towerofanimus | pull out the fourth cord

Entry tags:

pull out the fourth cord

Characters: Gamzee Makara (AU) and you.
Setting: The Cafeteria.
Format: Either
Summary: Realizing you're stuck in the lie again doesn't necessarily make it easier to escape it.
Warnings: Language. Psychological trauma.

Gamzee sits slouched in a chair in the cafeteria, a glass of water sitting half empty (if we're being pessimistic, which he is) on the table in front of him. He stares through its clear exterior with a feverish gaze, dark hair plastered to his face with sweat.

Water has been the only thing he's put into his system for the past couple days now, and that only because he needs it to survive (not that this seems to matter here anyway). It's not poison he's afraid of, at least not the sort of poison his counterpart is worried about, but rather anything that they might have put into his food to keep him sedated again - to keep him docile and pliable to their whims. He'd been a fool to ever thing he'd escaped from that madhouse, from the program that had kept him under its spell for years. He was beginning to think he'd never get away from it.

And the worst part is he doesn't know how to fight back. This is the best he can do for now - sit and ponder and possibly contemplate giving in to the desire for food despite all desire not to.

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Karkat had been doing amazingly at avoiding getting sick, but he had ignored food for far too long. As such, it was no real wonder that he would come nervously creeping around the corner to try and get food without touching anyone or anything. He could already feel the tickle in the back of his throat, and when he thought about it, it had been stupid to think that he wouldn't fall prey to the sickness eventually. From everything he'd seen, it was airborne.

But he had to try. And now his stomach was winning over stubbornness. Or rather, it would have been, if he didn't spot Gamzee on his way inside the cafeteria, which causes him to freeze. He had already heard some people that were sick freaking out over random crap (Feferi came to mind) and there was no way to tell if the same thing was going on with the human in front of him.

So he just sort of stands there awkwardly and waits for a reaction. This Gamzee, at least, didn't seem too keen on severing his head from his shoulders.

At the sound of footsteps, Gamzee's eyes raise from the table slowly and he stares at Karkat for a good few moments before the image truly processes. The blue one. The different one. The one he would have gladly tried to know better until he realized it was just another lure - another trap to draw him into the false reality.

He tilts his head slightly, voice scratchy as he speaks. "Quite the motherfuckin' ill creation you are." It's strange. As easy as it is to get angry at those that made these images, it's harder to snap at the images themselves, even if they could be one and the same. The same - or others trapped just as he is.

He will never really know, will he?

Edited 2012-12-21 23:19 (UTC)

"I get that a lot," Karkat comments simply, maybe with a hint of resentment. It bothered him a lot in the beginning, being told he was a duplicate and not the "true Karkat", so to speak, especially considering his counterpart was a mutant. He didn't really have anything against mutants (how could he, when Kanaya was one of them?), but it kicked some part of his pride that he couldn't quite articulate without sounding like a huge tool. He had since gotten over it, considering how many people a month were surprised at his existance, but lately it had been bothering him again -- perhaps because people like Vriska, who he had gotten along with, were returning to the Tower without memories of him.

Gamzee sounds sick. So when Karkat approaches the table, he leaves a good bit of distance between them, hands stuffed in his pockets.

"You get used to it. Everyone else did," he adds, lip curling a little over one of his sharp canines. No, everyone else probably didn't, but it was easier if he thought they did.

"Not what I meant, bro." He shakes his head. "Almost got me, though. Almost motherfuckin' had me in those lies. Could've found some fuckin' kinship in someone what seemed all as displaced as I am." A foul sounding chuckle followed this, and he lifted his glass to toast it mockingly at the troll.

"...But you ain't any more real than the rest of them."

Someone else not looking well at all plops down in the seat across from him. It felt for all the world like it took all his energy to just get up the stairs to the first dorm floors for the elevator. He hoped this illness cleared soon.

One flu-ridden gaze meets another through the glass, and Enoch gives his roommate an uncertain nod, light to keep the movement of his head from being dizzying. Many may have been bribed in some way or another to sabotage the cause of escape. But Enoch didn't know if Gamzee was one of them or not. A kid so wary probably wouldn't accept bribes from their hosts.

Edited (omg I started that subject line and then forgot to finish it!) 2012-12-24 04:41 (UTC)

Gamzee tilts his head, but what might have otherwise been a somewhat creepy look is spoiled by the fact that half of it is covered by his hair in a rather un-creepy fashion.

