district, whatever that’s all to mean. But you went and forgot, because they wasn’t all being any kind of important at you.

But she was.

“Sleipsis…”

You find her as you walk out into the district lounge. Her face is all being full off metal bits, her hair is short, and there’s something so different about her it makes you sick but all the same you’re too relieved to care. You see her and you’re almost a quarter okay.

“Sleipsis!”

You run at her and wrap your arms around tight. She makes a sound like she expected anything else but that, then puts a hand on your shoulder, trying to gently but firmly push you off.

She says, all in the same voice but wrong accents, “You’re one of the new tributes, aren’t you? Are you one of mine? District seven? I’m here to help but you’ll have to let go and tell me what’s wrong if that’s the case. Or at least let me help you prepare.”

You don’t let go. You shake your head, throat tight. She pets your hair all awkward while still trying to pry you off.

“It’s scary, I know. I’m not about to object to helping you, but we don’t have much time. We really do have to get you ready for the arena.”

You’re trembling and trying to pretend you ain’t. You’re ready to fucking collapse. You’re a fucking fool.

“And I have other tributes to see to as well-”

“NO!” You snap at her, then choke out, “No, no, you’re supposed to be mine. You’re my family, MY SISTER! YOU’RE SUPPOSED TO REMEMBER ME! And Theobro and Karkat, you was all supposed to come with me!” You might be losing it if you hadn’t fucking done that already. Your hug is grinding bones. “YOU PROMISED! YOU ALL SAID AT YOU WOULDN’T LEAVE! NO!”

Other hands are pulling at you, and there’s nothing gentle about these fuckers. She shouts something at them- them motherfuckers in white- or maybe she shouts at you, but you don’t hear what she says either way because you’re screaming again. Ninjas get to peeking out and over at you, you kicking and screaming and being a stupid fuck, and then they take you out to some room, all fancy as fuck, but it ain’t home, and you don’t know at if they sedate your ass and you just dreamt up all what happened next or if they actually let you beat your hands to shit on the door.

They took your horns from you. That you do know.

You’re not home. You’re not the kind of home what is your Gramps' arms, your beach, Tavbro’s kiss, and the Islanders all coming out at to tell you they missed you. You’re not the kind of home what is Sleipsis and Theobro and your Best friend all around you, talking their blasphemies and you needing them so much, knowing somewhere your Big brother is out there too, and your Redsis, and they’re both to be getting the same sort of need that you do, even if it’s for different fuckers. Every time you get on to thinking you can’t feel more bad, you find out that, fuck yeah you can. You don’t know how your Big brother ever got at to dealing with this, especially not without anything what to numb.

Not that you’ve got one right now either. But maybe that’s all just to be the thing. Rage all turning into something cold and sharp. Your Big brother always was cold at to the touch.

Cold enough that they let you be about walking back around. Cold enough at when you pass a motherfucker by what’s tossing shit—little bits of paper— you’re just chill enough as to not punch the brother out when a bit hits you. Just. Them fuckers in white are watching your ass with every move, but this brother is all just eyeing up your face, with its messed up paint, and he looks all like to be finding wicked recognition up in him but also like he ain’t being too sure about it.

“Cry pardon,” he says, his hands raised in defensive. “Assure to thee no harm was meant. Would thee mayhap hold relation of a sort to a troll known as the Initiate? You bear resemblance to he, though you appear not to be an insect.”

You stare at him for a long time, then say, “The fuck is the Initiate?”

And he opens his mouth to speak but you’re running off again. You run through the whole building. You’d run through the motherfucking city if they’d all let you. It don’t matter. All wrong places at the wrong time- ain’t a single motherfucker what you want is up and out and around. And a good thing on your knees too—If nothing fucking else— because when you hear those voices all being on a screen your caps drop to floor, just give the fuck out, and you think you could die. You drag yourself to that television like it's water and you’ve been in the desert for days. You drag your ass to it like it’s all being a piece of your soul what you up and dropped. If there were knives and broken glass spread wide over and on that floor you’d drag yourself there bloodied and cut up to fuck without a single goddamn care.

