[we don't go to ravenholm]
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
( Terezi Issues: The Log )
what ; girl talkans
where ; residential zone - stross
when ; idk, a few days after the scourge sister fanfic fiasco
warning(s); discussions of terrible things
( Terezi Issues: The Log )
"You're welcome," she murmured back, lightly resting her temple against the other troll's head, carefully minding their horns. "Anytime." And she meant it.
When the hug finally ended, Terezi expected that to be that. Whether she figured out what to say or not, they would go their separate ways from here, and this moment of sharing would be over. What she didn't expect was the other Terezi to comment on her unease. She started to grin out of instinct, but the reaction only got halfway before Terezi aborted it. There wasn't any use in trying to hide it from herself. If she could sniff her way through her double's bullshit, that skill worked in reverse as well. Instead, she paused, lips pressed together tightly as she considered her options.
"Not especially, no." She didn't have any reason to mislead her, especially when the other troll had been so forthcoming with her own personal troubles. It would be like a slap in the face if she didn't return the same respect and courtesy. Still, she paused again, there, unsure of how or where to start--if she even wanted to explain in the first place.
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"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.
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"...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.
"I was on a station like this one," she continued after another brief hesitation. "It was a testing facility, they ran experiments on us, weekly. I was there for almost half a sweep. Most of our time was spent in a two-story complex made up of tiny personal rooms. White-washed walls, bitter metal fixtures, everything bolted down. We never met our captors, the whole place was run by an AI named Val."
"Sometimes they sent us to other places. I don't think we ever left the station, but it was like they had transported us to a completely different world. Everything felt so real--the ground, the wind, the sun. Some of the places were from Earth, or that's what the humans told us. ...I can't describe how amazing the Earth human cities were, but... one of them..." She shook her head, pausing while she tried to make her stomach stop churning at the memory.
"Venice was bad." Terezi laughed, brief and humorless with a sharpness directed more at herself than at the other. "Venice was our Zone Seven."
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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?"
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"The second week we were there, they launched a brand new experiment on us... They cloned us." This was the harder part to explain, the part the made her want to back away from the other girl, to put as much distance between them as possible because just the scent of someone the same as her was enough to stir up that panicked feeling in her chest all over again. "But it wasn't exact. They altered them and hardwired them to hate us with every fiber of their being, and then they set them loose on us. They knew everything about us because they were us, and they had every reason to use that knowledge. We didn't stand a chance."
"Blackmail, kidnapping, torture... They did it all. Sollux's clone killed the real Sollux. He left Feferi to find the body. Vriska's clone manipulated her into drowning herself. Feferi's clone gathered the highbloods, and they formed a royal court. John's clone collaborated with her. They grabbed Equius and Gamzee before we knew what was going on. My clone... She stole my communicator. That was all she needed to do. Without it, I had no means of contacting anyone, I had no idea what was going on, and I couldn't approach anyone. No one would trust me. No one could trust me, not when she could just as easily pretend to be me." Terezi smiled grimly at that, lips pressed tight together because that was one of the things that hurt the most. "We could pull the wool over anyone's eyes, and they all knew that. It was better safe than sorry."
And Terezi knew she should stop there. That was all the other needed to know, but in the same manner as her double, she wanted to keep going, to get this out. Not just to have it out, but she wanted to be judged. There were so many things that she berated herself for, and no one held her accountable. Not a single person. John, Feferi, Sollux, Tavros... They all forgave her. And in her heart, she knew Karkat wouldn't have blamed her, either. It was enough to drive her mad.
"So, I did the only thing I thought I could do. I pretend to be her. I strolled right into Fake Feferi's court and I offered myself to her. I catered to her every whim. She demanded Karkat's blood color. I gave it to her. She ordered me to hurt him down. I gladly told her I would bring her his head. And it was all for nothing. They slaughtered Gamzee and Equius before I could get to them. Tavros came running to help, and I beat him half to death just to drag him away from them. They captured John, and I tortured him just to keep him alive. And by the time I did find Karkat... His clone had gotten to him first."
Her throat felt like it was going to close up. She didn't know if she wanted to laugh or cry. She bowed her head and bit her lip, pressing a hand over her eyes to keep her from doing either. "I couldn't smell the difference between any of them, not even Karkat. I didn't know a single thing was wrong until he clubbed me."
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Because they worked.
Who better to sow seeds of paranoia and distrust than someone who looked, sounded, and basically were the people you trusted? Someone with no compunctions against killing and mutilation and murder? At least with SHODAN's violations it was easy to tell just by looking at someone who was in her thrall.
The colors started to fade to black in the world, and Terezi let out a breath she didn't realize she was holding. She was still as as the other girl continued, listing all the deaths, all the tortures, all the horrors her friends had suffered at the hands of the clones.
And at her own hands.
Terezi always did what had to be done. She knew the heavy price paradox space exacted when you failed; she'd Seen it far too many times to count. She took the dirty jobs no one else would do or even knew had to be done, because horrible as the things she did were, as stained as she became, it was better than the alternative.
