~In the Dream Bubble~

~Equius' POV~

My head hurts. There's too much happening all at once. Too much information. I'm trying to calm down, but I just feel sick and want to cry. But I've done nothing but cry since I found out what Gamzee did. It's bad enough he forced himself on me, but to use my genetic material to make a sprite? I can't believe he did such a thing!

I'm so angry that I want to break something and that scares me. My powers are fueled by my emotions, from what I've observed. If I can't control how I feel I can't control my powers. I've already hurt Horuss. I don't want to accidentally hurt anyone else. Especially not Signless. He's so worried about me, I can feel it. But I refuse to let him get close enough to risk getting hurt until I've calmed down.

So, I've locked myself in my lab. I tried working on my bots to clear my mind, but pieces kept flying away from me. It took me an hour to give up and just sit in the corner. I have my head rested against the wall when the knocking starts. Someone, I don't know or care who, is knocking on my door. I don't intend to open it and risk hurting whoever is on the other side.

When I don't unlock the door, I hear voices on the other side before the lock sparks. I barely have time to stand before Karkat rushes to pull me into a tight hug, followed shortly by Sollux. They hold on tighter when I try to push them away.

"Please just leave," I plead. "I don't want to accidentally hurt either of you."

"No," they respond in perfect unison.

"Shut up and accept the hug," Sollux orders.

I can't bring myself to fight them, so I don't. I stop trying to push them away and let myself be held. If they wanted to hurt me, they would have done so already. And if I was going to lose control and hurt them, it would have happened the second they entered my personal space. So far, it's safe to accept their offered comfort, and I really needed it.

After a few moments that feel like an eternity, Kankri knocks on the doorframe. "Mind if I interrupt? I come bearing a message from Horuss."

"Is he okay? I didn't mean to hurt him."

"Relax, Equius. He's okay," he assures. "He's actually worried about you. Mituna told him about how Rufioh just flew off. He's worried that his actions may have triggered one of your panic attacks and sent me to check on you. Are you okay?"

I contemplate telling him the truth but decide instead to just silently nod. Wrong answer. He ushers the twins out of the room before having me sit at my desk. Pulling over one of the folding chairs from the supply closet, he sits beside me.

"I'm going to repeat my question. You wouldn't lie to Signless so stop lying to me." He takes my hand and looks me in the eye as he repeats, "Are you okay?"

Shaking my head, I confess, "I'm scared. I'm scared that I'm going to lose control and hurt someone. I'm scared that Signless might not trust me anymore after what I did to Vriska. He hates violence. I'm scared to know what else Gamzee has done to me or what else he's taken from me. I'm just so scared and I hate it."

"There is nothing you could do to lose Signless' trust. He loves you like Dolorosa loved him. You're his child and nothing in all the timelines will change that. Vriska's been taunting you for weeks with her victim blaming and name calling. She's lucky all you did was jam a pen in her eye. Had I been there, she wouldn't be breathing. As for Gamzee, he's taken more than enough from you already. Don't let him take your time and mind as well."

"That's easy for you to say. You didn't-"

"Get raped by someone I thought was my friend? No, my friends wouldn't dare. Not after my first guardian did just that and more two to three times a night starting when I was barely three sweeps old. Believe me, Equius, he's not worth your sanity."

I feel my blood go cold. Everyone on the meteor knows that Samael abused Kankri, but he never shared the details. "How can you stand to live with him again?"

He smirks and takes a small knife out of his boot. "I have more knives than he has organs on me at all times." His expression turns dangerous. "If that monster ever lays a hand on me again, I will bleed him dry before he even recognizes what's happening." When he replaces the knife, his expression softens. "Learn from my experience, dwelling on the past isn't the best way to live. I've been waiting for Samael to attack me since I was your age. Even when I was living with Cronus and Eridan I was afraid he would find me. I've been emotionally dependent on Cronus for centuries because of what that man did to me when I was a child. I'm only just starting to feel comfortable around others without Cronus or Porrim being by my side."

"I don't know if I can just forgive and forget."

He gently squeezes my hand, quickly responding, "And I'm not saying that you should. He doesn't deserve your forgiveness and it would be stupid of you to forget. You're a strong kid. Use that strength to protect yourself, but don't block everyone out. There are people here who care about you and will do everything in our power to make sure you don't get hurt again. Signless even permanently linked his mind to yours to protect you."

"Is that why I can feel his emotions?"

He nods. "He can also feel yours. Only, I think he's getting more from you than you are from him. As Seers, we have stronger mental barriers than anyone other than Mind players. He's still learning, but you'll eventually stop feeling any of his emotions that he doesn't want to share with you. Do you have any more questions?"