The motherfucker what’s sitting by and watching looks at you like you’re nuts. Yet again, you do not give a fuck. You touch that screen like it’s a long lost lover (Tavros, Tavros). You see up and on that screen that it's Teresis, it's motherfucking Nepsis, your cat-sister and blind best chica. They’re trolls, not human. Fuck, you’re to be making lighter on this shit than is, but you’re happy to see their asses. And with them is the Signless brother. And there’s the one troll what’s being an angrier version of your uncle Thomas.

But then, oh motherfucking then, the fuckers what did this, what brought you here, they gotta go and tear you all to bitty pieces up again. Your Redsister gets to being up one screen, your Redsis, scarlet sister as with the She in you, but she’s got at having eyes what see. She ain’t yours. It sounds like her still but she ain’t yours.

There’s the troll Karkat, and he might be your troll Karkat but that Karkat was never yours, and more motherfucking important he ain’t your Karkat. His voice washes over you and your face feels wet. You make noise like an animal wounded.

And then they up and give at to you one motherfucking more. A motherfucker what you don’t know but do. He wears you and your Big brother’s face and your Gramps’—The Highblood’s— paint all at once.

You don’t even fucking got in you to scream no more.

You do got it in you to try and break the TV though.

The motherfuckers in white, who are being everywhere always, come at you again, trying to be about restraining you. Any other time there might be part of you what would wonder at it and why they didn’t just knock your ass flat and out cold. Right then though, all you can manage, all you fucking fathom, is what noise gets its resound on in your own head. What fucking cacophony, what harsh discord gets about you.

Names fly round your head like prayer, the want of them twisting up into the mother fucking hymn of your existence. The Highblood, Big brother, Tavros, Redsis. You ain’t even seen at a Theobro here yet and you fucking WANT like you didn’t know you could. You want Sleipsis, your Sleipsis right now. You want Karkat. You need Karkat. Karkat, Karkat, Best friend, beloved.

You fucking

want

your Gramps.

You want him with every exhale, you want them all like breath.

And that’s all you can think or do, for you don’t even motherfucking know at how long. Until you’re rising up in a little tube to get gander on for a place what you’re being told at you gotta kill or be killed up in. You don’t want to kill nobody, but you made promise. You said you’d stay human. For Karkat. Well. You’ll stay mortal anyway.

“You’re already part-way there”, was what fake vision of your wicked Red-sister said way back when, seeing the illusory indigo cracking up over you, all making like to say you and you and He were some kind of murderous. She was wrong. But she don’t have to be here.

You got God in your veins. Not just Holy She, not just you; your big brother too. The flesh on your bones is your Gramps, and those bones are the motherfucking Highblood’s. You’re a God. You’re immortal. And all these motherfuckers are dead things walking. They’re decaying shit and you’re alive. You’re going to have kill all these motherfuckers, and you can, because you're Holy, you're above. You are going to kill all these motherfuckers. You’re going to earn your horns back.

You’re a Makara.

You are God.

And you just woke the fuck up.

~~~~~

The tributes burst into a run at once. Your husband, Theo is there watching with you. You’re thankful, not for the first time, for being close to a person you can put good word into for sponsorships. You’re thankful that Theo is that kind of person. You’ve already offered suggestions— the one alien boy, Karkat— but there’s one more.

“That one too. Gamzee.” You point out one particular boy, a human one with wild black hair and a resemblance to The Initiate troll.

He raises his brows. “Alright. I can certainly do that. Should I ask for a reason or would this be a gut feeling?”

You pause for only a moment, then by way of explanation say, “He knew my name, Theo.”

“…Ah,” he says, and you can tell he understands, even though you never thought this would be a thing either of you would have to think about and consider. “He’s new isn’t he. You didn’t mention him before. Do you think he was told about you?”

You shake your head. “He knew yours too. He knew us both. Mentioned us both, and the other tribute, Karkat, in one breath, and it was definitely personal.”

“So what do you think then.”

You fold your hands together and press them to your lips.

“They can’t change how I feel or what I believe. I’m not going to let them think they can. But I think… I think we’re going to have to both be on alert.”

He reaches over for your hands and gently pulls one away. He twines his with yours and you both hold tight.