Nepeta stared at Karkat, who had paused in his yelling to catch his breath. But he never got to continue, because she wrenched herself from his grasp and re-entered the air vents, placing the grate back in its rightful home. Nepeta glanced back at Karkat, who was watching her carefully, and smiled weakly. When he failed to return the gesture, as expected, she disappeared into the twists and turns of the air vents.

Something boiled in Nepeta's stomach, something unfamiliar. But she welcomed it, because it was strong enough to make the pain in her heart go away. She meant to return to her room, possibly wake Equius and receive a nice hug, but the something in her stomach distracted her to the point of making her lose her way.

When she was fully and completely lost, she stopped. Without the swishing of her tail and the scraping of her claws, still partly out, against the floor of the air vent, Nepeta could hear. She focused on the sound of the air whooshing through the passages, and detected another noise, occasionally permeating that of the first.

Nepeta took a sharp right and headed in that direction. As the sound grew louder, Nepeta realized where she was, and found herself peeking into Gamzee's room. The source of the noise was easily located. The clown troll was rampaging around his room, destroying things left and right. His makeup was smeared into a mess of white and grey, and there was a fire in his eyes.

Finally, Nepeta recognized the fire boiling in her stomach. Anger. She was angry. She was angry at Karkat for causing her so much pain and letting her down.

Nepeta watched as Gamzee flipped a table, kicked a chair, slammed a door, and threw a pillow into the kitchen. It hit an empty sopor pie tin. One of the empty sopor pie tins.

Gamzee was high. Gamzee was high and angry, and although Nepeta knew that was a dangerous combination, she was angry, too. So, as Gamzee flung open a cabinet and prepared to smash a plate, Nepeta called out, "Can I come in?"

Her friend froze, plate over his head like the monkey with the baby lion in that one human animated film Kanaya had showed her. "Now I'm just motherfucking hearing things," Gamzee muttered, placing the plate back in the cabinet. Nepeta giggled, and Gamzee slowly turned his head, eyes widening when he saw her.

"Motherfucking miracles."

Suddenly, Gamzee moved to right the table and retrieve the pillow. "Just a motherfucking minute, sis. Let me clean up in here." Gamzee dashed back and forth, attempting to diminish the mess.

He really does look ridiculous, Nepeta thought, and cracked a smile. Gamzee always cheered her up. But Nepeta could see in Gamzee's movements he still had fuel to burn, and she hadn't even started. So she slid into the room, saying, "That's okay Gamzee. I'd like to join you, if that's okay."

Gamzee's eyes darted up at her from his place on the floor, where he was picking up a pie tin, and he grinned. "I don't think you're up for the kind of motherfucking havoc I can all up and wreak, sis."

Nepeta's claws flashed fully out. "Try me."

Gamzee nodded his permission, and Nepeta let the burning inside of her take over. She leaped onto the couch and began ripping the cushions to shreds. Gamzee resumed his work, smashing plates and bowls to pieces.

When the sofa was more stuffing than fabric and the springs were showing, Nepeta retracted her claws and collapsed onto the rug, breathing heavily. Gamzee destroyed a final bowl and stepped over the mess he'd made to stand over her.

Nepeta straightened her hat and sat up. Gamzee's hands were bleeding indigo. Nevertheless, he helped her up, getting the deep blue-purple color all over her fingers. Nepeta giggled. Her fire had died down a little bit, but the pain had not returned. It felt good.

The two trolls sat down on the shredded couch and looked around, laughing at the sight of the room. Nepeta felt a little bad that she had destroyed Gamzee's property, but when she turned to face him he gave her a small smile to say all was well.

Gamzee reached his pointer finger forward, and Nepeta figured she had a bit of cushion stuffing stuck to her cheek. But Gamzee touched her skin and didn't move away, instead painting designs on her face with his blood.

Nepeta giggled nervously, but didn't bat his hand away. "That's morbid, Gamzee."

The clown troll stopped, and looked a little sad. "I've always got my morbid on, sis. Like I said, I don't think you can handle it."

Nepeta looked down at the indigo on Gamzee's hands. "I don't think you're morbid all the time Gamzee, just sometimes. Maybe that's why your blood color is so pretty; because you're actually good, on the inside."

Gamzee cracked a smile. "Maybe you're all motherfucking olive on the inside because green is a motherfucking adorable color." Nepeta laughed, because their discourse had grown to make hardly any sense at all. So she pursued a different train of thought.

"Gamzee, why are you angry?" Her friend just ignored her and turned the conversation around by asking the same question of her, insisting that was more important. So Nepeta told him everything, from her dream to her encounter with Karkat.

"And I just snapped," Nepeta admitted. "I think…I think he would be bad for me even if I could have him. I was angry because he was treating me so badly. So I want to find a way to let him go." The room was quiet for a moment.

"Hey, Gamzee?"

"Yeah, sis?"

"You never told me why you were angry."

Her friend took a deep breath and ran his stained fingers through his hair. "Same reason you're mad, sis." He hesitated. "I love someone who doesn't love me back."

Gamzee Makara wasn't unattractive. In fact, he was quite cute in a gangly way, with his tall frame, long horns, and runaway hair. The thought had crossed Nepeta's mind before, more than once, in fact, but she had been too utterly in love with Karkat to pursue it. But now that she was trying to free her heart of the cranky troll, wasn't it time to consider moving on? Nepeta reasoned with herself that no, of course not, it was way too soon. Still, an irrational, tiny part of her wondered if Gamzee liked her.

But for the most part, Nepeta was ecstatic that she would have someone to draw with Gamzee on her shipping wall. "Oh my gog!" she squealed, leaping off the couch and jumping up and down. "Which quadrant? WHO?!"

"Um." The clown troll awkwardly scratched a horn. "Flushed," he said finally, and got up to smash another plate. Nepeta bit her lip thoughtfully. She thought of her shipping wall, and all the trolls depicted there. But the main feature by far was her former OTP: her and Karkat with a big red heart.

She looked down at her claws to make sure they were retracted, because they still itched to destroy. What was she forgetting?

Suddenly, a crazy and heartbreaking idea hit her like a ton of bricks, but once it was in her head, there was no putting it back where it came from. But she would need help, or rather, emotional support, and Equius was going to be scrounging the asteroid for robot parts tomorrow.

So she turned to Gamzee, who was in the kitchen bending a fork in half, and said, "Meet me at Equius' and my apartment tomorrow morning." Before he could respond, she jumped back in the air vents and was gone.