LONG INTERMISSION IS LONG. In fact, it comprises the bulk of the update, and you'll have to forgive me, but I have nothing more to add. (Considering all the loose ends I still have to tie up, this may not stop at 50 acts HOLY SHIT WHAT IS MY LIFE. This fic will definitely hit 100K words by the end.)
Many thanks to LinkinPark X, Bitblondetoday, leok, iDreamBig, Wolfen Artist of Hetalia, grimjaws, ATrueFighter, thepeopleofthecrysis, obsessed01616, kab, Bear, and one guest for your reviews to the last act!
Bear with me for the intermission format. It won't happen again. I just needed it this way to explain you a thing.
INTERMISSION IV
Your name is Vriska Serket.
Today is Friday, November 9, 2001, a day you are sure will hereafter be known as the greatest day of your eight-year-old life. It's also known as the day the third-grade classes will be going to Legoland.
You wake your parents and sister up extra early, but only after feeding your pet tarantula, Marquise Spinneret Mindfang. The Marquise seems most grateful for sustenance this morning, and you think you see a flicker of gratitude in at least one of her many eyes.
You wolf down your breakfast at lightning speed in your Spiderman pajamas before hurrying to get dressed. A special occasion like this calls for your favorite outfit: your favorite pair of jeans, your white T-shirt with a blue scorpion emblazoned on the front, and your favorite red sneakers. Your mom makes you wear a jacket because it's November, but you refuse to zip it up. You love scorpions and spiders and all manner of eight-legged wonders.
Your father sometimes laments the fact that both you and your older sister Aranea like arachnids. You like them more than she does, but unlike your best friend Nepeta, Aranea isn't afraid to close the door and let Marquise Spinneret Mindfang out of her tank and play with her. You both know better than to let the Marquise loose in the house, though—your parents aren't necessarily afraid of spiders, but your dad avoids your bedroom as much as possible, and you're pretty sure the Marquise is the reason.
You wish Aranea could come with you on the field trip today, but it's for third-graders only and Aranea is a grown-up, mature sixth-grader. You feel sad to leave her behind to a normal, boring school day, but at least you'll have Nepeta with you. She is your best friend, after all, but you've begun to wonder if you can have a best friend if you only have one friend in the first place.
You can't help being slightly envious of Nepeta, either. She's tiny and pale with long blond hair and she has a knack for making friends. You're one of the tallest girls in your class and everything about you is brown and boring. You wonder if your sister is ever jealous of her friends. She, at least, has more than one friend. A few are even boys, although you think boys are weird.
Well, most boys. There's one boy who you can't help but like. He's very shy and he sits at the front of the class because he's short and he has a wide nose but you think it's cute. You just don't know what to say to him most of the time, so you throw things at him at recess and hopes he notices you and doesn't think that brown is boring.
You don't really know what to say to anyone, really. It's a miracle Nepeta is even friends with you, you think, and it's only because she approached you. She's tried to introduce you to people in hopes of you making new friends, but she doesn't seem to realize that the only reason they hang out with you is because she's there.
You just hope there never comes a day when the two of you aren't friends.
Your name is still Vriska Serket.
Today is Saturday, November 10, 2001, a day you are sure will hereafter be known as the worst day of your life. It's also known as the day after your school bus was struck by a truck and the day you lost your left eye.
The IV in your arm keeps you from feeling pain, but it doesn't keep you from feeling horrible. There is a piece of you missing, a literal piece missing, and you wish with all your heart you could go back to the morning before and pretend to be sick. You'd give anything to go back and not be on that bus.
You weren't the only injury, you're told—the doctors say that Tavros Nitram, the boy you like, had both legs broken. They didn't say "the boy you like part," but he is. But somehow, you can't summon any pity for him. His legs are broken—big deal. He'll be able to walk again. He'll get out of his wheelchair eventually and no one will know he was in an accident.
But your eye is gone. They're already fitting your for a glass eye, but you'll never be able to see with it. You're not even sure you want the glass eye. Maybe other people won't know it's fake, but you will. Maybe you want to wear an eye patch, like a pirate. Pirates are cool. Glass eyes are not cool.
Tavros rolls in sitting in his wheelchair to visit you. If you weren't in such a foul mood, you would have welcomed his company and enjoyed the shy smile he finally aims at you and the way he says, "Hello, Vriska," the way he always talks where his voice raises at the end as if he's asking a question. But you don't want to see anyone, let alone another reminder of the bus accident, so you scream at him, "Go away!"
