Hi I'm alive. Sort of. I'm just gonna post this, and maybe the second part to it in a few weeks. Or maybe not. But I suppose this can be viewed as a stand-alone. So I'll put this as "complete" but maybe a second chapter will come. Jesus, 4000 words. I've sort of got another 3000, but that part's sort of disjointed. Um...this is rated T, maybe? I don't know, I don't think any homestuck fanfic is truly kid-friendly.

Also, pairings. Don't like, welll...you can ignore it and consider them as bromance. Maybe.

Title: Post Mortem
Author: yesterdaysLuminary
Status: 1/2 (Can be viewed as stand-alone)
Fandom: Homestuck
Rating: T, for now
Main Pairings: Kanaya Terezi, hinted Vriska3Terezi.

"You and I together, we can do anything!" That same promise from their childhood, carried on by the rancid breath from between decomposing molars...

Vriska is dead. Terezi has stabbed her with her cane. She stood aside the body with strangely no satisfaction, smelling the blueberry cobalt of her blood spreading on the floor, staining her boots.

When Karkat comes up to meet her after she has finally killed Vriska with her own hands, he runs to her and gives him a tight hug. She hugs him back awkwardly, as if unsure of herself, and he cries with relief that she wasn't dead by Gamzee's hand. Terezi supposes that she is relieved too.

She sleeps deeply but not well, tossing and cracking open her eyes at five twenty eight in the morning, too bothered by a dream about Vriska, her blank, soulless, dead eyes staring at her in judgement.

When John finally joins them, Terezi can't bring herself to say anything about Vriska. He asks all the trolls as to where Vriska was amongst them, and she is the one who conks him on the head with her cane -"SH3 1SNT H3R3, BUT DON'T WORRY YOUR S1LLY P1NK 4L1EN H34D 4BOUT 1T." – and he simply takes it to presume that she might've hung back with Aradia or Sollux. Terezi didn't feel like correcting him. She feels that she might not be able to hold back the bile that rose in her throat.

So she manages to get through the next day, really, by specifically not thinking of that day. Or tries not to, anyway. At one point she really does vomit after she accidentally falls asleep, and sees, or rather, smells, the blood and mildew of the spider troll's body.

Vriska's body disappeared sometime before John arrived. It was a mysterious occurrence, for it was stolen right in front of at least three witnesses. She is certain that Gamzee was the one who took her, because he was discovered missing at the same time. But why he has taken the cobalt-blood's body, she doesn't know.

She sets off to visit the subjuggulator soon after John's queries about where Vriska was began getting suspicious. After all, she would not be able to hide the real incident behind this façade of cheeriness.

It was rather easy to find where Gamzee had hidden the bodies. With her sensitive nose, honed by years of blindness, she was able to sniff out the stench of the dead. She had considered bringing some cherry red chalk and sniffing it constantly to rid her sinuses of the foul odour, but then thought that maybe she needed to face reality, because she had killed Vriska, and she needed to know where the body is, if only to tell John the bad news.

As she approaches, she holds her breath as much as she can. Doesn't even breath through her mouth, just doesn't breath at all, because she doesn't exactly want to taste death on her tongue.

Gamzee was waiting calmly for her arrival, unfazed and prepared. He guides Terezi the way to Vriska's head, because he has only kept her head and thrown the rest of her body off the asteroid that they currently resided on. Her cranium resides in a chest, and Terezi seems to find little humor in it because Tavro's legs used to live there as well. Gamzee seems to have all the heads in separate chests, and Terezi is glad for that because she thinks that the myriad of bloody colours that she will smell would make her vomit. Gamzee gives her the key, and she squats down to slot it in the lock and opens the chest.

Terezi reveals that she has killed Vriska to the other trolls, because she thinks that John wouldn't want to know that the one who he has been giggling with and the one who has always been happy to tease and play pranks with was his patron troll's murderer. The trolls shake the thing off, because they were used to the violence and regular slaughter that their race committed practically on a daily basis. Truly, the culture of the trolls is mad; Terezi knows this as she toys with the bottle of cerulean blood that she managed to buy from Gamzee. The liquid sloshes in its glass container, leaving dark residue upon its walls. She doesn't open the cork lid that sealed the opening, and instead slips it into her sylladex.

The night after she met Gamzee, Terezi dreams of Vriska for the first time since her death.

It is a strange dream that doesn't quite add up. They are together at Terezi's hive, sitting amongst the boughs of the trees that surrounded the place. She remembers that Vriska used to come over when they were younger, before SGRUB, to discuss FLARP plans together rather than over Trollian. But they were younger then, and for some reason the Vriska that stood before her was wearing her God Tier, while Terezi herself wore her FLARP outfit. It all seems very natural to her at the time, however, and she enjoys sitting and talking again with Vriska.

