#insurrectionbent

He did what he always used to do.  He paced, thinking of slam verses to recite to no one and imagining various fantasy scenarios that made him somewhat happier.  He tried to conjure up happy thoughts.  When he was alive, that didn’t do much to help him, but now the dreambubbles sometimes shifted when he concentrated hard enough.  With that in mind, he focused stubbornly on a different thought and tested the door every time he looped back around the cell.  It took him three tries, but finally the door gave.  He breathed a sigh of relief as he stepped out into an open field.

With a sinking feeling in his gut, he slowly recognized the battlefield on which he died.  It wasn’t the happy thought he had in mind, but he tried to convince himself that it was better than the cell.  Most anything was better than the cell in his opinion.  The battlefield was empty, devoid of the trolls that had fought on it when he was alive, but it wasn’t the scarred wasteland it was when he died.  This memory was set before the Execution,.  Tavros didn’t know what that meant, but he did know he didn’t want to stay.  He lifted off the ground and flew towards the hills, hoping some other dreambubble would collide with his soon.

He scanned the forested inclines below him.  He knew what he was looking for, but he didn’t really want to see it.  When he came upon a wrecked patch of forest, clawed and broken by a fierce fight he didn’t want to recall, he paused.  The memory was still vivid for him, even after all this time.  A pair of scarlet eyes filled with intense hatred, blood, a kiss.  He felt a sharp stab of pain shoot through his horn, and his torso burst with agony.  When he looked down at himself, he saw his body in the same condition it was in at the end of the fight, reliving the memories his mind was playing out for him through the bubble.  With no better ideas in mind, he inhaled and descended to the ground.

He didn’t see the dark figure shift in the shadows of the moonlit canopy until his feet brushed the ground.  

“What the mother fuck do we have here?”  The voice made his blood run cold, a feeling his mind remembered even in death.  He turned wide-eyed as the Highblood stepped into the open, his gaze cool and level.  Tavros’s conditioning reactivated, and he stared up into the indigo irises, hardly daring to blink.  “What’s this?  Dead now, too?”

“You--you’re only a memory,” Tavros said.  He didn’t believe it, but saying it made it feel more true.  The Highblood released a low chuckle and stepped closer.  

“I was getting all my mother fucking hopes up that I would be gifted the sweet mother fucking opportunity to find you,” he said.  “It’s like what all you said, isn’t it, pet?  The harder a mother fucker hopes, the more likely his hopes are to be granted.”

“No,” Tavros said with a small shake of his head.  Pain shot through his injured horn.  “I said, um, that believing in things makes them less false, which...has no bearing on what actually happens, so...”

“Regardless,” the Highblood said, and his eyes flashed strobing shades of violet.  His gigantic hand flashed forward and closed itself around Tavros’s throat.  “I’m so mother fucking glad that you finally came.”

Tavros’s hands flew up to the Highblood’s wrist as he squeezed.  It wasn’t enough to suffocate him, but it hurt nonetheless.  He remembered the solid feeling of a tree against his back as the Highblood loomed over him, trying to choke the life from him with the little strength he had left before he succumbed to his wounds.  His wounds.  Tavros remember his wounds.

“I killed you,” he said.  He tightened his grip on the Highblood’s wrist and closed his eyes to lessen the curse of his chucklevoodoos.  “With my horn.  The one who killed you was me.”

“That’s mother fucking right you did,” the Highblood hissed.  He pulled up, and Tavros’s feet left the ground.  “And look at where the FUCK it got you, mother fucker.  What are you gonna do now?  No annoying fucking animals to help you now, my stupid little bitch.  Open your eyes, pet.  Mother fucking look at me when I’m talking at you.”

Tavros kept his eyes squeezed shut.  He repeated to himself in his mind the memory.  He killed the Grand Highblood.  He killed him with his horn.  He gored him.  He repeated it until it became a fire in his torso and a beacon of light in his mind.  He turned it into a happy thought, forcing the exhilaration of the thought against the force of the Highblood’s chucklevoodoos until their nightmares fell flat.  He sucked in air and, before he could doubt himself, kicked out as hard as he could.