"How did he link our minds? I thought only a Mind player could do that."

"Terezi, uh, messed up when she put him in your day terror a few weeks ago. I don't think Signless knows that this is permanent. I plan on talking to him and the Mind players about it later. Speaking of meetings, I believe you should go talk to Arquius and Dirk before they wake up." Seeing the panic in my eyes, he adds, "I understand how distressing it could be to interact with the sprite, but he's turned to self-harm to deal with his trauma. I hate to put this kind of pressure on you, but he needs you."

~Dirk's POV~

Roxy, Erisol, and Fefeta woke up on a beach in another part of the dream bubble. One of the trolls, Meenah, brought us to see them. They seem to be enjoying themselves playing in the water, but Arquius refuses to join them. He found a shaded spot under a palm tree to sit and watch everyone else. He looks upset but content with being left alone. I've been checking on him every so often.

After maybe a couple of hours, he starts picking at the bandages again. I've always hated the feeling of bandages on my cuts. I guess that's something else he gets from me. When the picking turns to scratching, I make my way over to him.

Gently grabbing his hands, I say, "What's wrong?" He just looks up from his wrist and tries to pull his hands away from me. "Stop it. I'm not letting you scratch at the cuts. That's just going to make it worse."

"But it itches," he whines.

"I get that. They'll itch until they're healed. It sucks but that's how it works. I can change the bandages for you and see if that helps, but you can't scratch."

He glares at me for a moment before giving in and nodding. After letting the others know we're leaving, we head back to the meteor. When he continues to pick at the bandages again, I give him my jacket and tell him to put his hands in the pockets. He seems annoyed but does as he's told. We ran into Rose near the computer lab. She directed us to the first aid kit on the wall and wondered off.

"Is it so difficult to organize a fucking cabinet?" I growl after once again failing to find gauze or bandages. It doesn't help that everything is in Alternian.

"Organization is not the strong suit of most of the residents of the meteor," Equius says from behind me. "What are you looking for?"

"Gauze and bandages." He levitates a few gauze pads and a rolled bandage from the top shelf. "Thanks."

He nods before quickly turning to Arquius and grabbing his hands. "Hey, stop that."

"Kid, I told you to stop scratching," I say, shaking my head and gesturing towards the closest chair. "Come on, lets get those bandages changed."

He nervously looks to Equius for a moment before doing as he's told. I can tell that he's not comfortable being around Equius. Why? I have no clue. Maybe he's just uncomfortable with someone other than me and Erisol seeing his cuts. Maybe he doesn't like being around the source of half of him. I just don't know.

I push these thoughts from my mind as I unwrap his bandages. The cuts don't look infected, but a couple of them have opened up. Holding a gauze pad to the bleeding cuts, I say, "See, Red? This is why you don't scratch at cuts. Even if it itches." He just pouts, which is as annoying as it is adorable. "What are you pouting at me for?! You're the one that wouldn't stop scratching."

He glares at the wall, mumbling, "It itched."

"I know. This isn't my first rodeo, kid. Remember?" I glance up from replacing the bandage and see those bright red tears that I hate. Quickly finishing wrapping the bandage, I reach up and wipe away his tears. "I'm not mad at you. You know that, right?"

He nods. "I messed up. I'm sorry."

"You don't have to apologize. I'm not mad."

"But you should be!" he snaps. "I'm your sprite. I should be taking care of you, not the other way around. I messed up! I could have died and left you without a sprite. You should be so mad at me you can't see straight! I shouldn't have any thoughts of hurting myself. I shouldn't still feel useless and broken because of something that happened to me in a different form! This is a new body that he never touched but I can still feel his hands on me all the time!"

"Red, you're spiraling," I say, placing a gentle hand on his cheek. When he closes his eyes and leans into my touch, I continue. "You are made from a piece of Equius and a splinter of my mind. You have all of Equius' trauma and all of my self-destructive coping mechanisms. I started cutting when I was barely a teenager because I was frustrated and noticed that pain chased away that frustration. It became a sort of addiction that lasted almost four years. It's not your fault that," I point to Equius, "his trauma mixed with my addiction and hurt you. That's on me."

"No," Equius states. "It's on Gamzee. He started this cycle of pain."

He looks pissed, but like he's holding back. His hands are flickering in and out of visibility. I reach out and hold his hand with my free one. This seems to calm him enough that his hand stays visible for longer than ten seconds at a time. Then his expression changes to the same one that Arquius gets when he has an idea.

"Has he met Signless yet?"

I think for a moment before realizing that, "No, I don't think he has."

