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“...Oh, but in the eyes of God
We said our vows before the pews
‘Not until death may we part,’
So until then, I'm stuck with you...”
Your jetpack carries you from cracked dreambubble to cracked dreambubble. You never stop for more than a few minutes, and only then if there’s someone to be found.
Your palmhusk crackles with music on your belt. It’s not like there’s anyone to annoy it with out here - not that that would stop you in the first place - and the echoes help you find your way in the darkness of the Incipisphere, ricocheting off the swirls of color that your nose misses.
And when the soundwaves start to get muted, flattened and pulled away by a force of gravity unfathomably heavy and odorless, you know where not to go.
“You swore that you'd be true to me
But gave me infidelity!
Why should I give a tinker's cuss?
She was your sister, what's the fuss?”
A beep interrupts the song. You hiss in annoyance. It’s been six hours - you promised you’d stop to rest.
You come to a stop, spinning slowly in place and sniffing. There’s a relatively-intact bubble above you - you’re pretty sure you’ve been there before. It’s a good enough place to stop and rest. You zoom up to it.
Gravity abruptly shifts dizzyingly, and you plummet downward head-first into the water. You can’t drown in dreambubbles - the frozen, fractured ones post-English are no different. It’s simple enough to pull yourself out and onto the sand, none the worse for wear. You sniff.
An endless expanse of salty blue water, an eternal grapefruit sunset. Harley’s island, probably. Yeah, you’ve been to this bubble before. No ghosts around now, as far as you can tell. You paw through your sylladex until you find some rations.
You lick the lid - it’s another chocolate-cherry bento box, put together by Kanaya. Popping it open, you find rice and shrimp, accentuated with pickled Earth ginger and Alternian coldfire mycelia. You don’t bother with utensils, and shove the whole thing into your face.
“Well then, let's propose a truce:
What's good for gander is good for goose!
Hey now, that's different, you took to bed
My favorite dog and all my friends.”
It was Dave who recommended this artist to you. Aurelio Voltaire - an Earth B singer and songwriter cut down by the Condesce before his time. He’s pretty good, you guess. Eccentric. Some of his songs make you laugh out loud now and then - you’re pretty sure the entertainment factor is why Dave stole your palmhusk to download all his songs for you.
They don’t like it when you’re focused on her. Obsession, they call it. Devotion, you answer in kind.
You made a vow. Like hell you’re going back on it. If a human refused to believe their spouse was dead, would they judge them, too? Just because you were eight sweeps old when the two of you promised that your diamond would be forever, doesn’t make it mean any less.
“Oh, but in the eyes of God
We said our vows before the pews
‘Not until death may we part’
So until then, I'm stuck with you.”
You’re not dead yet. Until you have proof that she is, you won’t believe it.
You’re done eating, but the next timer hasn’t beeped yet. So you sit, and wait. You pop the empty bento back in your sylladex, and wait. You breathe.
She’s out there, your heart screams. Every second you waste is a second she could be in danger!
But Karkat is right about one thing. All your friends are right, about this one thing.
You won’t be able to bring her home if you’re an exhausted wreck. You need to take care of yourself.
She’d be pissed if you pushed yourself to the breaking point for her.
“...but in the eyes of God
We said our vows before the pews
‘Not until death may we part.’
This is my curse, I said ‘I do’
Better or worse, I'm stuck with you."
You’ve met the other Terezis, the ones who can’t or won’t go back to their Earth Cs. Who won’t stop. Won’t rest. Won’t eat. Who wither away into husks.
You pull out your canteen, and take a swig. You’re thirstier than you thought - you end up guzzling half of it. You refill. The timer still hasn’t gone off.
She deserves a moirail who isn’t destroying herself for her. And in the name of Skaia, you’ll give her that.
Provided she hasn’t been swept off her feet by some other Terezi. That possibility has occurred to you. There must be more versions of you than there are of her. One might have found her already. Taken her home.
“You poked my eye, I wear a patch
I should've given you one to match.
Did you forget? You got me back
You chopped my thumb off with an axe.”
But like hell you’re quitting her. You fell in love with her as a wriggler, and never stopped loving her.
Through it all. No matter what you did to each other. And you will to the very end.
Guilty until proven innocent. Alive and here, until proven dead or gone.
“You drowned my kittens, one by one
You looked like you were having fun!
You stabbed my mother, in the chest
With a Korean bayonet!”
And when she’s home, she can fight with you all she wants. She can scream about how stupid you are, and argue about what your fucked-up quadrant actually is, hold you while you cry, for once. Just like you know she always wanted to.
When she’s home.
You put away your canteen. The timer still hasn’t gone off. You grit your teeth.
If she leaves a note, or a witness, something saying she’s already home, you’ll go back to Earth C for good. Try to put together a life without her, even if you can’t imagine it.
“...until then, I'm stuck with you.
Oh, but in the eyes of God
We said our vows before the pews
‘Not until death may we part’
This is my curse, I said ‘I do’
'Less you die first, I'm stuck with you.”
You shut the timer off. You shrug your jetpack back on.
And you leave the bubble behind, flying back out into the dark and cold.
“And now I lie here in the grave;
I pray to God my soul to save
And in the darkness of the tomb,
I'm glad I'm lying next to you.
And as I lay here six feet down
My body buried underground
In this dank, and dreary cold
I'm just glad I'm not alone.”
And if you find her corpse? Her body lying cold and empty, never to decay in this realm of the dead?
You’ll lay right down next to her. Maybe you won’t even be the first Terezi to do so. Either way, you won’t be alone.
“Oh, but in the eyes of God
We said our vows before the pews
‘Not until death may we part’
So until then, I'm stuck with you.”
The heat of the jetpack’s exhaust warms your feet. The air is cold, the endless expanse a metallic licorice black. It’s shot through with cracks of candy-rainbow veins, sprinkled with limitless stars of distant bubbles. All orbiting around a snarled knot of scentless nothing.
Somewhere out there, is your Vriska. One way or another, you’ll find her.
“ Oh, but in the eyes of God
We said our vows before the pews
‘Not until death may we part’
I'm not sad I said: ‘I do,’
I'm just glad I was stuck with you .”