towerofanimus | Freedom Can Be Confusing

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Freedom Can Be Confusing

Characters:

2nd_dii2ciiple & whoever would like to talk to him!
Setting: Room 2-08 and surrounding areas
Format: Any!
Summary: He's... not quite sure what to make of this
Warnings: slightly broken troll ahoy

The first thing he noticed when he woke was that he was not where he was supposed to be. There was no sign of his control block, or the biowires that should have connected him to his ship. The constant ticking of the computer in the back of his mind was gone as well - he wasn't connected to anything at all.

Panic tried to encroach as his conditioning insisted that he needed to get back to where he belonged right the fuck now, but he fought it off. He hadn't brought himself here, so it wasn't his fault he was disobeying. And flailing around in blind panic wasn't going to get him back to his station any faster.

Besides, if he was very lucky, this might be his opportunity to finally break free of his punishment of slavery. He'd almost lost hope that this moment would ever come.

The distress of finding himself dressed in plain white without even the tiniest indication of his symbol was enough to distract him long enough to read the letters and scout the tiny room. Thankfully a cursory search was more than enough to reveal the clean change of clothes waiting for him in an otherwise empty trunk, and he changed quickly.

Not a single hole for the biowire connectors. No sign of his hated helmet. He felt more like the Ψiioniic than the Helmsman, for the first time in nearly a sweep. Although he couldn't remove the collar, and he assumed the blue colour meant he was now owned by a blue-blood of that shade. It was actually a fairly ingenious method of identification. The problem was that he had no idea who it was, or where to find his new master.

Or, for that matter, why the Condesce would have suddenly decided to sell her most powerful Helmsman.

Time to find out what was going on.

Outside the room he found himself in a corridor full of doors just like the one he'd come out of. He turned to look back at his door, and saw a list of names, presumably the occupants. His was the last.

Right above it was a name he'd thought he would never see again. The Signless.

Just the sight of it was enough to send his panic rushing back in on him, intensified by the forbidden name. He reeled against the wall, staring in shock and disbelief. It couldn't be him. The Signless was dead.

And a part of Ψiioniic had died with him.

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"What previouth world?" Sollux asked, his confusion still no clearer.

And then his jaw dropped open. "The Thufferer? Holy shit. You knew the Thufferer?"

He took two steps closer, his eyes lighting up a little. "You've got to be my Anthethtor! Wow, I really have an Anthethor!"

Okay, not his chillest moment. But this was really cool.

"Anthethtor?" Damn it, why did it seem like the only thing he was able to do was repeat this child's words? Ψiioniic shook his head, struggling to clear it. "But... how could you be my Descendant? I've never even... I mean... I thuppose they'd probably..."

He trailed off, blushing, figuring it might be as well for both of them if he just didn't finish that sentence. He'd never contributed a pail to the incestuous slurry, but presumably eventually they'd collect material from him. They wouldn't want to lose the chance to re-introduce such powerful psychic genes back into the mix, despite the negative potential of his mutations.

Sollux blushed, too. "W-well, that doethn't matter," he said lamely. "Becauthe we were created ectobiologically, not the way motht trollth are hatched. You and me, I mean. And the other eleven of uth playerth, and the eleven other Anthethtorth. The thing with Thignlethh happened a thouthand thweepth before my time."

"A..." No, fuck, he was not going to repeat 'a thousand sweeps' back at the boy like a mimicbeast. He bit his lip, and rearranged his thoughts until he could say something a little more useful.

"The Signless wath my best friend," he said softly, real grief in his voice. "He gave me hope, and freed me from thlavery to the high-bloodth. He said there would be a thecond coming, another troll with his mutation... did it really happen?"

Oh.

Shit.

Suddenly a lot of things made a lot more sense.

"Yeah. That happened."

Sollux swallowed hard. Slavery? Did he mean literal slavery?

"You want me to show you around?" he asked, a bit more subdued than before, but trying to rally. Clearly what they needed was a distraction, and he kinda wanted to stick around with his Ancestor a bit longer, even if he was a bit weird and depressing. He was Sollux, after all, in a sense. He had to have his bifurcated brain and all.

"Then... the end of the world really did come," Ψiioniic realized. So the note was true. He didn't understand how it was that he could be here - and he still couldn't quite bring himself to think about the implications of the other name on his door - but at least some things were starting to fall into place. "Did hith Descendent win? Do you know him?"

A tour? That wasn't a bad idea. This Sollux seemed to know a lot more about their situation than Ψiioniic did. "Ithn't there... somewhere I'm suppothed to be?" he asked hesitantly, touching his collar. "Your collar ith the same as mine... does that mean we have the same owner?"