"...And what are you all being, I wonder. Are you the same as me? Or do you just got your exist on to put this motherfucker at ease." He shakes his head, only slightly succeeding in getting his bangs to fall aside. "Can't be at all at ease now, though, brother. Not when it flickers all like it is."

Gamzee's words seem meaningless to him at first. It takes him much longer than normal to parse what he's saying. "Flickers? Is your vision suffering?"

"My vision's perfectly mother fucking fine." He reaches an arm out to give the man a light poke. It wouldn't prove anything, of course, since objects in the program had always felt solid.

"It's this world, brother. This fake fucking world what can't all stay sharp and not give away how fake it all is."

Enoch's arm jerks reflexively at the poke, but he doesn't move otherwise.

"It looks normal to me." Enoch sighs, remembering Feferi's network post. That it wasn't just nerves getting to him. He didn't know what was worse, feeling this way, like there were enemies everywhere, or knowing that it wasn't natural and being unable to do a thing to change it. It was like the costumes all over again. At least this time, he had no urge to kill. Or urges at all. Just warped thoughts. At least he was aware of them this time.

"...Gamzee, this sickness isn't ordinary. Jason may be toying with your mind, like he is mine."

That just gets a weak chuckle from the boy. "Wouldn't that be an easy as fuck excuse to be going with? It's just that motherfucker getting his mess on with you! Just ignore what all graphical glitches you might see."

He shakes his head. "I can't believe that, bro."

"If that's the case...then none of our maladies are Jason's fault. So I distrust everyone for no reason, for nothing?"

Enoch exhales sharply, inhales just as fast, calming himself. "No...if the troll girl had said nothing, I might have blamed my nerves. But she recognized these things were unnatural, too..."

The boy just stared at him blearily. "And what all would be the point of that? Makin' me see effects which ain't there in order to mess with me?"

Given how this place was, it actually made sense. However, that didn't make it any easier to take in when questioning reality was a daily thing for him.

"What all illness does that..."

"Jason's does. Jason devises 'experiments' on us for his own entertainment..." Enoch sighed heavily, slumping forward against the table. Oh, but he felt so tired...

"If he can disable or even exchange our bodies, why not make them ill as well, in whatever way he wishes?"

Gamzee tilted his head, considering his roommate's words... But no, they just wouldn't sink in the way Enoch might have wanted. The boy just couldn't believe them. He couldn't let himself fall for it again.

"Sorry, bro. That's just too motherfuckin' easy of an excuse."

Enoch didn't raise his head, too drained.

"Then what does work? What accounts for both your vision and my suspicion if not Jason?"

"Don't know about you. The program works for me." Gamzee shook his head.

"You don't understand these motherfuckers, bro. Or maybe you do... you bein' fuckin' one of them. Or you're stuck all the motherfuck in it like me. How am I to know anymore? Man, fuck.

"Maybe I shouldn't even get my care on."

"What 'program'?"

It would help if he knew what a computer program was. As it is, all he can think of is analogous to "plan" more than "simulation".

"The one I done up and came from, motherfucker! Ain't I told you that?"

He'd told a lot of people, but perhaps he forgot exactly who.

"I...don't believe you have. How does one come from a program?"

See, if Gamzee had told him, he wouldn't be trying to figure out how one comes from...oh. Maybe...

"Do you mean you were in some sort of training?"

He snorts. Training. Right.

"I mean I was in some all sort of reality what weren't at all reality, if you know what I'm gettin' at." And he could never help but feel like it at all been some sort of game for those in charge of making it.

A reality that wasn't a reality. He was so sick he could barely piece it together. Finally, he thinks he has it.

"An illusion?"

"Sure. If that's what all fits for you. A whole motherfuckin' complicated, life-long illusion." Gamzee gives a little dismissive wave of his hand.

"One word's as good as another."

Your entire life was an illusion?

*At least there wasn't much of it. If Enoch were to find the same thing, well...no, he didn't want to think about it. Three hundred years, a lie? He certainly wouldn't be able to handle it. He's glad Gamzee was able to escape his illusion so early. He'd lost his childhood, but...he had plenty of life left to live for real.*

"Is as it is, brother." He nodded wearily.

That in itself was something he'd gotten used to being aware of. It was knowing where the fake world ended and the real one began that through him off all the time. When the fake one felt so real anyway, what were you supposed to believe?

"At least...you were freed early. You have all of your years ahead of you."