"I've missed you, Terezi."

"Y3AH," Terezi says. It isn't adequate. Her eyes water a little from the sun that shone through the pink foliage they were under. "1 JUST D1DNT R34L1S3 HOW MUCH 1 D1D."

Vriska flicks her blue lips up in a way that Terezi remembers from when she could still see, smirking and flashing those fangs that hadn't quite grown out over her lip yet. "Missed all those fa8ulous plans I designed? Or rather the way I could outsmart you in pretty much everything?"

Terezi can't help but be her old FLARPing persona here. "WH4T! OF COURS3 NOT! YOU 4R3 1N NO W4Y 4 M4TCH FOR TH3 CUNN1NG OF R3DGL4R3! 1 M1SS3D-"

She stops, because she suddenly realizes why the branch they were sitting on was so wet and moist. There is blue blood splashed on the tree limbs, the dark stain standing out against with the ultra-brightness of the cyan wood and pink leaves and pale sky. She smells decay and the sweetness of nature all around her.

"Missed?" Vriska asks, cocking her head to one side, as she fingers the Fluorite Octet she collected on one palm.

"W3LL," Terezi admits, promptly forgetting the dead people he is standing on. "YOU M4K3 M3 H4PPY."

"I D1D TH4T? ::::)"

" Y3S 4ND 1 DONT TH1NK 1V3 B33N QU1T3 4S H4PPY S1NC3."

It takes a lot longer than she would have guessed to make the John finally stop asking about Vriska. Terezi hadn't expected him to drop it quickly like his doofus personality suggests, but she did feel the enormous pressure that was required evade his interrogation - to the point where she sweats herself to waking at night. At this rate, she'll need as many towels as Equius would. Sometimes she grabs the bottle of blood from her sylladex, twirls the flask and watches as the congealed liquid sloshes sluggishly, and wonders what Vriska would say to get out of pressuring interrogation. But then again, Vriska is John's patron troll, so Terezi is sure that John will easily forgive the Scorpio's evasion, unlike Terezi's.

Vriska, whose FLARP antics worked hand-in-hand with Terezi's. Vriska, who was known as one of the Scrouge Sisters with Terezi as the other. Vriska, who had been killed impaled by Terezi's own cane. When she imagines Vriska now, it's in the same vein as that horrible dream in which Terezi's light, bright, and happy hive was marred by the death and decay. She sees, in her mind's eye, Vriska leaning against a tree, looking healthy and warm and- there's that strange gentleness in her eyes before she closes them – there is blood seeping from every orifice, and as she shifts into a more comfortable position, the blue colour smears on the trees. Vriska closes her eyes with placidity, and light cobalt tears fall down from eyes, and trail down her cheeks. And Terezi smells Vriska, too. Vriska smells like rot.

Still. Still. Vriska was very kind, in her own way. Vriska had let herself be killed by Terezi for the sake of the future of the trolls, for John, after all.

She'd been such a good person...

Terezi feels her eyes grow hot and quickly stands up to find something to wipe her eyes. She finds some tissues and clears away the growing moisture, removing the glasses and then putting it back on. She takes a moment to compose herself, immediately removes her red glasses again, and vomits.

It almost seems like that is all she can do, lately. Mostly it comes out clear, and Terezi is left with the same strange, clenching emptiness that matches the feeling in her chest perfectly.

She hears Vriska's voice say, "You and I together, we can do anything!" That same promise from their childhood, their FLARP times, carried on by the rancid breath from between decomposing molars...

Or maybe it was just the wind made by the air conditioning, flowing past her perspiring neck. Nothing more. It must've been the smell of the stale sopor pies that Gamzee has placed everywhere. Terezi walks to meet everyone confidently and with a little of a swagger, glad that everyone was too far away to have heard her in that moment of weakness.

Amongst nervous or irritated glances, she takes she place next to Dave, ignoring the glances from John. She doesn't pretend that he has dropped that topic yet, because she knows that he is abiding his time, waiting for the right chance to strike. According to Karkat, John was a bit of a doofus and a naïve idiot when he first met the alien, but three years seems to have changed that. John wants answers, and he knows exactly how to go about doing so.

Maybe, if she had not killed Vriska, Terezi would've been offering and tutoring the Heir of Breath in the art of interrogation.

