IT WAS MEANT TO BE…...

longass AU summary: this is the best thing i’ve written in a while, wow.

In this timeline, Gamzee never once tried sopor slime. He never made a single slime pie. Since a young age, the indigoblood has terrorised those around him – just for a laugh. In essence, he became the Grand Highblood he was supposed to be.

So by the time he reaches 8 or 9 sweeps old, he much rules over the landdwellers, controlling them through fear.

Meanwhile, Karkat Vantas, the anonymousblood, has risen to the top ranks of the Threshecutioners. He has a perfect record – he’s never even been injured on the job. There are more than a few people who want to know his blood colour, but most of them know not to cross him, and don’t push it.

The Grand Highblood has no such qualms, and bugs Vantas almost daily about it, though he never makes any move to do anything himself, no matter how much he threatens – sure, they live a great distance apart, but there’s no reason that should be a problem. It’s clear, to Karkat at least, that Makara wants the anonblood in his caliginous quadrant.

Karkat consistently refuses to acknowledge this, however, as a kismessisitude would result in spilled blood – and if not, at least spilled genetic material – and would reveal his mutation.

Under the sea and away from Makara’s reach, Feferi Peixes has begun to realise the danger that her own blood poses – she is a threat to Her Imperious Condescension, and thus any wrong moves and she can quite easily be killed. Her only safety lies with her lusus, and keeping Her fed; thus, her safety is her moirail.

She has never truly felt pale towards him, and struggles to deal with their moirallegiance. She only agreed to it in the first place because she was afraid to outright murder another trolls lusus. Now, however, she keeps him by her side because she knows that he is devoted to her, and she needs at least one person she can rely on.

They isolate themselves, and cuttlefishCuller reduces her Trollian contacts to three: Eridan, Sollux, and Vriska – her moirail, the troll she feels pale for, and a 8itch who h8s the shit going on up on the surface, and who refused to let anyone 8r8k contact with her, and who, of all of her wigglerhood fronds, is the one who Feferi finds she relates to the most.

They both have to feed their lusii, after all, even if Eridan does the culling for Feferi.

Out of all of the twelve trolls we are familiar with, the only one Vriska never kept contact with is, of course Gamzee.

He’s never been anyone’s friend really.

Sure, he talks daily to Karkat, but they’re far from friends.

He does, however, have a matesprit: he simply loves the way Equius Zahhak will do whatever he’s told to do, even breaking up his own moirallegiance (Makara laughed for days over the look on the greenblood’s face when Zahhak told her the news). Equius is, of course, devoted, even though he is simply being used as a toy for Gamzee’s entertainment.

When it comes to quadrants, the troll with the most trouble is Eridan Ampora. He’s hardly even aware of it, but Peixes is aware of how much she needs him, and how precarious her own safety is, and so she does her best to subtly prevent him from leaving her in any capacity.

He may not notice that, but he does notice how much she talks to Sollux Captor. He’s besotted with her, not stupid. And by now, much as he’d love to move from her pale quadrant to the flushed, leaving space for Sollux right where she wants him, he knows full well she wouldn’t agree to it. She doesn’t care in that way, but he’s not going to leave her. Maybe one day she’ll see how good they could be together.

But just because he’d step aside if he could move into a ruddier quadrant, that doesn’t mean Eridan is happy about the attention she pays to Sollux.

Fuck no. He is black as pitch for Sollux Captor, and he isn’t really sure how to prove it to Sollux without going to the surface and finding him – which would mean going on land, putting himself in danger and therefore putting Feferi in danger.

As Vriska Serket has grown up, she has mellowed, in a way. She no longer shows the dramatic excitement of her youth, and her obsession with her ancestor has faded alongside her belief in the legitimacy of her journal.

She is still a murderer – she feeds her lusus like a good little troll, but the joy she used to feel at manipulating them into her web has also faded. It’s now her least favourite chore, and yet the only one she whines at about it is her once-kismesis, Eridan Ampora. After all, they work together a lot of the time, to feed the Spider and Gl’bgolyb. It’s only sensible.

In a way, they’re better moirails than Eridan and Feferi are, but he can’t break it off with the Princess. He cares too much.

Since breaking up with Equius, Nepeta Leijon has gone feral; she lives in the wilderness and cares for nothing and no one, killing creatures with her bare hands and teeth.

This goes unnoticed for a while, but not forever – she’s been killing beasts that are farmed for meat, and is listed for culling. The Threshecutioner assigned to this job is one Karkat Vantas. Physically speaking, he’s capable of doing the job; the feral troll is dangerous, but no match for him.

Making the choice between his perfect record and his old friend’s life is another question entirely.

And it’s not even the most difficult job of his career.

No, that comes when he is sent to apprehend a dangerous hacker who is part of the underground resistance movement, Sollux Captor. Finding him is no big deal, and after Nepeta, he’s perfectly prepared to complete his job. He’s not prepared for the precision of the yellowblood’s psionics.

Or the sharpness of the shuriken that just barely scrapes his cheek, drawing a single drop of blood.

A single drop that guarantees Sollux’s escape and Karkat’s arrest.

A public execution, particularly of a disgusting mutant freak, particularly if the disgusting mutant freak is the most well-known Threshecutioner on the planet, is bound to draw a crowd. From brown to blue, trolls from almost the entire hemospectrum turn up, cheering as the blind Legislacerator  pushes the blindfolded mutant up the steps to meet the rope with her cane.

The noise the crowd makes is cacophonous as she fits the noose around his neck, removing the blindfold so he can see her shark’s grin.

He knows her, or knew her, and it hurts that she doesn’t care. And he realises that he deserves this, for Nepeta.

And silence falls.

