[we don't go to ravenholm]

[legislacerator]

who ; 2x Terezi combo
what ; girl talkans
where ; residential zone - stross
when ; idk, a few days after the scourge sister fanfic fiasco
warning(s); discussions of terrible things

Comments

[pythianjudgment]

That message was a little surprising. Terezi knew she had a couple things to ask her other, but she hadn't anticipated being beaten to that initiative. Just like she hadn't anticipated that location ping.

She understood that Zone 07 was bad. It was something she'd realized very quickly from Davesprite's reaction and (belatedly) Vriska's reaction, not that either of them had proven very informative on the matter. What she didn't understand is why her other wanted to have this talk in the place that everyone was up in arms over avoiding. It gave her a bad feeling all around. So, it was with slight apprehension that she ported herself over to Stross to answer the summons.

Stepping out of the teleporter, she gave her double a casual wave, but forewent any of the usual banter that they were known for. "Hey."

[legislacerator]

Just as she was getting antsy (this was a bad idea, she should just go -- no, there's nothing bad here anymore, just stay a few more minutes), she heard the tell-tale sound of the teleporter activating.

"Sup," she called. Defaulting to coolkid speak already. Dave was having more of an effect on her than she'd realized. She answered the other Terezi's wave with a wave of her own and hauled herself up off the bench.

"Come walk with me?"

[pythianjudgment]

She caught the coolkid greeting and a grin found its way onto her lips, despite her previous--and continuing--discomfort. There was always that vague sense of unease when smelling her other, even if she knew for a fact that there was nothing wrong with these temporal shenanigans. Even if the differences between them were glaringly obvious to anyone with two eyes (or a nose). That wariness was something she was just going to have to live with.

"Sure." She approached the other troll, waiting to let her lead wherever she intended them to walk, but keeping a slightly more generous amount of distance between them than she would with anyone else. "I get the feeling this isn't a pleasure stroll, is it?"

[legislacerator]

"Got it in one."

She could smell the faint disquiet rising off the other troll. Normally she would have chalked it up to the situation at hand -- her double had to know there was something wrong wit this zone -- but she had picked up on it as far back as their first meeting over the network. But what was the problem?

Terezi lead them deeper into the zone, trying to keep her cool. It was no longer reskinned synthetic plastic blacks and acid greens, but being back in this far stirred up old memories. She drew in a shaky breath. "You ever wonder why I can pass as a double in that old technologically irrelevant Troll Jeff Bridges movie that came out sweeps ago?"

[pythianjudgment]

This Terezi could also smell the unease from her double as they walked. It was bitter and tense--the scent of fear? But watered down, masked and guarded like only she knew how to do. It was comforting, somehow... Like the fear made the other Terezi all the more real. She was scared of this place? But she had still made it the meeting spot. There was a level of trust there that Terezi could appreciate.

The reference to the neon additions made her stop and pause. Her mind was making connections at lightning speed with what she already knew, what she didn't understand, and what she could infer. The realizations were starting to turn her stomach, but she continued, slowly.

"I did," she answered, placing the emphasis on the past tense. "Karkat mentioned a robot named Shodan was responsible, but he skimped on the details and I didn't ask." More for Karkat's sake than anything, he was already upset enough trying to explain his robot-hatred. She paused, working up the nerve to venture her own guess.

"Did that happen here? In this zone?"

[legislacerator]

She kept walking in silence for a few steps before finally slowing down and stopping. Karkat already told her. That was good, it wouldn't do to have a teammate left in the metaphorical dark, gotta keep everyone up to speed and god, she had been stalling, hadn't she? Come on, open your mouth and tell her.

"It started... nine perigees ago, I think," Terezi started slowly. "SHODAN was able to wrest control of the entire zone away from the station AI. I don't know why Hypatia didn't retaliate immediately, but I think she was too busy studying something that fell in Zone 08 that brought its own special set of problems."

She hesitated. "It was. Bad. I wouldn't say it was complete chaos, but it wasn't moonshine and daisies, either. People didn't feel well or just went crazy."

Terezi paused, head bowed, staring in that sightless way of hers down at the pavement.

"And in the midst of all this, SHODAN got Sollux."

[pythianjudgment]

Terezi stopped when her other did, hanging back a few paces before coming up to stand next to her. She didn't care much that they didn't have eye contact, neither one of them could see so it didn't matter. It didn't bother her a bit, but the hesitance that she could hear in her tone... That spoke louder than all the expressions in the world.

This was difficult to talk about, and why wouldn't it be? Terezi knew she had similar burdens--alarmingly similar given what she'd heard from Karkat--and those were equally difficult to put to words. She still hadn't told anyone about some of them...

It was the mention of Sollux that really struck an emotional chord with her. Just the thought of anything happening to him, even if it wasn't her Sollux... She wasn't sure if she really wanted to know more, but she didn't want to tell her to stop, either. Not when this was important...maybe for the both of them

[legislacerator]

She squeezed back -- thank you -- and took another deep breath. She'd never spoken about this with anyone, and now that she was getting started, it all was just tumbling out. Should she be dumping this on her all of a sudden? The other her had to have gotten the point as to why this place was bad news, but she didn't know if she could stop now, even if she wanted to.

"She changed him. He was her sysadmin, and when she made him her own, she got all of us, too. Orange Dave. Vriska. Me." If the other her didn't know why being in Zone 07 would be enough to set spidertroll off, she would now.

"Sollux called me out to the zone, said he wanted to show me something. I trusted him. I had no reason to not trust him. He led me straight to her and she altered me, made me--" (better) "--more useful to her needs." She laughed bitterly. "And you know what? I can take that. So what if I was a mutant dragon freak pchooooing around, dispensing justice and violence? How is that any different from my normal routine?" Just an average day in the life of

[pythianjudgment]

Terezi was silent for the most part. She nodded in the right places for encouragement, kept her grip tight on her double's hand, but she didn't say a word. Even that bitter laugh that brought a grim smile to her lips at how familiar the sound was, how often she herself had laughed like that over these things... Even that didn't get a comment from her.

