[backdated] The past comes back to haunt you...

[pythianjudgment]

Who| Terezi, Initiate, Cuthbert, and Karkat (But not all at the same time.)
What| Fun with wax statues. Terezi goes scouting for supplies, finds something else entirely.
Where| Sixth floor
When| Mid-Week 4 [backdated a little]
Warnings/Notes| None?

[Multi-purpose post, threads inside.]

Comments

For Initiate

[pythianjudgment]

Four weeks in. Four weeks, and Terezi is constantly on edge. It's a challenge to keep her thoughts from racing three steps ahead of the present. She doesn't feel safe without a mask on her face, but she knows what it's doing to her. She understands that the jumpiness and the paranoia aren't her normal fashion. She has to keep a constant hold on her willpower not to go reaching for one at every noise she thinks she hears.

Presently, she creeps silently through the sixth floor, searching for anything of value and carefully assessing each unfamiliar wax figure. Faces of the poor past victims of these twisted games peer at her from every direction. If there was a perfect place to plan an ambush... It would be here. There's a mask in her backpack--several of them, but she doesn't reach for them. She can do this without them, she thinks. She doesn't need to rely on them.

Deep into the forest of wax, Terezi comes to a sudden halt in front of an entirely familiar unmoving face. Her grip on her sectioned staff tightens, her breathing stops. There were some faces that she was expecting. Redglare's perhaps... Any of the other lost trolls. Dualscar, Summoner, that little rustblood. Volanz? But it was none of those.

She stares blindly, and the face of her Scourge Sister stares back.

Vriska. She was here. She was in these Games, but not anymore... Somehow, Terezi finds her breath again. She moves closer and sniffs out the plaque with the details of her sister's imprisonment. District Two. Arena One and Two.... And then they never brought her back. That long ago, and Terezi had no idea.

She stands there for what seems like a long time. There's a million things running through her head, but she doesn't know what to do. Tear down the statue, maybe. Scream at the Capitol sounds like a good one. Cry. Leave. Both great choices.

But instead, she doesn't do anything.

Re: For Initiate

[carnagecarnival]

Terezi isn't the only one feeling the wear of the masks effects, but unlike her, the Initiate has yet to completely realise them, already a creature of rage, of impulse. He does recognize the effects of his voodoo however. Visions dance in the corners of his eyes, dutifully pushed aside and ignored for now.

He searches for... for... he's not sure. Maybe a kill. Maybe his moirail. No spirits around corners, something more than that. Not more visions.

For a moment, when he falls upon the wax statues, he despairs. But quickly he comes to realise these are absolutely real. Physically real. He can smash his club into it if he wants too. Them. People. He recognizes one, two culled tributes from arenas past. He stares at them all, the scattered lines of them stretching on and on, immobile. And through his mask, ticking down the last seconds on his voodoo, he can't feel fear off any of them- just one, far in. It reassures and unnerves in equal measure as he casts off the mask and presses on.

He doesn't get used to the statues. He swings his club every so often, taking one down. He almost smashes the head of one right in. But, he starts to expect faces, searches for them even. It's thank to that, that he nearly mistakes her for one.

Terezi stands there- definitely real, he assures himself- staring at another was statue. It's a troll girl, one not far off in age from the little Vantas or Terezi. A dread settles in him and he breathes deep, trying to settle the spin of his pan. He walks closer.

"SISTER?" He starts, watching her. "You all motherfucking right?"

[pythianjudgment]

The voice startles her. Terezi jumps and turns, her hand reaching for the sectioned staff thrown over her shoulder--before she realizes who it is. Her hand hesitates. She thinks to grab a mask instead, but tamps down on that impulse as well. Just barely.

She doesn't need it. He's not going to attack her. He wouldn't.

"...Yeah, I'm alright." The lie is an obvious one, both from the way she'd been standing so open and unaware a moment ago and from the way she hesitates now. She doesn't know how to explain the way that she lingers near this statue, this reminder of her past.

"What are you doing here?"

[carnagecarnival]

He grips his club tight all while he watches her hand slowly lower. He stares at her, glances at the statue, then back again. He doesn't loosen his grip on his club, but he does walk closer. To the question, he shrugs. "PART OF THE MOTHERFUCKING ARENA AIN'T IT? We all got a know for why all we're up in this wicked motherfucking business. ALL GOT A KNOW FOR THAT WE DO."

His clothes are still the same as he started with, pyjamas all too much like a subjugglator uniform. The sides of his face are crusted over with purple, painful looking welts beginning to form. His facepaint has started to smear. His focus though, is only on her. And on the one he nods at.

