♈ Aradia: Do some long overdue things.

[psych0p0mps]

Who: Aradia and Vriska
What: After some stuff, Aradia's feeling vulnerable and trying to get her act together. What better way to make things worse than with unresolved caliginous tension?
When: When are trolls awake? Middle of the night sounds good.
Where: Game Room to start
Rating: WHO KNOWS...


To say it had been a long week - well, it hadn't even been a week. But it had been long, nonetheless. It would have been bad enough if he'd just disappeared, but to have it drawn out like that was just terrible, and it still ached. The Doctor, the future one, was gone, and once again she had no idea where, and his past self had gone further past and forgotten about everything. It was like watching a preview of what would happen when - if - his future self came back.

She kept losing people. And it wasn't like when they died. Back in the Furthest Ring, there was no reason to grieve. Death wasn't a barrier there, nor here, for that matter. If he'd died, two weeks, tops, and he'd be back - maybe even able to tell her about this world's afterlife. But he hadn't died, she'd just lost him. Had he gone home? Or was he still on this planet somewhere, turned human, with no memory of who he really was? It wasn't something you found out. There was no certainty in it. She'd reveled in the lack of certainty earlier, when she'd just come back to life. But after half a sweep, part of her was beginning to feel lost without it.

Aradia sighed and shook her head wearily. It was still only half past one in the morning, castle time, but she felt heavy, as if she hadn't slept, even though she had. She returned her attention to the coffee table, covered in blueprints and carefully traced maps and old archaeological diagrams and disorganized list such that the corners flopped over the table edges. Apart from the movie playing on the big screen, the game room was dark and quiet. She'd seen the Troll Indiana Jones movies about four hundred times each, and marathoning the familiar scenes and voices made for good background noise while she struggled to get her thoughts in order. First, the outpost. Then the expedition, recruiting, planning, staging, launching, and being the hell out of here as quickly as possible, before anybody else disappeared.

She wasn't really paying attention to anything else. Heck, she barely had attention to pay to what she was actually doing.

Comments

[wagers]

Vriska herself never had very many people on her mind for too long. After her human friends-- actual people who considered her just a great person overall without any of this suspicion bullshit lingering about-- left, after Tavros had left, it was getting increasingly harder for her to give any considerable fuck about people leaving. After all, the only person who would never let you down was yourself, after all. Well, arguably.

In any case, thinking of oneself was always a priority. It was just easier that way.

But when there were others in your way, whether it be a challenge or just another troll sitting idly near one of your favorite haunts, one couldn't help but assert that independence. It was just the way things worked. It was how Vriska was, showing the one person who could be considered her equal that she was not one to be forgotten so long as they shared the same world.

"Wow, what are you supposed to be doing?"

[psych0p0mps]

Hearing Vriska's voice actually startled her. It occurred to her that it had been a long time since they'd talked - close to 1,214 hours, to be more precise - and even longer since Aradia had seen an entry in that particular blue and not just skimmed over it. The first words into her think pan tumbled out of her mouth before she'd fully realized they were there.

"You're still here?"

[wagers]

The disagreeable remark from the other troll was more than enough to allow Vriska to pull her upper lip over fangs that were readily bared. There was the emotion she fed off from the other-- the old, drab Aradia was so boring, the vitriol was definitely something of a challenge. So full of life, wasn't she?

"You'll see that I plan on being here for a long," She'll lean over Aradia's work at this point, so close to touching some of her stuff. "Long time. Too bad our stays here are so random. I could just blink right now and see you leave before all my little eyes, couldn't I?"

[psych0p0mps]

Aradia only managed to glare at her for a second or two before she had to look back at the TV screen. Point to Vriska, one barb directly in the feels. "Wouldn't that be nice," Aradia grumbled under her breath. But - no, that presented way too easy of a retort, she had to come up with something sharper. "Is that why you've been so quiet?" she added, raising her voice to something more like confidence. "It's not that you don't have any irons, it's that the fires keep disappearing."