The crowd parts.

It seems to all those watching that the Grand Highblood wants to put this motherfucker down himself. Maybe he wants a new colour for his walls. Regardless of his reason, Pyrope steps aside, her expression barely giving away the disappointment of being cheated of her  sentence.

Makara unloops the rope from the mutant’s neck, and picks him up, slinging the silent ex-Threshecutioner over his shoulder, and like that, the crowd dissipates, having lost the chance to see an execution.

The whole way to Gamzee’s hive, Karkat is silent. He knows that as a mutant, he is going to be killed, and now his death will be drawn-out and painful, and he thinks he probably deserves that, more than just a hanging.

But when they get there, Gamzee leaves him in a fully furnished respiteblock, and it takes a while for Karkat to comprehend it fully, but he does understand: you don’t let your kismesis die.

Sollux Captor, meanwhile, has finally taken his final option, and has taken a hired boat to the only place left that is halfway to safe – the ocean. He has rations, and several computers. It’s not the same as his hivestem but it’s safe, at least.

Well, as safe as the ocean gets.

Instead of being eaten by sea monsters, however, the first major threat he faces are a couple of wigglers playing pirate. That is to say, Eridan and Vriska, who immediately leap into battle mode – which Sollux is having none of; he holds them in place with his psionics, and shouts at them until he feels better.

Vriska calms down and lets him on their ship, and Eridan, of course, just wants to hurt Sollux. Romantically speaking.

Sollux is a little too focused on surviving for hatesnogs, though.

They take him to the home they share with Feferi – a huge, partially underwater cave system that Vriska found on a treasure hunt sweeps before, and the four of them live there together, safe.

 Their relationships are very volatile; Sollux’s old kismecrush on Vriska resurfaces occasionally – he still hasn’t forgiven her for what she made him do to Aradia, and the caves remind him of his former moirail, somehow.

What he doesn’t know, of course, is that Aradia has always haunted Vriska, and that she’s right there, unable to communicate with him. The good days, when Vriska doesn’t remind  him of the sweet, excitable maroonblood, she isn’t in the caves at all – Nepeta needs guidance from someone who is used to being dead, after all, and she’s so worried about the blueblood she still considers her moirail, even if he did abandon her.

Of the three of them, only Vriska stands up to Feferi – her blood alone makes her strong enough to snap all their necks. Not that she needs to coerce Eridan or Sollux into doing anything. Eridan adores her and is entirely devoted to her, and Sollux, though far less devoted, is blinded by caring too much for her – and of course, she does care for him, in a way.

Her perception of caring is skewed, and she can only seem to be nice if she doesn’t set out to focus on niceness.

Vriska hates her: hates the way she doesn’t respect quadrants; hates the fact that she dares to put them all in danger simply for associating with her and the fact that she smiles as she does it. She hates the reflection of herself in Feferi – the ways she is trying to be strong by imitating the Condesce – and hates her for reminding her of her own past follies.

Feferi humours Vriska’s occasional black advances, but to her, it’s only ever a game;  relationships are impossible for her, as she isn’t about to discuss feelings with her moirail. They act the perfect moirallegiance, of course -  he plaits her impossibly long hair a thousand times, to stop it from becoming tangled; they sit on each other’s laps and curl up on piles, and he patches her up after fights with Vriska, silently wishing he could have that with Sollux.

 But honesty is not a thing that has ever passed between them.

Kanaya tries so hard to make it to her friends – to get to the place Vriska promises to meet her. She’s tough, there’s no doubt of that. Sweeps of fighting the undead have seen to that. But when they know where you’ll be and what you’re expecting, it’s not difficult to ambush you.

Vriska doesn’t find a beautiful troll girl, but a mocking message painted on the docks in precious jade blood.

Kanaya joins Aradia and Nepeta only shortly before Equius does.

Gamzee grows bored of him, eventually. He was always going to. It was only a matter of time, and Equius is surprised that the order to hang himself didn’t come earlier. He is not surprised that he is told to enjoy it, though; he does as he is told, and dies smiling.

He meets the two girls he always pitied, and a third who loves them all and gathers them into her protective arms. Not that the dead need protecting.

Equius is replaced, for a little while, by a troll who stammers and cannot walk.

Only for a little while.

They deduce, eventually, that all those involved with Feferi – even the Grand Highblood and his mutant moirail, both culled almost immediately after the new Empress’ rise to power – are doomed to remain as ghosts, never reaching an afterlife.

Vriska gambles her life away, hating herself more than anyone after she sees what siding with the winner has done to the world she once found such malicious delight in.

Sollux cannot pilot the ship forever, not without the constant attention of a flighty Empress who soon forgets he ever existed.

Eridan stays with her forever. She has the whole Empire now, and he knows she no longer needs him, but she keeps him, and he plaits her hair with shaking, deceitful hands that want to plait a loop right round her beautiful neck and end this – but he can’t. He loves her.

Eventually, he tells her the one thing he never told her, over all these sweeps. And of course she already knew, but it is in the telling that the lie they’ve woven around themselves is broken, and she leaves him. She tosses him aside like a wiggler with a used toy, and he lets himself waste away without her lifegiving touch.

And he joins his old friends, feeling more like himself than he ever did, and Sollux – beautiful, pissblooded, awful, perfect Sollux – bites at his lips with the passion they never shared when they were alive, with Feferi distracting them at any antagonism, never auspictisizing, only being herself. Now she’s not there and Eridan punches Sollux and feels a thrill he never had when he was alive.

And now there’s no one with Feferi, no more living connections to her, and they dance through their own memories, all of them, for eternity, as she sails her cold ship through the stars, cold and empty and never considering that there is any other option for her.