"Who all is that?"

[pythianjudgment]

Ask a dumb question, get a dumb answer.

Maybe after spending so much time pre-planning her every action, she automatically assumed that he was here with a purpose. That he'd been seeking her out for some reason. If that was the case, he doesn't seem intent on telling her. Typical.

His question has her freezing up, though. Her shoulders hunch defensively as she ponders his question. She should tell him? It's not like he doesn't already know.

"...Vriska. My cerulean friend." Terezi turns back just a little bit, smelling the wax figure from the side. Her tone sounds sad more than it sounds angry. "I didn't know she used to be here."

[carnagecarnival]

Vriska. Finally a name and face to the shadow. A shadow that had been signless shaped and red marked, splits off into a wild haired girl with round glasses and light mutation in the eye, one like his arms or his moirail's eyes, that wouldn't be cause for culling. The plaque on the bottom gets a glance over too. She looks young. She doesn't look all capable the amount of motherfucking grief she apparently up and caused. But she doesn't come off as innocent either; she is a troll after all.

"DID YOU MOTHERFUCKING LIE AT TO A MOTHERFUCKER?" He asks after a moment, not looking at her exactly. She doesn't need scrutiny, not for real. He speaks calm, no harsh tones where he can help it. "I asked once if all you regretted the know of anyone. GOT THE IMPRESSION IT WAS HER. But the know of her ain't looking to be what all you're regretting, sister. DID YOU LIE?"

[pythianjudgment]

There's a bit of silence before Terezi returns with: "No. I didn't lie."

She knows what he meant, that if she could do it all over again, would she choose to not meet her? But the truth is much more complicated than that. The truth is following a single path to it's conclusion and not liking what you find. It's looking back and wondering what other paths you could have taken to get anywhere else but this.

"Not meeting her at all would have avoided a lot of disaster. In that sense, I regretted meeting her; but that doesn't mean it's the only regret that I'm allowed to have."

[carnagecarnival]

Yeah. Yeah, that makes sense. That makes all kinds of motherfucking sense it all does. And so he says, "Fair. FAIR THAT ALL IS TO BE."

Except in say every single way that it's not. He doesn't say sorry for the wound he digs into. But he is careful not to turn it fatal.

"What else all is there? IF A MOTHERFUCKER MAY ASK. If all she wills to tell."

[pythianjudgment]

That question gets a longer silence. She's not sure how much she wants to tell, and it's hard to think. Her first instinct is to tell him, but being hyper-aware of that side effect leaves her wondering if she should or not.

"Everything." Her shoulders don't relax, but she does cross her arms over her chest. "I can only See ahead. I don't get visions of what Might Have Been. When we came to the end and finally cast my Sight into our future, there were only two choices left. There were thousands upon thousands of timelines out there... And yet, it came down to only those two."

Her attention drifts, her blind gaze fixating on a point that's neither him nor the statue. "Wouldn't that make you wonder where things had gone so wrong? Wouldn't you regret every junction from the moment you met up to your final decision? Especially the ones that you had the power to change, but didn't... For whatever reason."

[carnagecarnival]

"I DON'T KNOW, SISTER," He admits, frowning. "I ain't no seer of such motherfucking things. DON'T EVEN KNOW AT IF THERE'S A THING WHAT ALL I WAS SUPPOSED TO BE BUT IT SURE IS SHIT AIN'T GO NO SCRYING UP INS." He wonders, briefly if there was anything- and what it might've been. He could ask, if he wanted, not that Kankri's here. But that would also require talking to Kankri, and he doesn't even want to think about that fucker right now.

"A sister had at for two paths. MAYBE A MOTHERFUCKER WOULD WONDER. Maybe he might get all to wondering. I DON'T MOTHERFUCKING KNOW, SISTER. All every single thing what all ever was seems like a damn good way to the fuck come apart. MAYBE THERE AIN'T MORE THAN TWO CHOICES SISTER. Who's all to say you ever had at for anything but two choices? WHO'S TO MOTHERFUCKING KNOW WHETHER ALL YOU DID HAVE POWER?" He says. He doesn't try to pull her eyes to him. He just shrugs. "Maybe it's set the fuck to be as it is."

And that drags out like so many knives. That drags out like organs from up inside a corpse it does.

"I can't think all at you'd have chosen no thing what ain't what a sister thought was being right."