[wagers]

Vriska bristled at the sound of Aradia speaking up, an eyebrow cocking as she picked up one of her blueprints with two fingers at the corner, scrutinizing it as if she had found an old dirty sock. In spite of the scowl from her face however, she did take the extra few seconds to actually look at the darned thing. Interesting.

"Oh, didn't you know?" She laughed, swinging the blueprint in her fingers. "What do fires even matter here? Everything changes. Everything. Aside from keeping our strengths up, what real purpose is there to invest all the irons in all the fires that present themselves?"

She'll toss the blueprint her way at that. "It's all bullshit in the end, am I right?"

[psych0p0mps]

Oh don't you touch - don't you touch her blueprints Vriska. They're all she's got. Aradia watched the paper like a kid watching the school bully swing her stuffed rabbit around by the ears, albeit a kid who was pretty sure she could take the bully if she didn't put that bunny back in the box. Her hands even flinched upward, looking for an opportunity to snatch the paper back, but didn't get a chance to go for it before Vriska tossed it carelessly in her face.

By the time she got it off to where she could smooth out the wrinkles, she was seething with barely-repressed anger. "So what? It beats sitting around my respiteblock fondling eight-balls all day."

[wagers]

There was a sharp laugh at that one, Vriska's surprise simply cutting through the air as sharp as Aradia's own tongue. Is that all she thought she did? Really, now.

"Is that a thought that satisfies you, Aradia?" She began to approach the lowblood, hand on the table on which she worked, not minding if trailing her hand along the surface knocked some of her work to the floor. "Are you so desperate to know that I've gone soft by waiting for the next big opportunity to come my way?"

There would be another laugh, the troll coming dangerously close to the other's reach. "If only you could imagine how much I have over you."

[psych0p0mps]

Well, that and chugging sopor slime, considering the last time they talked. She was right, though, that Aradia couldn't imagine Vriska having something worth lording over her. She had a fully operational outpost. She had maps, plans, the beginnings of a timetable. She had a way, if not out of this world, at least out of the castle itself. And what did Vriska have? ...

... No. Damn it, what was she thinking like that for?

"This isn't a competition," she snapped, more forcefully than she needed to. "Why do you have to make everything a competition?" Aradia stood up from the couch to pick up the fallen papers, not bothering to roll them up before storing them in her sylladex. It was already a mess in there, what was some crumpled-up paper honestly going to do?

[wagers]

She just couldn't help herself. The grin never left her face and it was only a matter of seconds before she allowed another chuckle to escape her lips. There it was-- Aradia was fighting back.

"Oh come on!" And another snerk. "Don't you know when I'm messing with you? Really, do you think I care about any of this? It's like I said, it doesn't even mean all that much in the end!"

Hands would raise with her arms, her position moving into a careless shrug. "And it's all the same, too! Threats come, we smack them around. Stuff happens, people whine, but we always find our way on top of the heap. Yawn. It's not like fiddling with your glorified forts will make or break the situation!"

[psych0p0mps]

One way or another, Vriska had caught Aradia in a fighting mood. It was a directionless sort of fighting. Aimed at the castle, but not strong enough to kill it, it instead had her lashing out in multiple directions, just to feel like she was doing something about it. She'd gotten into no fewer than two strifes in as many days, once against her mentor and once against a stranger. On any other day, she might have thought things through, let Vriska's barbs slide off her husk, casually reminded her that she wasn't looking for a black relationship and certainly not with her.

But this wasn't any other day. Things that had been simmering in Aradia's consciousness were coming to a boil. Today, she needed to defend herself. She needed a target. Someone to be mad at, apart from herself.

It didn't come as a thought process, of course. Just instinct, anger, and the feeling of her own fingernails digging into her palms. Now when had she clenched her fists? Oh, yeah, the "forts"... it didn't help that, more and more frequently, Aradia found herself wondering if she was spending too much time building and not enough preparing for the actual expedition.