Kanaya stays with Terezi a lot. Perhaps she understands how she feels. How guilt-ridden Terezi is, how she dreams of rot and blood every night. Or maybe the Virgo troll has the skills of a meditator and a counsellor. Terezi finds Kanaya a good place to dump a great deal of worries and fears on.

"HOW COM3 YOU M4N4G3D TO COM3 B4CK TO L1F3?" Terezi asks her at one point.

"Came Back? Implying That I Died"

"YOU D1D," she says, knowing that she must've died when Eridan blasted that hole through her. Terezi is sure that if Kanaya loosened his cape from her waist, an empty space will be there. Kanaya smiles sympathetically.

"I Guess I Did."
"1T 1SNT F41R" Terezi hisses.

And she agrees. "No It Really Isn't."

At some point, more food than usual starts appearing on her plate. When Terezi realizes it, she looks up in surprise to where Jade is placing a glass of water next to Rose's plate. She says nothing, but after dinner she corners Terezi. She's a little intimidated, because she didn't think Jade was the type of person to care for someone in this way. All she does, though, is take Terezi's pulse, and rest the back of her hand against the troll's forehead.

Results inconclusive, she backs up a pace and then walks away. That night, Terezi lies on her side, arms circling her turbulent stomach, Senator Lemonsnout resting next to her. She falls asleep late into the night and dreams of Jade. Jade turns into her lusus, in its egg, who turns into her lusus, dead and the cracked egg, who turns into Vriska, dead, who turns into Vriska, alive. Even when she's alive, though, Vriska smells like she's dead.

"Hey…Terezi?"

"Y3S JOHN :?"

"Do you ever think of Vriska?"

Terezi freezes utterly in the middle of her typing. Her stomach flips and she suppresses a- well, he doesn't know what he's holding down, maybe yet more vomit, or perhaps a scream or tears or something very, VERY unpleasant.

"WH4T BROUGHT TH1S UP?"

They are sitting side by side on their respective computers, each talking to their respective people. The room is dark, with the light produced from the mainframes being the only source. John isn't facing Terezi, but rather staring intently at the screen. He seemed as if he didn't care, but Terezi could taste a hint of sadness in the air about him.

"Nothing in particular, I just think of her very often," he says softly.

"V3RY?"

"Yes, very often. I think Vriska would've been great friends with Dave and Rose and Jade...in all the conversations I've had with her, she seems like a friendly enough troll." He cracks a mirthful smile at the memories of pesterlogs.

"JOHN," she starts and then has to clear her throat because her voice cracks a little. He cocks his head in her direction. "1..." (she can't do it she can't tell him she's so sorry Vriska) "...1 TH1NK OF H3R TOO."

For once she is glad that she is blind, because she knows that she is crying and she doesn't have to see any expression on John's face.

"Terezi, it's okay to admit it. You loved her, didn't you?" Terzi doesn't answer right away, so John continues. "I really loved her. She was like another parental figure. One who has helped me all throughout this game session. I adored her. What about you?"

"Y3S," Terezi finally says, and opens her mouth to say more, but feels something coming up, and so she has to leave.

She had opened the chest, and Vriska had been rotting. Not much, not too much, the face was still recognizable... in a way. Something changes, something leaves. It had been Vriska's head, but it hadn't been Vriska. But Gamzee had put a decapitated head in a stuffy, hot, humid, and cramped space, and the dead decayed very, very quickly in that sort of situation. Her face had been blue, her hair limp. There had been the smallest of stains on the side of her neck, where crusted blue blood still remained. Her eyes were milky, and were rolled to the back of her head.

Terezi had been unable to claim the head. Gamzee wouldn't let her, since he claimed that he still needed it as a source to his miracle potions. Terezi had had to leave her there, so as not to anger Gamzee.

Terezi is in a bad, bad mood. She tries not to bring down the morale of the group, and indeed, she is such a practiced liar that hardly anyone notices. It is only Karkat and John who notices anything is wrong. When asked, Kanaya flicks some imaginary dirt out from underneath her perfectly manicured nails and looks off to the side and refuses to give a straightforward answer.

Terezi again dreams of Vriska. Vriska, Vriska, is never far from her mind, no farther than her lusus is. But there's something a little different when she thinks of Vriska, as opposed to when she thinks of her dead guardian. Maybe it's just a bit more special, because Terezi was loved, picked, and taken care of by the Dragon lusus. On the other hand, Terezi chose to love Vriska.