His metal leg collided with the Highblood’s side with a loud thud, and the bigger troll released him with a hiss.  Tavros flitted away and opened his eyes, looking down at the Highblood.  He was holding his side with a scowl of pain on his face.  Tavros darted farther away when he saw the red of the Highblood’s eyes turn up towards him.

“You mother fucking shit,” the Highblood growled.  Tavros looked up at the moons and the stars.  He wasn’t in his little cell.  And he had killed the troll below him.  He had that power.  It was his.

“What’s the matter?” he said.  “You’re looking like maybe I hurt you just then.  Kind of like I did when I killed you.  Do you remember that?”

He could hear the rage rise in the back of the Highblood’s throat, and he flew a little higher.  “Come here, pet,” the Highblood said, low and quiet.  This was not a tone Tavros heard often, but it stirred up ghost horror in him anyway.  But he replayed his happy thought until everything but a foreign sense of confidence was in his mind.

“I’m not your pet,” he said.  “And I won’t be ever again.”

"You’re mother fucking right you won’t be,” the Highblood responded.  Tavros frowned and risked a glance down.  The Highblood had a menacing grin on his maniacal, painted face.  “I’m gonna give you up to the Angel of Double Death.  A good mother fucking servant I am to him, righteous and loyal in death as I ever was in mother fucking life.  More things your stupid, impious lowblood mind can’t get itself wrapped around.”

“Oh, I certainly agree that you’re most definitely holey,” Tavros said, looking away again, “but, uh, I don’t mean in the religious sense necessarily, but rather in the sense that I, as your murderer, put a hole through you, with my horn.”

Tavros expected a roar of fury to met his impudence, but the Highblood did not respond immediately.  “Was that a mother fucking pun?” he asked.

“Uh, yes?”

“Fuck.”  Tavros looked down and was surprised to see the Highblood’s eyes shift back to orange.  They weren’t completely devoid of malice, but they weren’t full of pure wrath either.  Tavros was so unused to this development that his sense of dread skyrocketed.  They stared at each other for a second in silence.  “Go,” the Highblood finally said.

“What?” Tavros asked, eyes widening.

“I said mother fucking leave.  Your dismal attempt at humor has earned you some time.  There’s no mother fucking thing I value more than lame fucking jokes told by hideous excuses for trolls what’s time left in this plane is in my own mother fucking hands.”

Tavros’s jaw dropped.  “Are you...no, that’s...that’s literally just stupid.”

“I make the mother fucking rules, fucker, and I say you get to exist a little longer,” the Highblood said.  “But mark me.  I will find you, and you will get no other chances.  I will paint the very fabric of these dreams with your mirthless, heathen blood, and the elixir I pour out for you will be in honor of the Angel of Double Death, the destroyer of souls, the one true messiah.  Your head will be my ultimate offering.  A-motherfucking-men.”

"Motherfuck..." he breathed, turning towards him.  "You're...motherfuckin' Tavros."

Tavros lifted his hand in a sheepish greeting.  "Uh, hi...yeah, I'm Tavros, but, uh, I think I might have made a mistake, in thinking that you were the same Gamzee that was in my timeline, since you're apparently...not..."

Gamzee's eyes flit over Tavros, taking in his youth and apparel.  "You ain't among the living," he commented after examining Tavros's face.

"Oh, yeah, I'm not, but that's old news now, so it doesn't really bother me," Tavros responded.  He took a step closer and looked at Gamzee more carefully.  "Are you not dead?"

Gamzee's mouth twisted into a wry smile.  "Didn't the motherfuckers up and tell you all about how the shit gets kicked?  Clowns don't die.  We got some righteous motherfuckin' work to be about getting accomplished."