He looks so hurt that tears start welling up in his eyes and you immediately feel bad, but before you can say anything else, the nurse who brought him in wheels him right back out and another nurse puts more medication in your IV. You start to say, "Tell Tavros I'm sorry," but everything slows down and before you can finish Tavros's name, you're asleep.
He never comes back to visit you.
You tell your parents after you wake up that you don't want a glass eye, you want an eye patch, and your mom says, "Okay, sweetie, if you want an eye patch, you'll get an eye patch."
Your dad says, "Why would we get her an eye patch? She'll look like a pirate!"
You say, "That's the point—I don't want a glass eye! I want to look like a pirate!"
Your mom says, "She wants an eye patch. Let her have this. She's just been in an accident—it's what she wants."
Your dad says, "We give her everything she wants! She wanted to go on that field trip so badly, and look where it's gotten her!"
Your mom says, "Don't you dare blame her for that accident! It wasn't her fault!"
Your dad says, "I'm not blaming her, I'm just saying that catering to her every whim isn't a good thing! She and Aranea both—"
The nurse asks them to please stop arguing or leave the room, so they get up and leave the room. Once they start arguing, they don't stop for hours.
Your name is still Vriska Serket because your mom doesn't want to make you go by her maiden name. "You're a Serket on all your legal documents," she says. She goes back to her maiden name, though.
Today is Tuesday, May 14, 2002, a day you will remember as the second-worst day of your life. It's also known as the day your parents' divorced was finalized.
Your dad moves out. He says a teary goodbye to you and your sister and looks for a long moment at your mom but doesn't say anything to her.
Your mom says he has joint custody of the two of you and you'll see him on the weekends.
Aranea grabs your hand and hugs you when you start to cry. It always stings where your left eye used to be when you cry, so you try not to cry very often, but you can't help it right now. Your dad is leaving, and the weekend is too far away.
You wish you could call Nepeta and tell her what's happened, but after the accident, you stopped talking to her. You stopped talking to anyone, really. Now she has a new friend, a boy from the other class named Equius Zahhak, the boy she'd been partners with on the bus. She says he saved her from being hurt by cushioning her, and you want to punch both of them in the face. You didn't have a partner like that. You were stuck with Erik Foster and since you sat by the window, he ended up using you as a cushion. You lost your eye and he made it through with a few bruises and scratches.
Your mom says it's okay to be angry, though. She says you went through a trauma. She says maybe what you need is to start fresh. She says next school year, you'll go to a new school, both you and Aranea because this summer, you'll be moving a little further upstate.
Aranea screams and cries at this. She'll be in the seventh grade next school year—she's already started junior high. She doesn't want to leave behind her friends, not Meenah, please don't make her leave Meenah, she'll miss Meenah.
But your mom says she already bought a house and you're moving in July.
Aranea screams, "I hate you both!" Aranea turns and runs into your shared bedroom, slamming the door and locking it behind her.
"Why do you hate me?" you ask through the door, trying not to cry again.
"Because of your stupid accident! You're the reason we're moving! You made Mom and Dad get a divorce!"
"That isn't her fault," your mom snaps. "Get out here and apologize to your sister!"
"No!" Aranea screams.
You burst into tears and run into the backyard.
You sit with your back to your favorite tree, the tire swing still hanging from a strong branch. You lift your eye patch and wipe your eyes and cry and cry for everything you've lost already, for everything you're about to lose. You hate your father for leaving, you hate your mother for making you move, you hate your sister for hating you, you hate Nepeta for finding a new friend, you hate Tavros for getting better. The only person you don't hate right now is Marquise Spinneret Mindfang, and she's not even a person.
When your sister finally unlocks the bedroom door and comes out, she apologizes and starts crying. You tell her it's okay and you forgive her. All you want to do is take the Marquise out of her tank and let her crawl on your arm for awhile.
You head to her tank and look at her. She must be asleep, because she isn't moving. You tap on the glass to wake her up—the first day you had her, you learned not to startle a sleeping tarantula. She doesn't move, so you tap harder, more insistently.
"Vriska?" Aranea asks softly.
"Leave me alone, please," you say. "I just want to play with Marquise Spinneret Mindfang."
"That's the thing," Aranea starts, but you ignore her.
"She won't wake up."
"Vriska... I think she's dead."
"No. She's not dead. She can't be." Not today. Please, not today. Abandoning your better judgment, you put your hand in the tank to poke her. She doesn't move. "Please," you cry. "Please wake up."