Terezi dreams of the day they first met. She and Vriska, standing side by side under the trees at Terezi's hive, surrounded by the scalemates hung around them. Terezi dreams of rain. It fell, making the earth run into mud. The water seeps into the trunks and soon the smell of rot ruins her little fantasy. A three-sweep old Vriska becomes six sweeps, swinging a scalemate by the rope that was tied around its neck. And the Scorpio is rotting, the smell so great, filling up the entire place. Vriska is entirely marbled and stained, face swollen, fit to burst. A piece of her flesh peels off and plops onto Lemonsnout's nose. The scalemate seems to scream—Terezi screams—

Terezi is screaming a little as he wakes up. Kanaya's arms are around her as she holds her close. Terezi leans into Kanaya and feels a pain spreading through him.

"We Are Morails," Kanaya says in the gentlest voice Terezi's ever gotten from her. "I Won't Leave You."

"YOU WONT 3V3R D13?" she asks, face still buried in Kanaya's neck and shoulders, the top of her chest.

"No, Never," she says knowingly.

"NO…ROTT1NG?"

"I Have Not Managed To Rot Yet."

"1TS JUST R34LLY SOM3TH1NG," she chokes out as she finally leans back. Kanaya's arms slip away from Terezi's head to rest on her knees and she looks up at Terezi with jade eyes free of judgment. "1TS S1LLY. 1 KN3W H3R FOR 4BOUT TH4T THR33 SW33PS 4ND H4LF OF TH4T T1M3 W3 H4T3D 34CH OTH3R" She smiles briefly and bitterly. "BUT 1T W4S— 1T W4S CRU3L. W3 W3R3 R1V4LS 4T TH3 V3RY 3ND."

"So That Is What Is Bothering You?"

"…W3LL WH3N SH3 LOOK3D 4T M3 4ND 1 W4S 4BOUT TO K1LL H3R TH3R3 W4S SO MUCH W4RMTH 1N H3R 3Y3S. TH4TS WH4T DROV3 M3 CR4ZY, 4S 1N, HOW COULD SH3 H4V3 LOOK3D L1K3 TH4T? WH4T W4S GO1NG THROUGH H3R H34D? WH4T H4PP3N3D TO H3R, TO M4K3 H3R SUDD3NLY 4CC3PT H3R F4T3 B3C4US3 TH3 VR1SK4 1 R3M3MB3R W4SNT QU1T3 L1K3 TH4T. 1 DONT R3M3MB3R H3R 3V3R NOT CH4LL3NG1NG F4T3. TH3 P3RSON 1 LOV3D SO MUCH: 1 D1DNT KNOW 4NYTH1NG 4BOUT H3R, WHY SH3 B3C4M3 TH3 W4Y SH3 D1D OR WH4T SH3 F3LT 4BOUT M3 OR 4NYTH1NG."

Terezi reaches across her and grasps Kanaya's hands in her own.

"HOW WOULD SH3 F33L 4BOUT MY 4CT1ONS 4ND GU1LT R1GHT NOW? VR1SK4 W4S SO CONF1D3NT, 4ND TH3R3 W4S 4 L1TTL3 B1T OF SOM3TH1NG J34LOUS TH3R3, OR 4T L34ST WH3N 1 KN3W H3R TH3R3 W4S. BUT WH4T 4BOUT NOW? WOULD VR1SK4 S3KR3T ST4ND BY MY 4CT1ONS? WOULD SH3 H4V3 TOLD D4V3 1F TH1S S1TU4T1ON W4S R3V3RS3D; TH4T H1S P4TRON TROLL, M3, W4S D34D 4ND TH4T SH3 H4D K1LL3D M3?"

"What Do You Think, Terezi?"

"...1 R34LLY JUST DONT KNOW. 1F 1 H4D N3V3R K1LL3D VR1SK4 TH4T D4Y, 1 WOULD H4V3 S41D TH4T SH3 WOULD'V3 BRO4DC4ST3D 1T TO TH3 WORLD W1THOUT 4 DOUBT, BUT TH3 VR1SK4 WHO D13D W1TH 4 SM1L3 4ND THOS3 G3NTL3 4CC3PT1NG 3Y3S…1 JUST C4NT S4Y. WOULD S3KR3T H4V3 SP4R3D D4V3 TH3 P41N?"

Terezi is very surprised, but not unpleasantly, when one day Jade just decided to envelop her into a hug. Then she held Terezi back and looked her over thoroughly.

"Your clothes seem baggier," she states, to which Terezi laughs off. Is it something important enough that a person like Jade would have to notice? Her wardrobe has always been filled with rather loose shirts and trousers, if you excluded her Flarp costume. But she is not ungrateful. Jade sits her down and creates a very heavy meal fixed for Terezi in record time. She must be a genius of perception, because there is nothing on the plate that would possibly set Terezi's stomach off. Jade claims that living on an island with only your pet dog helped a little in her insight into people's behaviours, because she's had to take care of herself since little. Terezi knows that is not the case, because she hears Jade's heart speed up a little, as if to attempt to smother what she really thought.

