(So I became really enamored with grimdark mechanics and the idea of a grimdark Tavros in general. He slept all of the time, he communes with beasts, and he surely qualifies as having a latent desire for revenge, or at least has reason to have one. So I wrote this as an attempt to explain why I find this so interesting. I have to thank a Vriska that I encountered while RPing as grimdark!Tavros, who helped me conceptualize their confrontation. The title is a lyric from "Cosmic Love" by Florence and the Machine. Enjoy!)
Like many things, his descent began with flying and with light. These were things that he loved, even after it became clear that it was stupid and painful to love them. He loved them as he flew on Prospit, the only place that felt safe anymore. A place where he could be immersed in flight and surrounded by light, where he could still be happy.
He smiled as he floated higher and higher above the land of gold, diving down and shooting back up again. Everything shone and glittered, Skaia above and Prospit below as he did giddy little loops in the in-between. For him, this is what made everything worth it. Even after he had lost his use of his legs, many of his friends, the majority of his self-worth, he had this. Even after all he could see when he was awake was his own hands, stained brown-blue with blood and forced to write "K8LL M8" on a beautiful girl that he was unable to save, he still had this. So he spent as much time as he could in this literal dream world. Here he could cling to his innocence, here he could love the good and the pure. He was sleeping more and more to go there, to remember what made him happy. He was sleeping then, lying on the computer lab floor. When it began.
While he was flying and sleeping, one other troll was revving up her chainsaw while another waited and watched. She stood over him and without a second thought, she drove the weapon clean through his pelvic bone. The pain shot through him even as he dreamt, making him fall. He couldn't fly, and then he couldn't sleep. He was on his back in the lab, slick with his own blood.
The pain was unbearable, rushing through him and making him nearly blind with the force of it. All he could see was stretched and distorted. Kanaya standing over him with a murderous look, holding a chainsaw covered in chocolate copper blood. A pair of cracked glasses glinting the fluorescent light as they watched him writhe. And when he turned, he saw his own legs, useless but still his, lying beside him in a pile. In the madness of shock and pain, he reached for his own severed legs. He didn't even hear his own wailing screams and broken sobs. He only heard Kanaya's voice admonishing him, telling him to be less of a coward about this.
It wasn't long until he passed out again, but even in sleep he was already dead. He didn't get to see the destruction of Prospit, his last respite. The flight and the light he had cherished were simply gone. Instead, there was only darkness and falling. As he fell into the dark, he finally knew what it was like to have nothing left. His mind screamed out for something, anything, to help him. Then the falling stopped. He opened his white eyes to see he was caught in a mass of slithering black tentacles, which held him close and were pulling him closer. He was caught in the tendrils of a horrorterror which would not let him go.
There had been fear, of course. At least, there had been at first. He had been a boy of the sky, of light, of Prospit. He struggled on instinct against the darkness probing at his mind and body, so overcome with horror that he awoke with a start. But when he woke, the lab only held another type of horror. He lost the fear of the atrocities only to gain the freshly excruciating pain of having metal welded to his flesh. There was no anesthetic, no warning, only a sweaty, scowling troll insulting him and telling him to stop moving about so. And so he passed out again. He flitted between these two states for a while, driven to sleep by pain and driven to waking by fear. But the fear receded as the tendrils became gentle, and the pain of this nonconsensual surgery only increased. Eventually, he chose sleep, finding comfort in the whispers of their monstrous minds.
Eventually he woke up, after the operation was complete and the pain was a mere shadow of what it had been. He had a new set of robotic legs. It was nice to walk again, and he gave his shaky thanks to Kanaya and Equius. But still, Vriska tormented him at every turn. Still, he couldn't stop seeing her bleeding body, hearing her scream her agony directly into his mind. And even though there was no more light or flight for him, even though Karkat emphatically forbade any Prospit dreamers from sleeping, he snuck off to sleep at every chance he got. He wanted to rest again, to listen to voices that called him "friend".
They were all he had left, and he loved them for it.
The more he slept, the more comfortable he became in their twisted embrace, and the more fond he became of the monstrosities. He began to listen to them, and as a communer of beasts was able to respond to them directly. He learned that the horrorterrors had answered his call for someone to help him, that they had saved him from a dark and endless fall. He learned that he had communed with them in that fall, before he even knew what they were. They told him that something had been killing them off, that he was one of the few dreamers who had not fled from them in horror. And they told him that they always loved someone who wanted to talk to them, who was willing to listen.
He began to trust them, to tell them his dreams, his loss, his pain. After communicating with them for a long time, they told him in dark whispering voices that the trolls of the waking world were wrong to think that he was weak and useless. That he had been pushed around for far too long. That they were willing to lend him power so that he could get revenge that he so deserved.
And ever so slowly, darkness crept into this boy, filling all the places abandoned by the light. It was a gradual process, building the bridge between his sleeping and waking world, taking the power given to him. When he told Karkat that the darkness beyond dead Prospit was really not so bad, the supposed leader merely recoiled with revulsion and called him a freak. Even dear, sweet Jade seemed so upset when he tried to give her their messages. He was one of the few that seemed willing to listen.
