This isn't like you. You don't just get up and leave, yet here you are. Rose is awake, waiting in the respiteblock you two share. You said you had something to attend to, and you do. You would never lie to her. But lying is the least of your concerns right now. As you make your way down the dark grey halls of the lab building, you curse yourself.
Jade lipstick begins to fade and black streaks are now integrated into the green, showing the true hue of your full lips. Fangs in the colour of ivory white poke out, embedding themselves habitually in your lower lip, only making the lipstick situation worse. It's a nervous habit you've acquired along with your fangs.
Your footsteps echo down the cavernous, hollow hallway, reverberating off the empty walls and bouncing back to create a paradoxical syncopated beat. As if the guilt you felt wasn't enough, the echoes of your steps mock you, betraying your presence to any waking soul. These were sleeping hours, yes, and it was unmistakably certain that Karkat would have an absolute field day of leader-ly, authoritative berating to do if he found you in the halls this late, but this is something you'd neglected doing in the past, and as her former moirail, it's something you have to do. Not only for her, but also to ease your own mind.
Coming to a staircase, you peer up it, knowing that it won't be lit. In fact, there are hardly any lights in this facility. You're surprised the computers work at all with the conditions of the place. But they work nonetheless and that's all that matters when you're trying to "govern a team of imbeciles," as Karkat so eloquently puts it. Your thoughts quiet slightly as you begin to ascend the steps, only to pick up at a completely reasonable place of wondering whether or not your leader actually views you all as imbeciles, and your tread once again makes more noise than you'd like. Honestly, it's like walking in a large, empty vault. Or a cave. Which is strange, considering you've never experienced what it's like to be inside either of those things. You also decide that yes, Karkat believes you to be imbeciles, and no, he isn't wrong.
Your path of travel leads you to the roof. This is where she died, only weeks ago. You can still see the spatters of cerulean violence littering the scene. It's been cleaned for the most part, though you don't know who the unlucky soul that was forced to go through that was. Perhaps Aradia, since mundane chores didn't much bother her anymore and she held a bit of a grudge against your former moirail previously, or maybe it was Karkat, being the good leader that he insisted to everyone he would be when you first started playing SGRUB.
No matter what they did with her body- or any of the bodies, for that matter- you can still smell her scent. She smelled of smoke, and dirt, and cold steel, and sometimes even motor oil or something familiarly acidic, but it was always endearing in a way. Thinking that makes you feel a bit like Terezi, with how she can smell and taste colours and whatnot. It's a bit silly, but the silliness of the situation is cut extremely short by a cold feeling washing over you, and you remember why you're here.
If she knew, she'd laugh at you. She would explode into fits of laughter, and call you Fussyfangs, and tell you how stupid you are to believe she might actually hear you, but the truth is that your bloodpump is beating so fast and so hard that you fear even Rose can hear it, although she's probably reading a book back at the respiteblock, waiting up for your return, hearing nothing but the voice inside her head, carefully pronouncing each word like you know she does. Miss Serket would raise an eyebrow, and scrutinise you with a look that could burn down a kingdom. But you'll do it anyway. Even though it is cliché, and grub-like, and you're beginning to think you should just go back to the block and sleep it off curled around Rose, you're going to tell her exactly how you feel. And dead or not, she's going to listen.
"Vriska," you start, your voice strange and cold, and choked out by the throes of the universe until you can't even recall what you'd said or how you said it due to the gigantic, still silence that followed. So, after clearing your throat, you decide to start again. "Vriska," you repeat, louder, stronger this time. There's no chance that she can pompously ignore you like she used to, you muse as you stand at the scene of the crime. The air is still oddly silent, but it isn't as eerily deterring as it was just moments ago. It is now a canvas, or an empty notepad, opened just for you to pour your soul out onto, and that is exactly what you will do.
"I know things between us decidedly didn't go as well as we'd originally planned," you manage to say at last. Curt and formal, as you promised yourself you would be. But you know that won't last. "Upon entering quadrants with another troll, no one ever muses that the relationship will inevitably end, but that's the reality. And as your moirail, I had a duty to protect you. Needless to say, I failed."