[pythianjudgment]

The silences just get longer and deeper. Fraysong speaks and all she hears is her own thoughts echoed back at her from the past sweep. Maybe this was the only path she could have taken. Maybe she never had the power to change anything. Maybe it was the way it had to be. Regardless of how it ended, it was the right thing to do...

"Right for who?" Her tone turns scathing and angry, though not at him. "Right for me? Right for her?... Nothing about what I did or what I could have done felt right, and I can justify it a thousand different ways, but that doesn't mean that I'll ever know how else it could have turned out. If I had just talked to her, instead of shutting her out. If I hadn't shunned her, when I could have found a way to make her listen to me."

She doesn't know what she hates more right now. Her morality. Her pride. Her affection for a girl that she's spent perigees trying to convince herself isn't deserved. Vriska. Herself. Fraysong, for even asking about this.

[carnagecarnival]

"AND WHAT THEN, SISTER. Got thought up in plan aside that jack shit else would happen?"

Anger. Anger he can deal with. It feels right. Rage makes sense. He undermotherfuckingstands rage. Not talk of choices and what could have been. He meets her rage with a chill.

"YOUR CHOICES. Your motherfucking selections all dished the fuck out. WHAT WERE THEY? Let all a sister in where she tears shit up, tears all like to be asunder and done the fuck apart? I AIN'T HEARD NOTHING WHAT WOULD GIVE TELL THAT SHE WOULD MAKE TO LISTEN. I ain't heard nothing what all would make to suggest you should give even slight consideration of motherfucking trust her. YOU LET HER IN AND WHAT ALL HAPPENS TO YOU? For that motherfucking matter, what all happened to her?"

He can guess. He can guess easy. But nobody ever said he couldn't be cruel.

For Karkat and Cuthbert

[pythianjudgment]

With the Initiate gone for now, Terezi heads back the way she came. Tensions are running high, and it wouldn't do to let her friends run into each other. She doesn't want a repeat of the last arena.

So she leaves him behind, her mind still heavy with the things they've talked about. Mostly Vriska. She's not sure yet how she should feel about her sister having been in these games so long ago, and it weighs on her a little in the way she walks--and in the way she greets her friends. It's not much, just a wave of her hand to flag them down, to make sure that they don't head in the direction that her other friend disappeared in. She doesn't have the enthusiasm for more than that.

[tis_allgood]

Cuthbert keeps his voice at a whisper. "What was that, then? You look like you've licked a particularly colorless lemon."

Bert has been keeping an eye on things and he notices right away that Terezi isn't her normal shark toothed self.

[sleeplessinalternia]

"Yeah," Karkat echoes. "What the fuck happened? Is it someone we need to hurt?"

He has a terrible suspicion it won't be that easy.

[pythianjudgment]

"Not really, unless you have some fetish for lodging your sickle into a piece of wax." Terezi gives a shrug, putting a little edge back into her tone. But she knows she's not going to be fooling either of them.

"It's not a big deal. I just... ran into a statue. Of Vriska." She pauses awkwardly, then adds: "She was here for the first two arenas as a tribute. District Two."

[tis_allgood]

"A friend of yours?" Bert asks, as if that isn't already fairly obvious. Although it could be she's an enemy and that's what has Terezi rattled. Either way, Bert is curious.

[sleeplessinalternia]

Karkat's eyes go wide. "Vriska? Jegus fuck, Terezi, no wonder you look freaked out. Fucking Vriska. Shit."

It's like if he'd found some weird statue of Sollux or Gamzee or Kanaya or something, only weirdly worse because of how things had been ever since that stupid Flarping revenge cycle shit had happened.

[pythianjudgment]

"Something like that," she responds to Cuthbert, shrugging a little. Karkat obviously understands why it's such a big deal to her, though she's certain that he doesn't understand the whole reason as to why. She winces a little, thinking about how he's probably going to find out, after everything she told Fraysong. She doesn't doubt for a minute that the Capitol recorded that whole thing. It makes her a little ill to think about.

"We used to be good friends," she explains briefly. "Until things turned... sour. She killed one of my friends and crippled another. Used a third as an unwilling accomplice in the first friend's death." And lied and cheated and basically every underhanded thing she could possibly do... And never once felt sorry for it, as far as she could tell.

"I didn't know she was here." She pauses, thoughtfully, then adds: "There's a lot of faces here that I've never smelled before. They must go through us awfully fast."

[tis_allgood]

"Then I wouldn't call her a friend at all! I should hope you find your revenge on her eventually."

