Aranea/Terezi (Pitch): Remember When Aranea Convinced Terezi To Let Her Restore Her Sight?

Warning: emotional manipulation, ableism


It's the faint surprise you smell on her when she says "You don't think you would be more capable with the ability to use of one of your most basic senses?" It sends you from calm to furious in the space of a single breath, and you have to stop for a moment and not say anything because you're so much smarter than she is and it's not going to come across if you shout at her without getting your thoughts in order first. And then she goes and adds, "I wouldn't have expected such a short-sighted attitude from a seer of mind."

There is so much you want to tell her. You want to tell her about how you lost your eyes, and how that's what made you into who you are. You wouldn't be Terezi if you were seeing her instead of smelling her, if you hadn't fought to overcome a handicap and outdo everyone around you despite it. You want to tell her about being a scared lonely kid without eyes and without a mom who pulled it together and survived, and who thrived and loved life the way she was. You want to tell her about the pride you feel when you keep up with Gamzee, when you beat him even though he's twice your size and the most terrifying awful troll you've ever met, and you want to tell her about how you're so good that your friends forget that you're blind at all and it's the best joke you've ever known, and you want to tell her how happy you are to be you.

You do. You tell her all of it and repeat yourself over and over and stay admirably calm and coherent, and she just sits there with that faintly puzzled look on her face until you're out of breath. "But if you're already the way you are now, what do you lose by regaining the ability to see?" You gape at her for a moment, and her smile is so polite, but so mocking. "It seems that you'd retain your prowess as well as gaining a whole new advantage at no cost to yourself, and that this resistance is nothing but fear of change." You shut your eyes tight on the verge of angry, frustrated tears and she laughs at you so horribly gently. "I just feel like it would be an unkindness to watch you go on as part of a troll when you could be made whole again."

You are whole. You're you, you're Terezi and there's nothing missing about you because you're happy with the way you are. You explain again, try to tell her that how being blinded and being blind shaped you and how you hated it and loved it and wouldn't change a thing. She only hears that you hated it.

It's exhausting. It's a conversation that happens in every dream bubble you share, because she is horrible and awful and won't stop asking you if she can do it. It's exhausting to say no and be told over and over again that you shouldn't fear change, but light isn't the same is mind and she can't see the way you can, and you can see that she's changing you regardless. Every dream bubble Terezi Pyrope changes that much further into an unsure, ashamed girl. Every conversation, Terezi Pyrope is taught to hate herself just that little bit more. At some point, Terezi Pyrope becomes too tired to say no, and all it takes to make that one irreversible mistake is for Terezi Pyrope to say yes.