Your throat constricts, tightening to hold back the breaking; the sobbing that you feel will come eventually. Instead of letting it best you, you force more words out, like force-feeding a defiant wriggler. "I blame myself, of course, for burning the metaphorical bridge of our pale relations, but in this scenario, you were the one who held the matches, and all I did was let it burn." Your tone turns more sad than solemn, and you aren't quite sure how to get to what you intended to tell her in the first place, but you just keep rambling. Vriska didn't call you Fussyfangs for nothing. You fussed over her quite a bit, yes, but even Rose knew of your notorious ability to talk for hours on end, still somehow avoiding the original point or topic.
"You were selfish and manipulative, and the others never understood my feelings toward you. Our moiraillegiance was always about my unending patience, or my ability to somehow keep you in line. But it wasn't like that." You pause. Divine intervention would be warmly welcomed at this point. Or, instead, lightning could come out of nowhere and strike you down where you stand. However, that won't happen, and the words threaten to spill out of your mouth like a waterfall with its dam newly removed. "We were so much more than that." Breathe, Kanaya. "You and I were friends. Best friends. At only six sweeps old, we thought we had the world figured out, and we obviously didn't." You take another pause to control your breathing.
"When you asked me to make you that dress, I'll admit that I was thrilled to oblige, since you'd never willingly let me near you with a measuring tape or a needle. Then I found out why you wanted it, and I suppose I felt hurt and betrayed because I saw you kiss him, and I never even got a thank-you." You're avoiding the point just narrowly now, dancing around it like a lithe ballerina. The toe of your slipper touches the spindle that holds the poison of your confession, but it merely catches the silky fabric and then lets go, not tethering you to the matter at hand.
You know now that if there's any way she can listen, that's what she's doing. "I love you, Vris." You smile. A sort of bittersweet sentiment, if you do say so. You'll never get to tell her this in person. She'll never hear these words from your lips, and yet here you speak them, out under the wide-open sky for all to hear. "I was hopelessly flushed for you, and I never said anything, and I regret that." The corners of your mouth twitch downward, not wanting to admit this even to yourself.
"And you're dead now." Your voice is tiny. This revelation doesn't hit you as hard as you expected it to. Probably because you've had weeks to brood over your confessions: the time she's been dead, as well as the time before her death, when you were ignoring her and she was ignoring you. When you knew she needed a constant, but you couldn't be there for her. It was too difficult, and you let her down. "But it doesn't make any difference, because if you were alive, I wouldn't be saying this."/p
However harsh that may be, it's the truth. "I'm sorry I never told you," you say in a small voice, tears of jade green, translucent liquid brimming in your eyes. It would completely mess up your makeup should you cry, and Rose would question you when you got back, but there was a small part of you that didn't care; that just wanted her moirail back.
"Shut up, Fussyfangs," a medium-pitched voice says from behind you. And you swear to the gods in the Furthest Ring that it's her, but you just can't bring yourself to turn around since you know all you'll find is an empty rooftop.
"Seriously," the voice continues, "I never thought I'd see you cry. Did you save all your pity-tears just for me, Maryam?" And this time you're certain it's not just a whisper from your memory. She's actually here.
You whirl around to face a semitransparent entity hovering there, now directly in front of you. Her eyes are completely white, but her lipstick is still the same shade of cerulean it's always been, and her hair is so ridiculously unkempt and unruly that it creates an inverse paradox. The messier, the prettier. And she's gorgeous, even in death. She wears her usual crude smirk, unquestionably smug upon hearing your confession. Her eyebrows arch with interest.
"You just going to gawk at me?" She asks, her voice raising a bit. And all you can do is nod, jade lips parted in awe, because she heard you, and she's here, and you wonder if it would be appropriate, or even possible, for you to hug her.
Here, formalities don't matter. And you've already embarrassed yourself past the point of no return, so you lunge forward and capture her slender frame in a tight hug. And her arms wrap around you in return, and the two of you are there, oblivious and vulnerable, like she would never admit to being and like you never asked her to be.
"I'm sorry," you whisper, hopelessly at a loss for anything else to say.
"Shut up, Kan," she repeats, tightening her arms around you a bit.
"You know I hate that nickname," you point out weakly.
"Yeah, I know," she says.
You know you have to return to Rose, your matesprit, lest she get worried and come looking for you, but there's no way you're going to cut this encounter any shorter than it needs to be. You breathe in the scent of her hair, earthy as always, and she returns the gesture by combing her fingers through your short black locks. You miss her more than you want to admit.