#the reckoning.

[marshmallord]

he’ll be an adult in four days? this kid? this child? this itty bitty little guy? this wee baby? this infant? no. surely you must be joking.

[8eware]

The Reckoning: pt. 8/8

     If it was up to you, you’d stay dead.

     If it was up to the Clock, which it is, but in this case by only on the barest of minimums in technicalities, you’d stay dead.

     But you’re lucky that it isn’t your time yet. Fate has a different plan for you.

     So you rise.

    You rise, to the surprise of your host, and in an instant, you make it your goal to give her the most worthy of deaths; drowning. No use leaving unfinished business after all, so you approach, duct tape in hand and wings aflutter.

[8eware]

The Reckoning: pt. 1

     In an earlier time.. around a couple of hours ago.

    The creaking of the floorboards beneath your boots is a distracting noise to you and only you. If your crew had been around, they would have let this sound slip past their ears if it had been them in this situation, possibly compromising the entire plan. But this is you, and nothing planned and plotted as efficiently as you’ve planned and plotted will go down on your watch.

    To you, the creaking is a hindrance rather than the simple sound of an old hive that may or may not go unnoticed to the hive’s owner. In your personal definition, a hindrance is categorized as an issue or situation that you feel skews the road to your success. In your own experiences, you know your floorboards don’t creak unless someone steps on them, and if the seadweller who lives here understands her living quarters as much as you do yours, you know this noise wouldn’t pass. If she was around.

    The only reason you’re not frantically trying to correct your mistake is because you know she’s not around to find out. At this time, she can be found in her backlawnring, watering her plants and enjoying the light of the moons with a glass of orange juice before dawn rolls up. How do you know this? You have her schedule memorized; Saturday nights near the break of dawn, she has a routine of garden care and casual strolling behind her hive, like she has nothing to fear, nothing to hide. People should really be more spontaneous with their lives. Too much repetition can set someone up for trouble, and this is why you’re pretty arbitrary with your schedule.

    You make it around the corner, your footsteps as quiet as a hair landing on a table, which is to say, very silent. Your left hand doesn’t leave the wall as you follow it down the corridor, not only as a sort of anchor to stay close to a place of cover, but as a tactile map. Fervae, your group yellowblood, is in charge of gathering information about the interior of a hive with the use of a very shocking memory and many thin layers of psionics. She’s your group’s electric dolphin, in short, mapping the inside of a hive from just the front door and saving the plans for later. From that, you assist with the construction of both a 3D model, and a 2D one for devising game plan.

    That is your bible for the next couple of weeks after creation. You study it, perfect it, worship it until every millimeter is engraved into your pan and it’s impossible to forget. You know this hive like the back of your hand, and you know the happenings of this hive like the back of your other hand. Which prevents you from worrying about every creak beneath your boots. You know that you’re safe and in the clear, at least for another ten minutes. However, even then, your chances of getting caught are slim. Again, you’ve been planning this for weeks, studying, memorizing, drawing up plans and mapping out this entire area for points of entry, escapes, and secrets-

    But. All for what? Your train of thought has never been in such a wreck as it was just now, the sheer force of it took the tracks along with the wreckage.

[8eware]

The Reckoning: pt. 6

     Now we can resume our previously mentioned and tragic situation.

     The floor is wet, probably because the sink started to overflow at some point and pool at the tile. That must be terrible for the seal. But why is your number one priority the integrity of the flooring in someone else’s hive? You’re being stabbed. Come on now Karkat.

     You’ve felt knives touch your insides before, but for some reason, some small, irrelevant reason, you feel more. It’s like the burning has a purpose. The stinging in your skin is there with a mission. You feel like the knife itself is out to get you, not just the bearer. A blade with a personal vendetta against your existence. And then the knife twists, and you’re instantly in more pain than you could have expected to be in this entire mission.

     And then it’s out of you, not quickly, no, she takes her time, as if she knows you’re baffled with the outcome of this situation, and that you wish to revel in it for as long as possible. Not only is that torturous on its own, but you feel entirely deserving. This is what you get for everything you have done, and you accept that. Revenge has many ways to come through.

     Once it’s out, it’s back in within seconds. You don’t even have time to breathe before you’re in double the pain you were in before. You don’t fight back, you can’t, because you know you deserve it. You know you deserve this for what you did and you can’t bring yourself to lift a finger against your attacker for that reason. The thing in question isn’t breaking and entering, it’s manipulating Nepeta for.. how many sweeps? The fact that you can’t get a solid number is sad, all things considered, but you’re admitting it for once.

[voidwalked]

this is the Jake frost that the tiktok post warned us about /silly

i hope u know this made me cackle oomf.

[belatedheart]

[8eware]

The Reckoning: pt. 7

     She said she thought you could change. That level of optimism is far beyond anything you’ve ever encountered. You? Change? It sounds like something straight out of a dream, something that may or may not come from deep in someone’s subconscious, waiting to be realized and accepted. But you’ve never thought about change. You’ve been emotionally stagnant for so long you don’t even remember what it’s like to change until now.

     To change is to.. progress somehow, right? To remedy something about yourself, even if it takes weeks, for better or for worse, and it impacts you one way or another. That’s what change is, to you anyways. You’ve been doing a lot of that lately. At least the progressing part. All because of what Nepeta said to you. 

     You’re changing, for the better, and it feels like it’s long due. You owe her that much.

     Your thoughts are interrupted by another stab to your middle, and you start to think about how most of this is probably stemming from your rapid blood loss and pain, rather than the need to come to terms with your internal battle for change. Hell, that could be wrong, though. All you know for sure is that you’re bleeding, you’ve lost feeling in your abdomen, and everything is getting blurry, hazy, like there’s fog creeping in from the corners of your vision. Your head feels light, and in this moment you swear you could hear the distant sound of a Clock ticking.

     You can’t fight back. You wouldn’t fight back even if you could. You know Nepeta didn’t wish this upon you, you know she forgave you. She said that it was her choice to forgive you but you can’t let her forgive you so easily. You can’t let her because you know she doesn’t know the extent of how much you’ve hurt her. She’s right though. It’s her choice to forgive you, you’ll give her that, but how the universe takes her forgiveness is a different thing entirely. It’s up to Nepeta to forgive you, but you’ve wronged Nepeta more than she can gauge.

     Lady Luck, whether her ghost or the cosmic incarnation of her remains, has taken things into her hands. This is your end, for a reason, and you’re accepting this entirely.

     You take your last few breaths, as labored and as wet with blue as they might be, and let the clock do its work from there.