Bert doesn't understand all the intricacies of it, but he knows a shitty troll when he hears about her. And Vriska sounded like someone he would have killed in Terezi's position.

tw: victim blaming

[sleeplessinalternia]

Karkat sighs. "It was just this neverending cavalcade of stupid kiddy revenge bullshit," he says. "Everyone involved got fucked up in one way or another." And it probably would have never happened if Tavros had done his shitty roleplaying online like a sensible troll instead of getting into death games for girls. "You see it in most friends groups at some point before everyone gets Conscripted. At least ours only had one fatality," he says. "At the time, anyway. Aradia killed Vriska back later, but she didn't stay dead."

[pythianjudgment]

"But she did get what was coming to her in the end. That's all that really matters."

She keeps telling herself that, but Terezi wonders if she even believes it anymore. There were a lot of things that Vriska did to deserve death, but... trying to save them from jack wasn't one of them. But she had died. Which meant she deserved it from a cosmic point of view.

Somehow, that doesn't make her feel any better.

[tis_allgood]

"Lucky for you, many like that don't. And that is a terrible shame."

Still, Bert has a feeling that there's more here than he can understand. Some troll thing that's just beyond him.

"Just be glad she's not here any longer, aye?"

[sleeplessinalternia]

Karkat frowns, wondering what the hell happened to Vriska and knowing that Terezi's probably not going to tell him. "Yeah. I mean, even Vriska..." He shrugs. Even Vriska doesn't deserve to be playing is what he wants to say, except that would probably piss off the Capitol just by implying there are people who don't deserve to be playing here.

Letter to Karkat and Cuthbert

[pythianjudgment]

It's the wee hours of the morning, when Terezi decides to head out. It's been weighing on her mind for several days now, but it's about time she finally cut herself loose from this party. She can barely stand to look ahead to their futures when the paths are getting slimmer and it's harder and harder to find a way to keep them all alive.

There's a bit of paper and some writing utensils in her back pack, things she grabbed from the gift shop on a whim weeks ago. She spends most of her lookout shift trying to decide what to write in between bouts of scrying for trouble. In the end, she manages to pen out a letter to her party:

3V3RYON3

1 4M SORRY BUT 1 H4V3 TO GO. 1 C4NT ST4Y H3R3 W1TH YOU 4NYMOR3. 1 TH1NK W3 4R3 4LL 4W4R3 TH4T TH3R3 C4N B3 ONLY ON3 W1NN3R. 1 KNOW 1T B3TT3R TH4N 4NYON3 H3R3 R1GHT NOW. W3 4R3 NOT 4LL GO1NG TO L1V3 THROUGH TH1S 4ND 1 DO NOT W4NT TO W4TCH 4NY OF YOU D13. 1 4LSO DO NOT W4NT TO DO 4NYTH1NG R4SH TH4T 1 M1GHT R3GR3T L4T3R. TH3S3 M4SKS 4R3 M4K1NG 1T H4RD3R 4ND H4RD3R TO R3S1ST DO1NG TH4T. B3 C4R3FUL W1TH TH3M. ONLY US3 TH3M WH3N YOU N33D TH3M.

TH3 THOUGHT CROSS3D MY M1ND TH4T 1 COULD K1LL YOU 1N YOUR SL33P. 1 KNOW YOU W1LL 3ND UP B4CK 1N TH3 C4P1TOL WH3N 4LL 1S S41D 4ND DON3 BUT TH4T 1SNT 4 P4TH 1 W4NT TO T4K3. T4K3 C4R3 OF 34CH OTH3R. 1M L34V1NG K4RK4T 1N YOUR H4NDS CUTHB3RT. TRY NOT TO G3T H1M K1LL3D.

GOOD LUCK.
W3 W1LL M33T 4G41N 1N TH3 C4P1TOL WH3N TH1S 1S OV3R.

-T3R3Z1 PYROP3

PS SORRY FOR L34V1NG 1N TH3 M1DDL3 OF MY SH1FT. NO ON3 W1LL F1ND YOU B3FOR3 YOU R34D TH1S. TH4T 1S TH3 L4ST B1T OF SCRY1NG 1 C4N DO FOR YOU.

She folds the letter in half and tucks it under their supplies, where she knows they'll find it. She doesn't bother scrying for their reactions... She doesn't really want to know. It's better this way. She's sure of it.

Terezi packs up her own bag, leaving behind all the masks she's used until now--a generous amount, and taking some of the ones she hasn't. Not all of them, of course. She's only one fourth of the party, and she doesn't want to limit their ability to survive. With that done, she carefully shoulders her pack and slips out of their camp, heading back through the clusters of wax statues.