"Have you ever even left the castle?" she demanded, voice rising. "There's nothing to find in here. Nothing. Even the Insolitus is just here to screw with us. The only answers I'm going to find are out there, and once I do -" she jabbed her own chest with her thumb "- then I can get back to my actual purpose, and you -" she switched the thumb for a forefinger and jabbed Vriska in the same place "- can go back to being dead."

[wagers]

She kept her smirk. That same damn smirk lessened, but like hell would Vriska let it slip completely. Just like with every other situation, she would laugh it off-- though this time, she would laugh it off through gritted teeth.

"Of course I've left the castle! Like I'd ever lose my sense of adventure!" There was yet another scoff, and Vriska couldn't help but grit her teeth in the slightest, not trying to relent as she smacked Aradia's finger away from her general direction.

Dead? Her? Hardly! That's already happened. It's past. Dead and buried! Right! Right. It was all this bullshit that the two put behind them, but Aradia just had to bring it up again.

What, did she think she could do it again? No. No! Of course she couldn't. She wouldn't. Wait. No, no, she didn't have the guts to try it a second time.

All she was doing was talking big to get back at her? Right? ...Right.

There was no other outcome. The luck was hers. All of it.

"Pretty fucking idealistic of you! Like you're so important!" She'll tilt her head, trying to stop herself from tensing her muscles. "And you think you're so much better than me? Ha! If anything, with all this stupid nonsense you're bringing about, trying to make a difference?"

Lips curled. "If anything, we're just the same."

[psych0p0mps]

"What's that supposed to mean?" Aradia spat. She might not be the most important character in Homestuck, but she did have a clear purpose out in the Furthest Ring, or if nothing else a reason to be alive.

And if Vriska thought that her - her faffing around or whatever she did all the time - was anything like Aradia's hard work and dedication - like the literal months she'd spent designing and scavenging for materials and living on what amounted to the other side of the planet for all anybody noticed it sometimes, for all that niggling voice in the back of her mind said she was putting way too much effort into what amounted to a side project just so she could put off leaving her friends behind at the castle -

... That train of thought got all over the place pretty fast, but the point was, they were nothing alike.

[wagers]

"Ambition," Vriska grinned, fangs bared as if she was about to spin a web around the other at any given moment. "You and I both share the insatiable need to be on top of things, to overcome whatever stands in our way. You can't deny it."

There was a sharp laugh at that. "And if you even went so far as to do so, why, I'd just call you weak and be done with it!" And so came a few more seconds of laughing. It just added to the amusement, considering just how uncomfortable she knew she was starting to make Aradia. "But we both know that's not true, right?"

She grinned at this, fangs tightening atop one another as she moved to catch the other's eyes. "You're just as cutthroat as I am, ready to go in for the kill. Just like me."

/slowpoke.gif. ALSO LEMME KNOW IF THIS ISNT 0K...

[psych0p0mps]

Okay, that was a threat. That was so unmistakably a threat that there was not even any use asking whether it was.

The prickling in Aradia's think pan grew to its fullest, blunt, brutal focus. Her hand snapped upward, sending a psychokinetic wave ramming into Vriska, aimed for her neck and powerful enough to slam her into the wall. And she'd hold her there, not really caring whether her dear frienemy could breathe or not.

"Do you want to see cutthroat?" she snapped. "Is that what you're going for? I told you I can kill you with a twitch. That hasn't changed!"

[wagers]

It was certainly a surprise. She hadn't expected Aradia to act this way so soon...

But really, how could she dwell on that right now? There was a very distinct look of surprise, although fleeting, and she could feel her arms moving upward to grasp at the invisible force around her neck. Fangs began to clench as she stifled what breath she could, eyes narrowing at the lowblood before her.

"S-see?" She managed to utter. "You're no fucking better than me."

There was a quick breath and fingers tightened around nothingness. She would attempt to save face, forcing a grin from her clenched fangs. "I just like how you're,"

She paused for another short breath. "Acting like you're just so fucking kind. It's... all a big fucking lie, isn't it?"