Enoch could offer little else. He was sick, and worried about the threat of the enemies. How much would it take for one of them to use this information to bring Gamzee to their side...?

"Freed." Gamzee snorted. "Right."

That was assuming any of this was real, which he doubted very heavily right now. And even so, it wasn't true freedom, was it? In a way, it was almost worse, as there was so much more he had no control over.

"...This isn't quite the life we're meant to lead, either, I'll admit it. But should our worlds be restored..."

"If our worlds are fuckin' real."

"There was a reality to your world. For the illusion to exist there must have been a reality to escape to. And you can discover that, if Dax should restore it.

I wonder if we can't help somehow..."

But with Ruana handing out favors to keep people here...surely they must be able to help! Ruana must be trying harder to keep her playthings here because losing them might be a reality!

"Yeah. Yeah, sure." He knew there was a real world out there somewhere. He just didn't count this as part of it, at the moment.

So all these things having to do with Ruana? Yeah, he didn't think they were important in the slightest. Just another part of the program, after all. Just another reason to try and get him to care about something that didn't exist.

Well, it seemed Gamzee wasn't up for talking. It was to be expected with this disease. People were simply too ill.

Including Enoch, himself. He had come down here for food, but just getting down here was enough to have him slumping forward, resting his head on the table.

"When we have recovered..."

"If we recover." Gamzee was all doom and gloom then, it seemed.

He slouched lazily in his chair, not even looking at Enoch anymore, and certainly not expressing much concern over the man's condition despite them being roommates. That was how little he cared at this point in time.

The good thing about being able to fly is that people are less likely to hear you sneaking up on them. The things they were doing to her brain were making her paranoid and irritable. That must be how they got away with it, how they could drag her away without her knowing no matter how little she slept and how alert she tried to stay.

It was only because she was weak, because she was easy to whisk off. If there was someone else, someone who wouldn't put up a fight then maybe they might spare her in favour of someone else. It went against her morals but she was at the end of her rope.

In her hand she held a bottle of what she hoped was some kind of sleeping drug. She couldn't read the labels at the infirmary and asking would surely give her away. So she silently drifted towards the first person she found, a shag of black hair with a glass of water sitting in front of him. Perfect. Wriggle wasn't exactly sure how this worked but if she could get it in his drink that might work. Of course she came prepared, on her arm sat a number of wasps to use as a distraction. They kept eerily patient as she approached. When the time felt right she let them go, ducking down in the opposite direction in hopes their buzzing would distract Gamzee enough for her to slip the chemical into his drink.

Most people would probably be thrown off by the sight of that many wasps flying around them indoors, but Gamzee was a special case at this point. To him, the insects flickered in and out of existence like some graphical error in a computer game. So he sat and stared at them, almost amused at his captors' poor attempt to spice up his afternoon, but going nowhere. Indeed, moving to swat at them would have been too much of a hassle.

"And what would a set of buzzbeasts be doin' all up in here, hm? Gonna sting a motherfucker, maybe? Puff me all up with your stinging poison?" His voice is hoarse and his tone uncaring. If they all landed and stung him that instant, he probably still wouldn't move.

Even if he didn't get up at least he was facing away from her, just enough for her to try and slip something into his drink unnoticed. Wriggle crouched down, keeping quiet as she unscrewed the cap on whichever bottle she'd bought with her. The wasps kept flying and looping, showing no signs of harming Gamzee.

Her hands shook slightly as she poured the contents of the bottle into the glass, turning the water a slightly smoky colour. Wriggle didn't particularly notice that it was obvious, she ducked under the table and signaled to the wasps to head back upstairs.

The boy watched them with only the smallest amounts of interest, reaching for his glass once they had disappeared. He was out of it enough that he didn't even notice any difference until he'd already taken a gulp of it. Upon noticing that the color of the liquid he'd had up to his mouth was off (as was just about everything else about it) he frowned and set the glass back down on the table before shoving it away from himself.

"Man, fuck." It would just figure that not even the water was safe.

If she'd slipped in a drug to send him to sleep then this might have been a victory but unfortunately for Wriggle all she'd got him to drink was expired medicine. That didn't stop her from letting out a little squeak of delight when she heard him.

Suddenly aware of her own voice she slapped her hand over her mouth, hoping he hadn't heard. A little of the medicine spilled out of it's container, lubricating her hand and making the bottle slip out of her fingers with a clatter.

Gamzee glanced down at the table, frowning. Then he reached a foot out and began kicking it out lightly as far as he could stretch it.