Tavros furrowed his brow in confusion.  "But, I thought that only the people from the alpha timeline got to live, and everyone else from the doomed timelines needed to die, according to paradox space laws," he said.  "And since our Gamzee is in the alpha timeline, doesn't that mean, by that logic, you would have to be a dead Gamzee?"

Gamzee's eyes widened with surprise and grew narrow, darkening to a deep red.  "What all are you telling at me that your Gamzee is the motherfuckin' main one of us?"

An unpleasant shiver crawled up Tavros spine and his mouth grew dry.  The darkness in Gamzee's eyes seemed to produce a shadow that surrounded him.  "Uh," Tavros said, "that wasn't meant as an insult to your uniqueness, or to your right to existence as a doomed Gamzee, so...sorry, if that's how it sounded..."

"But what about you, brother?" Gamzee asked.  To Tavros's surprise, he reached out and gently brushed his fingers against his cheek.  The anger in his eyes was still producing some unholy pressure, but Tavros noticed that it was sharp with distress rather than affront.  "If your Gamzee is the main motherfucker, and the main motherfucker's Tavros is you, and you're motherfuckin' dead...what about you, brother?  What happened about you?  Is that...the motherfucking end of it for you, in all of paradox space?"

Something stirred in Tavros's chest, deepening his discomfort.  "I...don't think I understand what you mean by that.  Do you mean, how did I die?"

Gamzee's fingers brushed back across Tavros's temple and down so his palm could rest against his cheek. "Is there no more alive Tavros?" he asked, so quietly Tavros almost couldn't hear him.

"Uh..." Tavros said, and the answer to the question shook up a feeling of sadness he hadn't felt for a long time.  "No, I guess there isn't anymore."

"Mother fuck..." Gamzee said, stumbling backwards onto his ass.  "But you were supposed to be about making it up for...you were supposed to be the alive one, to make it all motherfuckin' worth it."

The way he dropped his head into his hands made Tavros's sadness grow.  After a moment of fumbling with his hands and figuring out how to react, he stepped around to Gamzee's side and sat down in the sand next to him.  "Uh, I can see that you're upset, maybe because of something that has to do with your Tavros, which I can appreciate, but, uh...I still exist, even if I'm not technically alive, see?"

He waited for Gamzee to look at him and flashed him a small smile.  Gamzee examined his face for a second and, to Tavros's surprise, threw his arm over his shoulder to drag him into a heavy hug.  Tavros tensed, unsure of how to react, but Gamzee didn't seem to notice.  Their backs were to the ocean, and Gamzee's dark hive stood before them.  Tavros gradually began to relax as minutes passed with no sign of Gamzee releasing him.

Finally, Gamzee sighed.  Tavros looked up to see him eyeing his hive with something similar to grief etched into his expression.  "You know, little motherfucker, when I got my wicked self all up off this planet to be about finding up my destiny, I would've never got my realization on about how much my wigglerhood memories of this shitty little hive would make my pump biscuit hurt.  I'd give up every motherfuckin' thing what can be got up to go back and do it all better."

Tavros looked from Gamzee to the hive and around at the Alternian landscape, feeling the cool ocean breeze ruffle his hair.  The smell was familiar, similar to the same salty scent that blew over the edge of the cliff outside his own hive.  The light of the moons, the stars, the grass, the temperature of the air...it was all familiar, but he had been hopping through dreambubbles so long that he had forgotten to appreciate it.  Now, thinking back on everything that had happened--the game, dying, traveling through the dreambubbles, participating in Vriska's crusade, rebelling and winding up alone--a sharp stab of nostalgia twisted in his chest.  "I miss it, too," he said.  "I miss the way things were before, too."  He finally relaxed against Gamzee, giving into the comfort of his cool skin.

Gamzee sighed.  "I never gave up on my promise, brother," he said.  "Even if it's all fake and meaningless and worthless, I'll be putting together that shangri lol what I promised your other self I would do.  At least we can up and create our own dreams in the afterlife."