As time passed, the line between his thoughts and theirs became blurred. It was only to be expected of these Prospitans, he thought, or perhaps heard from those who shared his thoughts. So terrified of anything on which the light does not shine, so quick to recoil and denounce anything that was not bright and beautiful and simple. The creatures told him how happy they were that he had proven them wrong. That he had let his kindness triumph over his prejudice. That his goodwill spread even to that which lay beyond the bounds of narrowly defined sanity.
It was then that Vriska contacted him again, trying to break him into nothing, telling him of her horrible plans that would doom them all. We like you so very, very much, they told him in the midst of her cruel rant. We know of your rage, they whispered, buried beneath so much self-hatred, so much pain, so much desire for the happiness of others. But what of YOUR happiness? What of how this bitch had made you suffer, by hurting you, by killing your friend, by MAKING you blind another, for breaking you down until you were sure that you were too worthless for anyone to care for?
We care for you, they said softly as their darkness curled comfortingly in his soul. You are kind, kind enough to befriend the darkest of things even as a child of light. Gentle listener, commune with us. Let us help you. If you let us in your mind, we can give you all the power you need. We will help you end this, once and for all. With that, he smiled for his friends, giving them his complete trust. He let them in, and let them change him.
And as he took their minds and power into himself, how he changed. His skin grew darker, his hair grew white. His eyes gained a glow that could not be called light. His own shadow grew, spread, embraced him, and everything about him became dark and strange and powerful. But he felt no fear, nor anything like it. He had never felt so loved as when his shadow lifted him up, hovering him a few inches above the ground as he moved smoothly towards his target. No, it was not flying, but it was close enough.
He found Vriska in a large, empty storage room. The smile slipped from her face as she saw that he was not what she once was. The horrorterrors piped angry, chilling, garbled language through his mouth, but he did not much mind. He rather liked the way it made her tremble and go pale. She tried to talk, but no, no, he refused to listen. She had said so much already, so many words like thousands of pins stabbing through him, meant to hurt and hurt and hurt. He blurred her sound into static. He had had enough, and now was the time to fight.
His first punch caught her by surprise, as the darkness rushed him forward faster than she expected. A roll of her dice sent knives flying his way, but those that hit drew brown blood that turned black and thick as tar. Her blood was as blue and thin as it had always been, as he hit her with arms that were always stronger than people remembered, as he kicked at her with mechanical legs. The pain he felt didn't even register in the thrill of finally fighting back. When it became clear that he was getting the upper hand, she tried to manipulate his mind again. But when she went in to take him, he was not alone. And his company did not like the intrusion.
The horrorterrors roared at her presumption, washed her over with darkness, chilled her with unnatural fear. They rifled through her mind, picking at all her secret little regrets like scabs until they bled. They had no trouble showing her how much she had hurt their kind host. While they accosted her, pushing her out of his mind, they also separated themselves from him. This would need to be a just death for her to die, and they knew that they could not be involved in killing her. Only he could be the one to do it. They left him with no real resistance. They cared for him, and knew he would not abandon their touch. When they were gone and he came to, something close to what he had been save what he now knew, Vriska was strung up by his own shadow. She was bleeding, trembling, and trying desperately not to cry.
He lifted his lance with a trembling hand, and she asked him to wait. She told him of how her feelings for him had been twisted and confused, how she shouldn't have done what she did, how she was going to accept that he would never be what she wanted from him. She asked if there was any way that they could both make it out of this alive. He shook his head sadly, tears beginning to stream down his face. No, he knew that this had to be the end, and when she began to nod he saw that she understood it too. She asked him then if she could have a real kiss before she died, free of mind control, free of anything but the two of them. The shadows twisted and hissed in protest, but he quietly calmed them. He used his free hand to cup her face as he closed the distance between their lips. The kiss tasted like blood and felt like goodbye, and it was bittersweet for both of them. When it ended, she closed her eyes and only asked that he make it quick this time. He obliged, putting a gentle hand on her shoulder as he speared her through the abdomen with his lance.
"Tavros," she whispered to him as she bled out, as he withdrew the lance and slowly lowered her to the ground.
"I'm sorry," was all he said to her, holding her close before she died, closing her eyes when it was over. Whether he was sorry for killing her then or for not killing her sooner, he could not say. He did not have much time to think about it, as the darkness curled affectionately around him and whispered a question into his mind. He nodded, and slowly, the darkness began to pool around Vriska's corpse. It got blacker and blacker as it swarmed around her, and she slowly began to sink into the black. The shadows gathered her up, devoured her until there was nothing left but discarded dice and the occasional bloodstain.
As this happened, the darkness flowed back into his mind, taking him again. He welcomed it, as it comforted him, as it dried his tears to tar, as it hummed its praises into his mind. He let it change him again, and again he floated a little off the floor with the support of terrors unnamed. With something inside of him caring for him so, it was almost as though he cared about himself again. For the first time in so long, he was both awake and almost happy. Smiling slightly, he wiped his lance and floated back into the twisting hallways, waiting to see what awaited him now that the just death was done.