(no subject)
Title: Only the Good
Fandom: Homestuck
Characters/Pairings: Vriska, Bec Noir, Terezi, [Karkat]
Ratings/Warnings: PG-13, violence, canonical character death
Written For: womenlovefest
Wordcount: 400
A/N: Doomed timelines always need exploring, now don't they?
You leave Terezi in your dust like you always knew you would; you didn’t imagine it quite like this, her standing motionless and silent in the backdraft of your wings. You can’t laugh properly if she isn’t trying to shout you down.
You figure it’ll be all right. You’ll gloat about winning, and she’ll stomp and glare and sulk, and it’ll all be normal, and maybe she’ll even kiss you like a proper kismesis. Because, really. You could’ve been great.
You leave without letting her realize that you looked back. It was only a glance anyway.
----
“COWARD!” you scream as a flicker of green dances away. “COWARD, COWARD, COWAAAAAAAARD!”
Then his wings shift the shine of the light and it bounces through a stream of swirling glitter -
No. Terezi made that up. It’s just the way your wings smelled. It wasn’t there, it wasn’t real.
You twist the light without realizing what you’re doing, and the gold motes flare hard enough you can’t mistake him, a twisted figure with a sword already a tiny silhouette.
You angle yourself through space and fly as fast as you possibly can. You’re still clumsy in the air, still uncertain, and you’re sure you could wring a little more speed out of your fragile unfamiliar wings if only you knew how. You think they’re beating faster than your pulse; they’re hurting now, screaming in blank-white-shrapnel pain, and still you grit your teeth and force yourself to fly harder. Harder still.
You catch up just in time to see Karkat fall.
Terezi looks smaller than you’ve ever seen her, shrunken-in against the turquoise. You know how much blood fits into a body, know it to the drop and spatter; there’s not enough left in her to keep a wriggler alive.
Noir turns to you, colors flowing over each other down the steel, and smiles.
You swipe at your eye without noticing you do, set your teeth, reach for your dice. This fucker is going to pay, and you’re collecting right here, right now. Even if it kills you. (Especially if it kills you.)
----
It doesn’t.
You stand there, green and black crackling down to sparks at your feet, teal washing thin against the metal and red drying almost to normal, and you wonder if you’re the last one left alive.
You wonder what happens if there’s no one to kill the hero and no one who knows justice from luck.
You wonder what you can possibly do now.