~On LOCAH~

~Dirk's POV~

The walk back to Jane's house was quiet. Erisol and Arquius floated a little ways ahead of me, talking in hushed tones. I can't help but feel as if they were talking about me with how often Erisol shot dirty looks my way.

When we got back to the house, the living room had been turned into an interrogation room. Every piece of furniture has been pushed against the wall, save the chair the clown is tied to. I almost feel bad for him when I spot the bruises on his neck. Then I remember that he mixed a piece of my twisted mind with Equius and my hatred for this creep returns full force. He deserved what he got.

My attention is pulled from the clown by a nearly painful squeeze of my hand. Arquius is scared. I squeeze back, just to let him know that I'm here. That he's not alone. He lets go of my hand and hides behind me when the clown locks eyes with him.

"I'm sorry, Equius," he says. He sounds genuine and slightly broken, but I don't trust this son of a bitch as far as I can throw him. Judging by the fact that Arquius is still hiding behind me, his forehead pressed to the back of my shoulder, I'd say he doesn't believe him either. "I-I was angry and I lost control. I didn't mean to hurt you."

I feel Arquius shaking behind me. I can't tell if he's scared or pissed, but he's shaking enough for Erisol to take notice from his spot beside Fefeta, across the room. "You didn't mean to 'hurt' me?" Arquius snaps. He sounds like he's holding back tears. "Do you even remember what you did to me?!" He slips out from his hiding spot, but still stays close enough that he can hold onto my wrist. "Or were you too high to hear me begging you to stop the few seconds you let me breath?!"

The clown looks shocked and confused. Arquius, on the other hand, has lost his fight with the bright red tears racing down his cheeks. I don't know if I should leave him alone or get him out of here. I settle on pulling him into my arms, trying to shield him from the now silent clown. It must have been the right decision because I see Erisol nod his approval from the corner of my eye. Arquius just cries, hiding his tears against my shoulder.

"I want to go home," he mumbles.

Nodding, I say, "Okay, Red. We can go home."

I keep myself between him and the clown as we make our way to the exit, motioning for Erisol to follow as we pass him. He silently accompanies us to the portal to my planet and the three of us leave without a word to the others.

~On LOTAK~

Arquius doesn't talk to either of us for a few hours after we arrive back on LOTAK. He doesn't even greet Hal when he passes him on his way to our room. Erisol advised me to give him some space to calm down. So now I'm sitting in the living room with a concerned sprite and a distracted android.

"Are you sure I shouldn't go check on him?" I ask Erisol.

He gives me a look, like I'm being tested or something. "Do you think he needs to be checked on?"

"That's a yes." I check on Hal before I leave. He's playing with a few of his favorite plushies beside the couch. He doesn't even acknowledge my presence when I let him know that I'll be right back. I have no idea why, but a sense of dread settles over me just before I reach the door to my room. Any chance of me knocking flies out the window when worst case scenarios cross my mind.

Something is VERY wrong.

Throwing open the door, my fears are realized. There is blood everywhere and lying in a pool of it on the floor is my sprite. He's holding one of my kunai and a blood-soaked towel. My guess is that he tried to stop the bleeding but passed out before he could. I scream for Erisol as I rush to his side. He's so cold, but I can still feel a faint pulse. Luckily, he only cut one arm. Erisol arrives as I'm turning my belt into a tourniquet, just above his elbow. The green sprite is just as horrified as I am at seeing his brother bleeding so much. He immediately springs into action, summoning gauze pads and bandages out of nowhere, probably Jake's captchadeck.

The next few minutes are a blur as we work to stop the bleeding. When Erisol shoos me away so he can finish bandaging Arquius' arm, I go through the entire apartment, gathering every weapon and sharp object in a box. From katanas to kitchen knives, everything is now in this container. Erisol is working on cleaning up the blood when I return with the dangerous stuff.

"What's all that?"

"Every sharp thing that I own," I set the box down on my desk. "Everything, except my main weapon."

Erisol's already pale complexion turns even paler as he inquires, "You think he'd try again? Equius would never-"

"I don't know what Equius would do!" I snap back before checking my tone and taking a deep breath. "I only know that, if something pushed me far enough to try once, I'd try again and again until it finally worked. We can't keep treating him like he's entirely Equius because he's not. Half of him is a warped version of my own mind. In situations like this, we need to take into consideration what I would do, too. And I would try again."