"Yeah, it did. Boom, all the meteorth fell and then the vatht glub killed the retht of uth," Sollux said matter-of-factly. "And yeah, we won, but then thomething went wrong. A monthter from the world we created ath our prithe came through into our world and attacked uth. We were hiding from it, trying to figure out what to do, when I wath brought here." He smiled wryly. "The dethcendent ith named Karkat, and yeah, I know him."

He blinked and then scowled a bit. Maybe Ψiioniic really did mean literal slavery. He could see why he thought that the blue collars meant that they were slaves, and that they might have the same owner. "No, no, we're not thlaveth. I don't know what the collar ith for, but we don't have an owner, and if anything trieth to thay I do, I'll blatht them to thmithereenth."

Ψiioniic bit his lip, distressed. Sollux's reaction was so much like the one he would have had, if someone had told him as a young adolescent that someday he would be a broken slave.

Which only proved that for all Sollux's fire, the fate was inevitable and inescapable. If he wasn't warned. Ψiioniic could tell him what was in store, give him the chance to fight back that Ψiioniic had never had.

"You have to thee them coming, first," he said softly, head down. "They catch you during the day, when you're athleep in your recuperacoon. They drug you, and the next thing you know you're being schoolfed so thoroughly you'll hardly have a thought you can call your own. It'th the fate of all low-blood psychics... but they don't tell anyone until it'th too late. At leatht, that's how it was in my time. I don't know how thingth might change."

Sollux stared for a good minute, as everything Ψiioniic had just said sank into every particle of his brain.

"Okay," he said finally, and touched Ψiioniic's sleeve very lightly. "If I go back to Alternia, and everything goeth back to the way it wath, I'll remember that. I'm not going to let that happen to me."

Ψiioniic nodded, reaching up to cover his Descendant's hand with his own. "That's good. Maybe, if you know it's coming, you can ethcape. I did, for a while... with the Signless." That was why he'd loved and revered his friend so damned much.

This was startlingly intimate, but Sollux didn't find himself minding. He felt oddly protective of Ψiioniic, and was also still coming to terms with what he'd been told.

"It'th hard to believe thith ith really real," he admitted quietly. And then he suddenly had a horrible thought. "Do you think the highbloodth know? I mean, oneth my age."

"I can't thay for sure what's going on in your time - I hope things have changed at leatht a little. But children were never told in my time," Ψiioniic assured him. "There'th a lot more interaction between the classes as adolescents, and they can't rithk any of the psychics finding out, and trying to escape." Either by running away, or by killing themselves.

"Well, I guethh I'm glad I've got you to tell me about it," Sollux said with a wry smile. He was extremely relieved to know it was unlikely that Feferi, or even Eridan, knew about this and he didn't.

He sobered. "Tho are you okay? You theemed really thcared at firtht."

"Yeah, I wath just..." He gestured helplessly at the sign next to the door. "His name ith there. I don't understand. And I was already fighting a panic attack, I'm not where I'm suppothed to be and my conditioning is freaking me out about it, so when I thaw that..."

"Oh." Sollux looked and immediately saw the source of his issue. "Yeah, I can thee why that would freak you out. But that meanth he'th here, then. Thomewhere."

"Maybe. I can't believe it could be true. I thaw him die. I heard him screaming in my head for a week before they actually killed him - I knew it was coming, and there was nothing I could do to thtop it." Ψiioniic bowed his head, still overcome by his failure and inability to protect his friend. He'd done everything he could think of, but just like all his other visions, he hadn't been able to change anything.

"Yeah, but remember what I thaid about timelineth," Sollux said wryly, giving his arm a squeeze. Stay with him, Ψiioniic. "You should be long dead, too, but inthtead you're talking to me. The Thignlethh here could be from your patht, before he died. Or he could be from another univerthe where you have purple blood. Trutht me, weird shit ith going on here."

"Purple blood?" The thought was more than bizarre enough to break his brain and distract him from thoughts of the death of the Signless. "Thith place is really weird. I... feel so lost."

"I know the feeling," Sollux said honestly. He tugged on him a little, trying to encourage him to walk with him towards the stairs. "One of the firtht people I met wath a blue-blooded Karkat who thaid I wath normally a purple blood he knew."

A blue-blooded Signless equivalent, and Ψiioniic as a purple-blood?

Ψiioniic just stared at him a moment in blank incomprehension, unable to picture it. Finally he shook his head. "Too weird," he pronounced.

Sollux laughed. "I know, right? That'th what I thaid." They reached the top of the stairs, and Sollux began to draw Ψiioniic down the stairs with him.

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Freedom Can Be Confusing

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