You haven’t expected it to turn out this way.

It makes you numb, seeing her lying still and bled out like that on the ground, the cheerful bright orange of her outfit stained with dried dark blue blood. Her wings are all lying flat on her back and it makes you wonder, forces you to think of how she must have looked when she took flight in life, swift and powerful, an absolutely crazy but nevertheless entrancing grin on her face.

It makes you hurt. You want to curse Skaia and demand the whole thing to have never been run down, but as you stare at her, the only thing that fills you is emptiness. She was vibrant, aggressive, assertive - and with all that gone you guess you just want to remember her in peace, take some good memory of her away so that she won’t simply be remembered as an idiotic narcissist who nearly got everyone killed.

“Hey, Vriska.”

You kneel down beside her. She has liked - perhaps loved - you, you know, so what can you say now to make this good? What can you say to her now when you could have stopped it, when you should have asked for more information and told her not to go?

She can’t answer you, so you reach out and hold her in your arms. There’s no breathing, no pulse, no reaction to call you stupid or punch you in the face, no Vriska or anything that makes you feel her in your bones. You hold her up anyway, careful not to let her head droop.

She has helped you to come this far, and you owe her.

“Vriska, I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry. I know you can’t hear me and it won’t do you any good now, but I should have told you not to go. I should have told you to wait. If I had done it right we would be watching Nic Cage right now and -“

And you can’t do it.

She’s light, light in death, light as the fairies of legends, but that weight still holds you down like everything has. You remember Earth, the wasted face of your father, the frozen expressions on the faces of the other trolls no one has been able to save. Everything you have loved. 

Everything you have lost. All the good things, all the bad things, all rolled up together until you can’t tell anymore, don’t know where to go and what to feel.

“Oh, Vriska,” you whisper. “I hope I added to your pile of good things.”

All original art credit to Emily!

Inspiration from this post

Original Quote from Doctor Who Series 5, “Vincent and the Doctor”