The things the other troll had done were terrible, but Terezi understood. And she could sympathize with every black feeling of self-loathing that had to be crawling through her right now.
And she knew she would have done the same thing.
To try so hard
and do so much
and fail.
What had it taken for her to come out to this zone by herself at the call of someone whose mere presence dragged up so many terrible memories? Someone she couldn't even be sure wasn't going to torture and kill everyone she knew and loved?
"...There's more, isn't there?" Terezi asked quietly, and that was the worst part about all this. She knew the story wasn't over.
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She nodded, still trying to steady her emotions enough that she could trust herself to speak. "There is... but not much. I had orders to bring Karkat back. I fully intended to warn the real one to lie low and bring the clone back to be executed... But the clone jumped me. He tied my wrists, broke my ankles, and dragged me in front of the real Karkat, also restrained. And tortured me while he watched. I could smell the guilt washing over him minute by minute, but I couldn't do anything--every time I spoke, that asshole started breaking bones..." She grimaced, and that had little to do with the illness rising in her throat. The pain had been intense, so much she couldn't even speak.
"When he was finished... he burned me alive. I still have nightmares. About the heat and the smell of burning flash and the horror wafting off of him." Terezi swallowed hard and shook her head, trying to dislodge the memories that she was calling back. She hadn't had to think on this in a long time, and the wound it left still felt too deep. Her tone turned harder as she continued, the bitterness of it taking a sharper edge. "By the time they revived me, he was already gone. They terminated him--removed him from the project and incinerated the body. They claim to dump the ashes back in with us for good measure. I don't know if they think it's funny or efficient or both."
"I...never got the change to explain what had happened. That is wasn't his fault. I wish I had. I wish that that wasn't the last thing he saw of me..." Her voice cracked a little, despite her best efforts, and she knew she was done. She couldn't talk about this any more. Her eyes were stinging behind her glasses, and she didn't want to go there. She wouldn't start crying in front of her other. That was too much. She changed the topic abruptly.
"I can't stand them. Those clones, or anything about them. I never thought I could hate something so intensely before they came alone. They make my skin crawl every time they rear their heads. No one talks about them, and no one talks about Venice."
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There was no point to any of it. What theory or hypothesis needed to tested out by torturing subjects? Were her other self's captors only trying to see how long it took to emotionally and mentally break someone down? And not just with the experiments, either -- with the sheer power and control they held over everyone held there. To incinerate someone (Karkat) and dump the ashes back in once they were finished...
"What are they even doing?" she asked, voice shaking. She clenched her hands tight, fingers digging painfully into the palms of her hands; all she wanted to do was dig her claws in and rip into someone responsible, and she hadn't even lived any of it-- "What could any of this possibly hope to accomplish?"
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"We don't know." She gave a shrug, but her shoulders were tense. "To see how far they can push us? To test our limits? ...Or maybe they just want to break us. There was a rumor going around that they were training us as weapons. Weapons don't need to feel anything." They just needed to do as they were told, jump when asked to jump, kill when asked to kill. They didn't want subjects, they wanted servants and machines, and they wanted a quick and easy way to do it.
"But... I tried that. They threw new Karkats in with us, and they killed him two more times. They said they were targeting me, and I tried to just stop feeling, so they would leave him alone. But I couldn't. It still hurt, every time. The newest one... It's not even fair. He hasn't even played SGRUB yet. He doesn't know anything, and I don't even know if he's still alive, or..."
She trailed off there, but not because she had nothing left to say. If anything, she had too much to say. It was just a tangled mess of painful feelings and memories, and pulling on one just yanked the whole knot out into the open. And now she was veering away from facts and stories, drifting into the less solid territory of her own thoughts and feelings and worries, and her other didn't need to hear that. She grimaced, taking a deep breath. Enough, Pyrope. That's more than enough.
"Sorry. This was supposed to be about us, not about him. I know there's nothing wrong with you. You're...me. Actually me, not just a copy or a clone. I don't have anything to worry about, but it's been so long since I could stop worrying... I'm not sure that I remember how. But I am trying."
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She just nodded when the other Terezi cut herself off from continuing. There had to have been even more, but she could guess at and understand why she stopped.
"We're pretty fucked up, aren't we?" she said with a tired, bone-dead laugh, pressing a hand over her eyes. She with her messed up thinkpan and wants, her other self for all the terrible things that had been inflicted on her constantly over the course of a year. What a pair they made.
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The grin faded after a few moments, back to a small, grim smile. She reached out, removing her double's hand away from her eyes with a surprising amount of gentleness. She couldn't say that she felt better. She was certain of that. She was still nervous and the wounds still hurt just as much as before, but it was out and away from her. She had scooped most of those poisonous thoughts out of her system, and even if it didn't feel better, it felt healthier.
"Yeah. We are, but..." Terezi shifted her hand, lacing their fingers together and just...holding her hand between them. It felt awkward to her, and her movements were a little unsteady, but she continued. "...at least we have each other to talk to. I am...really glad for that. Thanks."
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