It wasn't until the other started struggling in her explanation that Terezi knew they were getting to the real problem. She wasn't surprised that the thing bothering her double the most was mind games. That was always a sore spot with her, too. The Mind was her their dominion, and nothing dug deeper or festered more than the thought of someone attacking them on their own turf and winning. It just made the emotional consequences that much worse.

"What did she say?" Terezi finally prompted, her voice quiet. There was no judgment or mockery in her tone, just simple understanding mixed with sympathy. They weren't immune to doubt and worry, as much as they tried to convince everyone else.

[legislacerator]

"She didn't have to say anything," she said miserably. "It's not the words that get to you. It's what she does to you. They drew me into cyberspace while my body changed and there was no escape there. She reached inside and cornered me, wrapped me tight and brought me close. I was so devoted to her by the end of it. I would have done anything she asked. Her word was law."

When SHODAN took over Stross, she made it completely hers. Terezi could still taste that warm, sour smell of organic growth lingering in the back of her throat, hear the screaming static backsound of the hivemind. There was order there, ticking away in perfect clockwork rhythm, and it was her job to keep the balance.

"It was like I had just been... shifted out of alignment. I was still me, but so much of me was hers. I called her a goddess, you know that? Bitch had such a god complex." She laughed humorlessly, the sound raw and jagged. "I meant every single stupid, dumb, worshipful word I said about her, and I wanted to share that feeling with everyone. Given half

[pythianjudgment]

Terezi didn't object to the sudden absence against her palm, but the coolness against her skin felt as unsettling as the contact did. She wanted to understand, in a way. They were the same person, her and her double, and she wanted to put herself in the other's shoes and know what to tell her about all of this. She wanted to help, even as she stood there feeling uncomfortable by her mere presence. And in a way, she did understand bits and pieces: the longing for that dream connection that they both missed, the desire to return to something that she knew was wrong, and the shame for wanting that and knowing she shouldn't

[legislacerator]

Even with the warning, Terezi still tensed as she was pulled into a hug. She was no stranger to physical contact, far from it, but she felt so raw, like she had been cut open and hollowed out. She hadn't planned on spilling her proverbial guts when she invited the other girl into the zone, but now it was all out there in the open, the sick, diseased parts of her she didn't want anyone to know about. She still wasn't sure if she felt better for it, but she had just needed to get it out.

She had never talked about this with the others. Not even the other original survivors, the ones still on the station: her Dave and Sollux and Vriska and orange Dave. She envied them for being able to open up to each other, for even having each other. There was no one to stop her from tearing herself apart as she repeatedly dreamed of torturing her friends, wearing a razorblade smile all the while. Not that she'd ever admit it. She was Terezi Pyrope, the Seer of Mind, untouchable and indomitable, and maybe if she told herself that enough times it would

[pythianjudgment]

As her other relaxed into the hug, Terezi herself grew less tense as well. It wasn't as terrible as she'd prepared herself for, and the longer they stood like that, the less her mind summoned up possible means of being assaulted. When that quiet apology reached her ears, she even managed a faint smile

[legislacerator]

She didn't quite understand exactly what held the other Terezi back; while they both shared a reluctance to tell other people about their troubles, preferring to deal with issues on their own, she knew there had to be something else to this. She could read it in the tenseness that mirrored her own in the hug, the way she started to flash the grin they wore when they wanted to deflect questions they didn't want to answer, the hesitation in her voice, and she started to put a few pieces together.

"Does it have to do with where you were before?" she asked carefully, nodding towards the strip of metal around the other girl's neck. "You don't have to answer in detail if don't want to. A yes or a no will do."

She didn't know much about where the other girl had been before. She had never asked, and the other her had never offered up any information. But any place that forced their inhabitants to wear a collar they couldn't even take off couldn't be good news. To put it lightly.

[pythianjudgment]

Terezi was sorely tempted to take her other up on that offer--to give her only a yes or a no and let the conversation drop, but how fair would that be? It wasn't just a matter of mutual confidence. She didn't have to spill her guts on equal par with the other girl, but she did have a right to know why she was being treated so differently. At least in Terezi's mind, she did.

"...Yes, it does." She lifted a hand to the collar, running her fingers along the metal edge as another uncomfortable grimace crossed her face. Jegus, she hated this thing... But it was seamless and would have to be cut through to be removed. Which involved the possibility of electrocution and unconsciousness at the hands of whoever's aid she asked. She wasn't ready to tackle that trust issue yet.

But this... Maybe. Maybe she did want to tell someone. She told Karkat some of it, and that hadn't backfired on her, but so much of it was about him too--not him him but another him, and she couldn't tell him everything

[legislacerator]

The other troll hadn't even launched into her story proper and already Terezi's skin was crawling. Half a sweep -- a whole year -- in a cold, impersonal place. The use of the word captors. While none of the people on Sacrosanct had come here by choice, she was certain not many of them would describe their situation as having been kidnapped. And the fact that the other her brushed over their purpose there with only a bland description left her to fill in the blanks was somehow the worst part. Weekly experiments. Jegus. She knew all too well what horrors could be committed in the name of science.

Her double hadn't been on a space station. She'd been in a prison.

She wanted to reach out, to offer her the same support that she'd been offered earlier, but the admission that Terezi's very presence made her uncomfortable stayed her hand. Any contact between them would be on the other girl's terms.

And then:

"Venice was our Zone Seven."

Terezi went cold.

"What happened?"