But she doesn't, and you cry yourself to sleep every night for the next month.
Your name is still Vriska Serket.
Today is Thursday, October 31, 2002. It is also known as your ninth birthday, and the end of the year that should have been the greatest of your life but ended up being the worst. You are not sad to see it go.
You've made a new friend at your school named Terezi. You like her a lot, mostly because she's practically blind, but she also has a wicked sense of humor. You invite her to your house to have dinner with your mother and sister, and she accepts.
You wish your father would set aside his disdain for your mother to join you, but you haven't seen him in months and he hasn't called you today. There was a present in the mail from him last week, a new tarantula you named Marquise Spinneret Mindfang II after your beloved first pet, but there was no note. You wouldn't have even known she was from him if it hadn't been for the return address with his name.
You bring Terezi to your new room—you don't have to share with Aranea anymore; your mom says she's almost a teenager now and needs her own space—and ask her if she's afraid of spiders. She boldly says that she isn't and you tell her to hold out her hand. She does and you reach into Marquise Spinneret Mindfang II's tank and gently pull her out. It's the same tank that the original Marquise scurried around in—you could never bring yourself to throw it away—but it has a few new toys to keep the new Marquise happy. You tell Terezi not to panic and gently deposit the Marquise into her hand.
Terezi's expression shifts from cool and collected to a little nervous. "Uh, did you just put a spider in my hand?"
"She's a tarantula. That is the Marquise Spinneret Mindfang II," you say proudly.
Terezi still looks nervous. "Uh, what happened to the first?"
You bite your lip. "She died. A few months ago. The day my parents got divorced."
"Oh." She looks sad now. "Can you take her? I... I thought you meant like a regular-sized spider, like a Daddy Longlegs, not a tarantula," she says.
"Sorry," you say quietly, and gingerly pluck Mindfang II from Terezi's outstretched hand. You run a gentle forefinger down her abdomen and she settles into your hand before you place her back into the glass tank and she slowly walks off. You set the lid of her tank back on and turn back to Terezi. "My mom should be almost done with dinner. Come on!"
Your name is still Vriska Serket.
Today is Friday, June 8, 2007, a terrific day in your life. It's the day you graduate from middle school—the same middle school Aranea graduated from three years ago—and next year, you'll be a freshman at the same school where she'll be a senior. You can't wait to see her in the halls again. Your current school is a kindergarten through eighth grade school but the junior high kids were always kept separated from the fifth-graders and younger. Once you reached sixth grade, Aranea had moved on to high school.
She's so mature now, you can't believe she ever felt as awkward as you do now. You try to imagine having a sixth-grade sister right now and you can't. You're lucky to have her as your sister. She's taught you a lot.
Family are the only ones who can be trusted—Dad doesn't count. Aside from phone calls on Christmas and birthdays, you never hear from him. Aranea says, "Dad is an asshole. If he loved us, he would call more." You have to agree.
She also says that you can't trust your friends, either. If Nepeta cared, she says, she wouldn't have abandoned you after the accident. If Terezi cared, she wouldn't have killed your LARP character (who you also named Marquise Spinneret Mindfang, as well as drawing copious amounts of designs for her) with hers (who she named Redglare) and then refused to speak to you for a week afterward, pretending you were dead. You wanted to hit her for a long time, but instead, you just ignored her, too, and after Terezi began speaking to you again, you pretended you couldn't see or hear her. That effectively ended your friendship with her, bringing your total of friends down to zero again.
She says you don't really need friends, either. Not when you can manipulate people to get what you want. She shows you how to do your makeup to look extra pretty (over the last few years, you've been surprised to realize that you've been becoming rather attractive) and all summer teaches you how to flirt to get what you want. By the time school starts in the fall, you're ready to break hearts and take names.
Your name is still Vriska Serket.
Today is Thursday, May 13, 2010, and you have just broken your very first heart.
Not your own, fortunately—that pathetic little rich kid Eridan Ampora. He speaks with a stutter, tripping over his Vs and Ws (listening to him say your name is painful) and you taunt him relentlessly about it, but you turn right around and flirt with him just like Aranea taught you. Apparently Eridan's older brother Cronus had the same stuttering problem and she manipulated him just like you manipulated Eridan. She crushed Cronus, but you've improved her technique and obliterated Eridan. After sleeping with him, secretly pretend-dating him for three months, and making him feel both worthless and powerful by turns, you've kept him stuck to you and almost ripped him away from that stupid friend of his, Feferi.
