Chapter Text
You sneer, how would Terezi exact this "JUST1C3" anyways? She's no psionic and she lives pretty far from your Lawnring. You know what? Just for laughs, you'll consult your all-knowing cue ball... But as you are about to use your eyesight eightfold to see your answer, a sickening familiarity arises in your gut...
...Oh, right, you remember. You remember it all. Wet blue blood is again soaking a familiar bright orange garment representing your apparent victory, no more glasses, eyesight eightfold, wings, luck and a thin stab wound in your chest. You are Vriska Serket and you are dead. Dead, dead, dead, dead, dead, dead, dead. Your death wasn't dramatic, or bloody, courageous or valiant, it was quick and it was fast and it was nessecary. You never thought that would be how you would die, you thought for sweeps, since you were a wriggler, that you were destined for greater things, to die in a bloody last stand after a long fight, to take your killer with you to the grave, a death of honor and heroism, but not to be run through in split seconds, to spend your last moments crumpeled on the ground, defeated and soaked in your swirling, poison, cerulean swill.
For what seems like sweeps, you watch your last moments through the eyes of a spectator, over and over and over again. It hurts at first and fills you with rage, rage which turns to sorrow, and eventually, torment. This is not the only memory you have had to watch repeatedly, you have been watching your very own life, all 6 sweeps of it, and within it everything you've ever done, every troll you threw to your lusus, every moment of that stupid pride, every idea and every time you've stabbed someone in the back for your personal gain, though the memories are only half of it.
In this torturous web of memories, sometimes, you get stuck inbetween them, time in a replica of your hive, but completely empty. It's so quiet, you never remember a time you wanted to scream more, nothing makes noise here except for the muted ones that exist in your own little circle of hell. Even though you had to kill hundreds upon thousands to feed your lusus, you have never felt regret, shame, or loneliness. Never felt regret until now because winners don't have anything to regret, and you're a winner, right?
...Wrong
You are no winner, you are no hero. When you are alone in an empty world, all you can do is think and that made you extremely nervous. You don't want to know your own thinkpan because what you might find there might scare you. What you found there scares you. You've turned to psychoanalysis, unintentionally, at first, when you saw your life through for the first time, you wanted to know where you went wrong, but the deeper the dug, the more you found, the more you found, the deeper you dug. And the deepest truth was horrifying.
You paralyzed possibly one of the only people on Alternia who could stand you. You blinded someone so close to you they may as well have been your reflection. You killed a girl through someone she trusted completely, just for trying to avenge her partner. You killed a boy you've terrorized for reasons that don't matter anymore. You are killed by someone who deserved to kill you. You no longer feel anger, just regret. You based your life off someone who may have shared your symbol, but was not you at all, she had chivalry where you had ambition. You ran from yourself and all your failures since all you could see is victories that only existed to you. You are your own undoing, you, Vriska Serket, have come to hate yourself, hatred that grows with every moment you see of your life. So you watch every moment again and again because you can't look away because you can't; tears make their way down your face and you hope this is not the afterlife. You're dead but this can't be the afterlife, you hope for the love of anything this is not the afterlife.
You don't have any idea of how long it's been, but after a long, long time... you're somewhere new. Somehow, you still remained curled up, hugging your knees and crying like the pathetic bitch you happen to be, but you still can see, smell, and hear this memory, so obviously not your own. You are on a beach, feet where the water would be, but not getting wet. This cannot be your memory. Your blood was simply too low to live oceanside, in fact, Gamzee, funny even thinking that name now, was the only one you knew who lived by the water, his was the only blood high enough for it. Wait. Ampora. When you were in a very black relationship, you both went to eachother's hives and his, unlike all the other seadwellers, was on dry land by the shore, like an indigo. You both once ruled the game of FLARP as Dualscar and Mindfang. This place was his. Almost to confirm this,a blurry figure at the very edge of your vision took a single step forwards... Perhaps he too is stuck in this twisted prison of thoughts, and now neither of you have to be alone, perhaps if your luck traversed beyond life. You couldn't face anyone else, you'd barely be able to face him... no, not even him. This world would've been better without you, simple as that. Your Lusus may have gotten a weaker troll and starved, Terezi might still be able to see, Aradia wouldn't have died and Tavros wouldn't have faced all those years of shit you put him through. You don't deserve to even exist in this stupid web of memories, you won't let yourself be happy after all you have done, no joy, only remorse and guilt.
Though through crossed arms and somehow bleary eyes, you see the figure take another cautious step and a small spark of what may be hope in your mind ignites while a ghost of a once-confident smirk tugs at your lips. You'd know that cape anywhere.