Jade seemed to have taken upon herself to clean the whole place. Terezi knows that she had enlisted Rose's help, knowing her neat tendencies and wish for order. There is some air sanitizer, obtained from who knows where. The dishes were washed and dripping, leaving the scent of lemon in the air. The place was so clean. Lemon all around, with lilac and lavender perfume drifting lazily past Terezi's nose. She feels her mind wiped blank.

A long time ago, Vriska and Terezi talked about something. They wondered what happiness would look like if it could be given a physical form. If she isn't mistaken, Terezi believed that it was Vriska who said that the shape of happiness might resemble some sort of multi-faceted glass.

Her reasoning made sense. She had said, "Even if you don't usually notice it, it's definitely still there, you merely have to change your point of view slightly. Then that glass will sparkle when it reflects the light."

Terezi doubts that anything else could argue its existence more eloquently. However, Vriska's metaphor might've been originated from her own ego, with the Scorpio having her advanced vision. Perhaps Vriska was also claiming that she had the ability to change people's viewpoints too.

Terezi sleeps in her bed that night, or doesn't sleep, and thinks about her kind's culture. She keeps going over the sudden realization of how many of their own they've killed by a hand of another. All of them with that blood pooling out beneath them; cut down by drones or other trolls in a never-ending strife for dominance in the blood caste system. Survival of the fittest.

All of them, corpses rotting in the sun.

Yes, 8lood is the reason why trolls discrimin8 against one another.

STR1V1NG FOR JUST1C3, FOR 4 D4Y WH3N TH1S SOC13TY'S STR4NGL3HOLD ON V1OL3NC3 1S 4BOL1SH3D.

Are you really going through with this? That's easy enough to say, isn't it!

YOU 4ND 1 M4Y H4V3 D1FF3R3NT BLOOD COLOURS BUT W3R3 ST1LL S1ST3RS!

And to have this utopia, you'd...?

1 DONT N33D 4 R34SON TO DO WH4T 1 W4NT TO DO, OR S4V3 WHO 1 W4NT TO S4V3!

You appear to have o8tained a reason for living.

YOU KNOW W3 H4D TH3 POW3R TO CH4NG3 1T 4LL.

"JOHN?" Terezi calls as she enters the dark room where John was currently sharing with Dave. Dave was out somewhere, and he is sitting up, covered with blankets, reading a book of some sort. He smiles up at her, a smile she can cannot see. But she didn't need to. She knows that it will be gone soon enough.

"What is it, Terezi? Is something wrong?" His head tracks her as she comes around to sit on the edge of his bed, beside him.

"JOHN, 1 H4V3 TO T3LL YOU SOM3TH1NG 4BOUT VR1SK4 4ND…4BOUT M3."

Dave came back and he finds that John is curled up on the bed and doesn't respond to the door opening. Dave paused in from of him and waved his hand in front of John's face. "Hello! Earth to Egbert please!"

John doesn't move his head from its downcast position. "Yes. Hello."

An awkward silence fills the room. Dave raises his eyebrows at John, but he is looking away. Dave looks everywhere for answers, but there was nothing in the room that could've possibly have triggered this sudden angst festering in John.

"Well then," Dave says lightly, trying to stimulate conversation—anything to get some answers and stop John from this. John was the cheeriest, goofiest person Dave knew, and if Egbert of all people was sad then it was a seriously dire situation. "Did someone come?"

John hesitates, and then finally lifts his head. He says with little emotion, "I have found out a lot of different things lately, Dave, and there's only so much time in the day. Terezi just came by and gave me some more information. I'm afraid I haven't quite managed to sort out everything in my head, yet."

"I see," Dave says quietly and leans back against the wall. After that, there is not much else to be said. But John eventually spills, and Dave listens with silence.

Terezi vomits again after her confession to John. That night, she sleeps next to Kanaya upon the large pile of horns that Gamzee had kindly offered because of space issues. Her presence was soothing, but it doesn't help her need to fall into slumber. Terezi closes her eyes but cannot sleep. John's face, smelling like wet salt and snot, keeps lurking in the corner of her mind. All of that, for Vriska.

"I Thought You Got Over It," Kanaya says suddenly. She speaks at just the right volume so that it doesn't sound too loud or grating.

"GOT OV3R WH4T?" she mumbles back, irritated.

"The Throwing Up Thing."

Terezi turns on his side and says nothing.