"If you got your hide on under there, best be popping the motherfuck out." Not that he was in any shape to be chasing anyone down should they decide to make a run for it.

This had been a bad idea, a very, very bad idea. The more his foot nudged against her the more she scurried away. It wasn't too far to the opposite side of the table and in the end Wriggle figured her safety in the present was even more important than her safety in the future. It was true she could always find another person to go in her place.

Rolling over to the opposite side of the table she peered up. There was a slight surge of adrenaline as she finally saw his face and the door to the stairwell behind him. There was no choice but to wing it and she jumped out from under the table, ready to make her escape.

"You? And why all would you be wanting to--- motherfuck."

As she started to run past him, he made to get up and chase after her. However, his outstretched hand missed her by a good bit, and he ended up stumbling over his own feet, falling to his knees as he was instantly hit by a wave of lightheadedness. This had nothing to do with her attempted drugging (though his empty stomach wasn't going to help the way he felt later). He was just too damn sick and hungry.

Even though he couldn't catch her she still felt the wind on the back of her ankles, causing her to lose balance and tumble to the floor. Looking back, she was surprised to find him keeled over on the floor. Had her plan worked?

Wriggle staggered back to her feet, now feeling extremely weak at the knees and approached with extreme caution. She still made sure to keep far enough that he couldn't make a jab at her.
"H-how are you feeling?" She breathed, trying to assess just how close to being knocked out he was.

"What the fuck did you give me?" He wasn't feeling any different then, just as bad as he was before. He expected to start feeling worse at any moment, though.

"What all the motherfuck did you go dumping into my beverage, you squirming little virus?"

His harsh words make her recoil a little but she took another step forward. As scared as she was, Wriggle tried to put on a front of confidence but her voice shook and her smile was off.

"I gave you something to put you to sleep," She explained, despite the fact she'd done nothing of the sort. Wriggle couldn't read any of the labels on the medicine she took but from his reaction to it she came to her own conclusions. "Just take it easy, you won't remember a thing."

"Motherfucker!" Gamzee wasn't feeling any more tired than he was before (though granted, he was pretty beat). Her actions, so different from how she'd acted toward him before, helped to cement in his mind how fake this whole world was just then.

He struggled up further, standing shakily. "I'm not gonna let you reset nothin'. You're just gonna have to motherfuckin' off me. Put me out of my mother fucking misery."

She jolted back a few spaces. Even though it seemed like Gamzee was in no position to hurt her she didn't want to take any chances. After hearing stories about him, or perhaps the other him, Wriggle still didn't realise there were two of them, she couldn't help but feel scared when he started to yell.

"I'm not resetting anything!" She blurted out, quickly losing what little cool she had. "And I'm not going to kill you!" Just let you get dragged off and get experimented on. Was that really much better?

"You should. It'd be all motherfuckin' better for everyone. You..." He pointed to himself. "Me..." He pointed to her. ...Okay, that wasn't right but he wasn't going to bother correcting it. "It'd solve every fuckin' dilemma what we got here."

He took a few steps toward her, the dizziness fading a little as he got moving and his body caught up.

"So what's it take from you, huh? A pull on the motherfuckin' plug? A knife right in that goddamn human hole I got up in my midparts? Come on. Come the motherfuck on."

As he approached Wriggle took a step back before she began to float a few inches off the ground. If he made any sudden movements then she could make her escape upwards, where he couldn't reach her.

"I said I'm not going to kill you!" All the while she wondered when that supposed sleeping drug was going to take effect. Dying had not been pleasant and no matter how this place worked she didn't want to be responsible for that kind of feeling. "J-just calm down! You'll be alseep before you know it..."

"HAHAHAHA.... no." He made for the door, meaning to leave the cafeteria and any further temptations behind. Water will probably be off the menu now too.

"I'm gonna keep these motherfuckin' peepers wide open as long as a brother can. You'll have to sew the mother fucking flaps shut." He didn't know how he was going to manage staying awake, but he figured he could do it somehow.

Wriggle lurched upwards as he passed and wondered if it was worth following. Gamzee was probably too dangerous to deal with and there were plenty more people in the tower. She'd probably be better of finding a more docile victim. That didn't stop her from yelling back though.

"Fine! I will!"

She won't.

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pull out the fourth cord

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The RNG needs to stop rolling yes for your threads in a position to completely wreck CR. ^^;.

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Sorry for the random style flub...

It's all good!

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