~On the Meteor~

~Equius' POV~

I wake up to Karkat yelling, which wasn't out of the ordinary. Nepeta's playing with my hair and I'm still tired, so I don't put forth any effort to figure out what's going on. I glance up when I hear Signless tell someone to stop talking and that they usually get into trouble. Dyrrin's watching him walk away the same way that Dave does when he watches Karkat. I don't think Meenah notices as she heals a cut on his neck. At least, she doesn't give any indication that she did.

A feeling of hatred towards this man rises in the back of my mind. I feel static in the air and look over to Psiioniic. He has a very threatening death glare trained on Dyrrin. Considering who he was staring at, I wouldn't doubt he was imagining all the ways he could kill the indigo.

The second the cut on his neck is healed, Meenah roughly shoves Dyrrin into the chair he had been tied to before I fell asleep. Looking almost as pissed as Psiioniic, she hisses, "I saw the look you gave Signless. Look at him like that again and I will personally rip off your bulge and strangle you with it. Understand?"

"I'd love to see you try," he taunts.

From across the room, my dancestor calls, "Meenah, I highly doubt Signless would be overly thrilled by you killing a man he just asked you to heal."

She grumbles something I don't quite catch from this distance before marching off, not even bothering to retie her prisoner in her anger. The second she's too far away to intervene, he gets up and unties Samael. Without thinking, I teleport in front of the caprittanius.

"Sit down," I demand, sounding more menacing than I intended. I even scare myself for a second, before I remember what this man, and an alternate version of him, has done.

"You don't scare me, kid," he laughs.

"Don't call me 'kid'." His laugh quickly turns to choking noises when I close my fist. I telekinetically choke him until he drops to his knees. When I finally release him, he's gasping for breath and looking up at me in complete terror. "And you should be very afraid of me." I point to the chair he was just tied to. "Sit. Now." He quickly moves to sit in the chair, and I go to check on Psiioniic. "Are you okay?" I ask.

He laughs nervously. "You can be pretty scary when you want to be."

"Please don't tell Signless."

"As long as I get to call you 'kid' from now on."

"Deal." I glance back to Samael to make sure he's still in his chair. When I look back to Psiioniic, I can see the fear in his eyes that he's trying to hide. "Are you sure you're okay? There are a few rooms with working locks that I could move them to. They'd be secure. You and Signless would be safe."

He ruffles my hair and laughs a little. "I'm okay, kid. And, besides, it's not my Samael. He just looks like him."

"He's worse," Cronus states from the closest door. "He'll probably avoid you though. My version of you gave him a reason to fear geminis when we caught him abusing Kan."

"HE FUCKING DESERVED IT!" Mituna shouts from the group of dancestors crowded around a card game in the far corner. "Hurt Kankri and get zapped, fucker." When he sparks to emphasize his point, he winces. The capricorn beside him makes a few hand gestures, a worried look on his face. "I'm okay."

"What-" I start.

"Sign language. Meulin's deaf and Kurloz's mouth is sewn shut. We all learned it so that we didn't have to text to talk to them. And Mituna almost completely burned himself out just before we entered our session; in case you were wondering about why his psionics hurt him. He manages the side effects with mind honey. I'd say he has about another hour before he comes all the way back down."

Mind honey is for gold bloods what slime is for purple bloods. I feel the panic take hold as I ask, "H-he-he's high?" Not even Psiioniic placing a hand on my shoulder seems to calm me down. I know that I've turned invisible, a glance down at myself confirms it. I can't stop staring at Mituna, a part of me waiting for him to attack.

"Go find Signless," Psiioniic orders a very confused Cronus. The seadweller doesn't ask questions, just runs back out the door to search for my guardian. I'm trying to force myself to become visible again, flickering every few seconds. "Equius," Psiioniic says, "look at me, kid." I manage to look away from Mituna and towards Psiioniic. "You're safe. Nobody here's going to hurt you."

~Signless' POV~

"Is Signless in there?" Cronus asks Terezi, completely out of breath, before actually checking the room. "Your kid's freaking out."