Then he asked you to the prom. You laughed in his face and told him to get lost. You didn't want to go to prom with him—your relationship was effectively over.
He looked stunned and asked if you were serious. You said yes and he turned and almost dashed away, laughing as he ran.
But a part of you still feels sad. You actually kind of liked him, no matter what you said to him. You wouldn't have lost your virginity to him if you didn't like him, and he hadn't been bad. He'd been a virgin, too. All things considered, it was rather impressive for a mutual first time.
But Aranea had told you so many times, like a mantra, that no one could be trusted but your mother and your sister. You believe her, of course. She's been right about everything. About life, about friends, about dad, about the death of the first Marquise.
She was right about you, too. You're the cause of all the bad that happened to the family, and you're lucky you still have them.
Your name is still Vriska Serket.
It's Saturday, October 26, 2013.
You're so good at using people that you've forgotten how to connect with them.
Seeing Eridan back at college, seeing how he still has that stupid stutter and he is still still hung-up about what happened makes you smile. You liked him, but you smile.
You avoid Tavros. You found him the summer after you graduated high school and found that your childhood crush on him lingered. You toyed with him for a year before, during one off-again phase in your relationship, he cut the tie for good and found someone else. You try not to feel devastated over the one that got away.
You smirk and say pretty, taunting things to Kanaya. You really liked dating her, finding out that girls were just as vulnerable to manipulation as boys. You had no real reason to toy with her—it was just fun, and she's wicked pretty anyway.
You text lines from Nicholas Cage movies to John—you both had a passion for them, as lame as they are. He's fairly rich, just like Eridan was, but not quite to the obscene Ampora wealth. Mostly, being with him had been easy, uncomplicated.
Every time you felt yourself getting too close to one of them, you would bounce to the next one. Tavros, Kanaya, John—they were your constants. After Tavros never came back, it was just Kanaya and John, but it was enough. You'd dropped them both for awhile but sent them flirty texts to keep the spark alive for when you finally enrolled in their school.
Kanaya, you fear, is gone for good as well. You can't believe a second one slipped away. You struggle to tighten your arachnid's grip on John, but the more you clench, the farther away he slides. You think you're losing your touch.
It's five days before your twentieth birthday. You haven't spoken to your mother or Aranea in a month. Your father hasn't called you on your birthday since you turned seventeen.
You won't admit it to anyone except the third Marquise Spinneret Mindfang, but you've never felt more lonely.
END INTERMISSION IV.
ACT 41
Cronus and Meenah took off from the house around six that evening. It was a mad scramble for everyone to shower when only three people could shower at once (unless someone doubled up, but surprisingly, that didn't happen). Everyone finished around seven-thirty and Feferi ordered food from the vegan-friendly Chinese place down the street.
They gathered in the basement to watch HBO reruns of Game of Thrones (a few of them still hadn't seen it, so Aradia insisted they watch it) and wait for their food. Once it arrived, it took another ten minutes to get all the orders sorted out and then Nepeta busted out the Everclear again. This time, everyone except Terezi, Karkat, and Tavros took a shot—even Equius did, although he grimaced afterward and coughed loudly.
He and Aradia ended up making out on the floor in front of the couch. One of Sollux's legs dangled between them but he brought it up to the cushion and kept it there, eating his food and staring at the screen, acutely aware of Eridan sitting right next to him and doing the same thing. Feferi was on Eridan's other side with Dave squished in beside her. Nepeta sat on the floor right in front of the TV, whispering things to John, who snorted with laughter and hid his face. Rose and Kanaya had piled into one of the recliners to watch the show with a blanket pulled over themselves. There didn't look to be any movement going on beneath the blanket, but it was dark and difficult to say for sure. Tavros had claimed the other recliner, and Terezi and Karkat had settled in front of that one.
Sollux didn't want the weekend to end. It had certainly been a confusing twenty-four-hour period so far, but it had been good. He'd never felt closer to so many people in his life—and Eridan liked him. It was probably the least lonely he'd ever been.
END ACT 41.
So sorry about the brevity of the actual act, but I am exhausted.
Someone's been leaving me fanart and I am dying from laughter.
Also hipster starfish.
(By the way, the line from the last act "Brace for shock! Boom! Hit alpha!" is a Navy thing when we're running drills, and I figured Eridan would be aware of it. So yeah.)