~Signless' POV~

"Hun, he's probably fine," Psii tries to assure me. I just glare at him. He and Disciple, who's been sitting on the workbench and passing Psii tools, have been trying to convince me that Equius just needs some time to calm down since he ran off a while ago. I've been pacing in the engine room this entire time.

I can feel Equius' emotions shift several times over the course of about an hour. I wish I knew what was causing each shift. Karkat and Sollux had gone to check on him when they found out about the incident with Gamzee. They stopped by a little while ago and told me that Kankri was talking to him. I've been meaning to ask Kankri to talk to him since the Beforans arrived on the meteor. He seems to be calm and a little confused while he's talking with Kankri.

What surprises me is the spark of joy a few moments before he hugs me. I'd been so distracted that I hadn't noticed him arrive, along with Dirk and Arquius. The sprite looks upset and has bandages on his wrist, but it's not my place to ask questions. It's still worrying, though.

"Hey," I greet. "Are you okay?"

"As okay as I can be. I wanted Arquius to meet you. Given what he was made of, I doubt he has any of my memories of you."

When I look up to him, the poor sprite looks like he's about to run. He has that wide eyed fearful look that Equius used to get when he met new people that he didn't trust. I try smiling at him in an attempt to show that I'm not a threat, but that backfires. He rushes to hide behind Dirk.

"Come on, Red," Dirk says, trying to coax the startled sprite out from behind him. "It's just Signless. The man wouldn't hurt a fly. He's not going to hurt you." When that doesn't work, he adds, "He's the one that's been taking care of Equius." Still no success. The human sighs and turns to me. "I'm sorry, he's not usually like this."

"Don't worry about it. One of the many things I've learned from Equius is that trust needs to be earned not expected." A long string of curses from Psii pulls my attention to him. "Everything okay over there?"

"This fucking thing won't even turn on now!"

"It's backwards," Dirk laughs as he makes his way over to the machine. He points at the part that Psii and Equius have been struggling with for the last few days. "This connects," he points to a different piece, "here. There should be another connector on the other side that connects," he points to a different part, "to this. And," he pulls a blue wire from the back of the part, "this should be plugged into the main power convertor. The red one connects where you had the blue one plugged in. The green wires connect the engine to that fuse box," he points to a metal box on the wall a few feet away, "and support the power for the entire propulsion system. There should be a set of yellow wires on the other side of the engine that connect to a back-up generator." He takes a step back and puts his hands in his pockets the way Dave does when he explains something that should be obvious. "It would've exploded the way you had it rigged if the wires were actually connected."

Equius' hand becomes very well acquainted with his face after he process what Dirk just said. "Backwards? We've been putting it in backwards?!" Then he turns to Dirk. "How did you know it was backwards?"

His smug expression darkens with grief. "The Condesce tried to power her ships with humans after she ran out of gold bloods. Needless to say, humans aren't compatible with Alternian biotech. She killed off almost everyone who survived the terraforming with her experiments. The rest of us were hunted by drones until it was just me and Roxy and all the little chess dudes. The drones never messed with the chess dudes." When Arquius floats over to him and holds his hand, he wraps his arm around the sprite and kisses his temple. "I'm okay, Red," he assures before continuing. "I don't know how, but Roxy managed to shoot down one of their ships about a year before we entered our session. We spent about half of that time studying it. I focused on the engine and navigation system. She focused on the weapons. We managed to reverse engineer about half of the ship by the time we entered our session and lost the whole damn thing."

It takes a moment for this information to sink in. It's been a bit difficult to come to terms with the fact that the trolls on the meteor are the last of our kind in our timeline. Hearing that there's a timeline where there are others but not a single gold blood. That information hurts for me to hear. I can't imagine how Psii might feel about it.

I glance over to where he was just a moment ago to check on him, but he's not there. I look over to Disciple and she looks concerned. She looks over to me and shrugs. A quick search of the room reveals what I was worried about.

"Did anyone see where Psii went?" All I get is shrugs and confusion.

"Maybe he woke up," Equius suggests.

"Maybe." I close my eyes and focus on my physical body. When I open my eyes, I'm in me and Psii's room. He's sitting next to me, crying. I sit up, resting a hand on his back. "I'm so sorry," I offer my condolences. He doesn't respond any more than to lean against me and rest his head against my chest. I wish I could do more for him than to just hold him while he cries.

I feel tears roll down my cheeks as it dawns on me that I have no idea how to soothe this kind of pain. I never had another member of my blood caste until recently, but he did. There were thousands of gold bloods on Alternia. He may not have been able to interact with them for most of his life, but he knew that they were out there. He knew that there were others like him. I could never come close to guessing what it must feel like to know that they're all just gone.