I've never moved so fast in my life. On the way through the confusing halls of the meteor I get all the information that I need, mainly what triggered Equius. Someone's high. That's one of his main triggers. Cronus informs me that Psii was trying to calm him when he had come looking for me. By the time we finally reach the computer lab, a few of the dancestors have moved closer to Equius, most likely trying to calm him down. We walk through the door just in time to see Equius put a desk between himself and the small crowd.

"Equius," I call as I approach. No response. I can feel his fear. A part of me wonders if this is one of the abilities Kankri told me about or if it's a side effect of Terezi linking our minds earlier. The rest of me just breaks getting a taste of the pure terror my child has lived with for more than a third of a sweep. Focusing on things that I know comfort Equius – hoof beasts, Nepeta, robotics, and cuddling with me – I carefully move closer to the desk he's hiding behind. "Hey, Equius, it's me," I say as I walk around the desk and kneel a few feet away from my flickering child. He wordlessly scrambles into my open arms, nearly knocking me over in the process.

Psii's alternate, Mituna, leans over the desk, asking, "Is he okay?"

Equius' fear spikes and he tries to get closer to me.

"You're the one that's high." Mituna nods. "Okay. I'm sure you don't mean any harm, but you're making matters worse. Drug use is one of his main triggers. Please, back up."

Without question, Mituna and most of the group move several feet away from the makeshift barrier Equius has turned the desk into. The only person other than Psii that didn't retreat is a boy that looks so strikingly similar to Darkleer that, if not for this boy being visibly younger than the executioner, I would confuse him for the same person. He stays silent, but close, with a look of concern on his face.

I shift my undivided attention back to Equius as I run my fingers through his hair and assure him that he's safe. Even clinging to me, his eyes dart around the room, searching for some unseen danger. It's almost like he doesn't even realize that I'm here. He hasn't had an attack this bad in months, not even when the Grand Highblood ran into him on Alternia. I try every trick I've learned over the past year to calm him. Nothing is working. Tears start to form in my eyes when a feeling of hopelessness settles over my mind. Then I remember how Latula had helped in the dream bubble.

"Equius," he glances up at me for a split second when I call his name. "Hey, sweet boy, can you show me somewhere you feel safe?"

"Engine room," he whispers before teleporting all four of us to a different part of the meteor.

Psii goes pale when he sees the engine. About ten different emotions cross his face, ranging from terror to disgust, before finally settling on begrudging acceptance mixed with determination. I can tell that he wants to run as fast as he can away from the machine, but he seems determined to stay close for Equius' sake. They're close, so it's understandable that he'd want to be there for him, but I'm just as worried about him triggering a flashback as I am about Equius' current panic attack. I'm about to give him a pass to leave when he shakes his head, silently making it clear that he was not leaving.

The Darkleer look-a-like, on the other hand, looks like he's in heaven. He must enjoy mechanics as much as Equius does. Since Equius seems to have calmed down a bit, I keep an eye on the other sagittarius as he inspects the equipment. Psii is coaching Equius through one of their breathing exercises when the other indigo inquires, "What's this?"

When Equius glances in his direction, his brief sense of calm quickly shifts to a level of annoyance I've only ever witnessed from Disciple when someone messes with her journals. "Don't touch that," he snaps, teleporting over to his dancestor. He snatches the small machine from him and handles it like the most fragile thing in existence as he delicately returns it to a well-organized worktable. "Do you have any idea how difficult it's been to make all of these parts?! Do. Not. TOUCH!"

"Okay, okay. I didn't know." He looks around again. "So, what's so special about this place?"

Equius looks a bit sheepish as he explains, "The meteor is supposed to be able to be piloted like any other ship. This is the engine, Aradia found it a few weeks ago. Unlike the rest of the tech around here, the engine is Alternian biotech." He looks over to Psii. "I've been trying to make it fully mechanical so that nobody has to be plugged in for it to work." He looks down to his hands nervously gripping the hem of his shirt. "I never cared much for biotech. It's barbaric and simply unnecessary, especially when there are so many effective cruelty-free energy sources to choose from." His nervousness shifts to anger as he says, "Biotech is just a way for the highbloods to control a perceived threat to their self-appointed superiority."