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edenfallingSummary: Here's the thing: nobody ever deserves happiness. There isn't any law laying out what crimes merit the permanent loss of happiness as a punishment, or what penance must be done in order to regain the ability to smile and laugh and enjoy your life. Sometimes you think the world would be easier to accept if there were such a law. Background Terezi/Karkat/Dave. (1,275 words)
Note: This fic was written for Cotton Candy Bingo Round One in response to the prompt: healing, and to the following suggestion from Asuka: could be terezi post breaking up w/gamzee & throwing away addiction and/or fixing her bonds with dave and/or karkat? all about how she likes herself better now and is happy with how her life is going?
[ETA: the AO3 crosspost is now up!]
---------------------------------------------
The mind is its own place, and in itself
---------------------------------------------
Here's the thing: nobody ever deserves happiness.
This doesn't mean that everyone deserves unhappiness, though that might seem to follow logically. It just means that happiness isn't something people can earn. There isn't any law laying out what crimes merit the permanent loss of happiness as a punishment, or what penance must be done in order to regain the ability to smile and laugh and enjoy your life.
Sometimes you think the world would be easier to accept if there were such a law.
In retrospect, you suspect you were trying to write one with your own actions -- to hurt yourself enough that you wouldn't feel that horrible black hole of guilt pulling you in every time you dared to feel good even though half your friends were dead, many of them either at your hand or because of your negligence. You're a Seer. You should have known what was going to happen.
But you didn't know. And trying desperately to drown yourself in misery only meant you stayed in that trap of ignorance and blindness. Maybe Lord English and Doc Scratch built it, maybe Gamzee shoved you in, but you're the one who shut the door and turned the lock. You're the one who made the trap your home. You didn't know what was going to happen in the new session, didn't know what the Condesce had planned, didn't know how to fight Lord English.
You won anyway. You built a new universe. Half your old friends are still dead, you still hate Gamzee for how much he made you hate yourself, still wake with a nagging thirst for Faygo, still wish you hadn't let Vriska's sickly-sweet trap-spider Dancestor restore your vision. But if you could forgive Vriska and she could forgive you, maybe you can try to forgive yourself. You have a whole new world to explore. Half your old friends are alive, to say nothing of the new friends you made along the way, and you can't box yourself up forever. You open the door or you die.
It hurts like hell to straighten the parts of yourself that bent and warped to the shape of the trap, but it's a good hurt, like blood flowing back into sleepy limbs. And eventually you look back at the dark, barren place you escaped and wonder how the hell you ever thought you could fit inside. Maybe a small world was simpler, everything pared down to misery and failure, but there is so much more to life outside that intangible box, so much more you're rediscovering every day.
Here's the thing: you think you might be happy.
You say as much to Dave and Karkat one evening as the three of your sprawl on your roof watching the cute yellow sun turns huge and brassy on the western horizon and the stars ease into sight in the eastern sky, away from the glow of the two crescent moons.
"No shit, really? I'm in shock from the magnitude of this revelation. Catch me, Karkat, I feel faint, all this happiness is going to my head. I might swoon," Dave says, not moving an inch from where he is lying with his hands crossed behind his head.
"Your hypothetical medical emergency fails to engage my worry glands. You're already flat on your back. The only difference is you'd stop talking," Karkat says, tossing a handful of dead leaves over you to land on Dave's face. He turns back to you, eyes big and worried. "Is it mind control? Is someone fucking with your think pan? I knew this victory bullshit was too good to be trusted."
You sit up and poke the tip of his nose with one finger, just to watch his eyes cross. (He holds still for you. He trusts you not to hurt him. You don't deserve that any more than you deserve happiness, but it's his choice and you don't really want to argue him out of it, any more than you want to argue Dave out of his reconsideration of the idea that love can involve more than two people at a time.)
"It's not a bad thing, Karkat," you say. "It's just a little bit of a surprise! Half a sweep ago, I was sure I would never be happy again, and equally sure that that was the right and proper order of the universe."
"Bullshit," your two knights say in chorus. There is a pause while they exchange a rapid-fire conversation in awkward glances and strangled body language.
"Any universe with your misery as one of its fundamental laws isn't a universe I'd want to live in," Dave says, rolling onto his side to face you and Karkat. "We all fucked up--"
"--beyond the power of troll or human consciousness to comprehend--" Karkat interjects.
"--yeah, what he said, and yeah, we all felt like shitheads, but hey, twenty zillion wrongs sometimes do make a happy ending, who knew. Not a perfect ending, sure, like that was ever in the cards, but it's got a sweet planet and awesome powers and you guys here with me. I'll take it."
"What he said," Karkat agrees. "It will all collapse hideously when we're least expecting it, of course, but I for one am going to wring the last, desperate drops of non-catastrophe out of my life while I still can." A pause. "You're one of them. You make me--"
"--make us--" Dave corrects.
"--fine, whatever. You make us happy."
"You make me happy too," you assure them. "I'm glad to feel that again. I'm glad I'm able to feel that again. For a while I thought I could only feel hate and guilt and other emotions that are like rolling around in a pile of shit and broken glass."
Dave makes a terrible face at your analogy. Karkat's mouth quirks up in a tiny smirk.
"We were all in a bad place by the end of our journey between sessions, and we made those bad places worse by not talking about them. But I think we're getting better," you conclude.
"Yeah," Dave says.
Karkat takes your hand in silence. After a moment, Dave sits up and takes your other hand. You watch the stars come out together.
Then you go back inside for ice cream, because if anything in the universe counts as a non-catastrophe, your vote is for ice cream. And sex, of course, but that's for later. You have priorities!
"To getting better," you say as you raise your spoon.
"In every day, in every way--" Dave begins.
Karkat shoves a spoon into his mouth to shut him up.
You think Vriska would have laughed to watch them squabble. You almost pity Gamzee for fucking up so badly he doesn't get to see Karkat like this anymore. You still have a little voice in your head saying you don't deserve this, you shouldn't be here, you need to hurt and writhe and grovel and wallow in your own failures and flaws.
Here's the thing: maybe everything that voice says is true. But it's not the only truth, and you don't have to listen.
You brace the handle of your spoon in one hand and pull back the bowl with the other, then release the tension. Strawberry ice cream flies across the table to impact Dave's shades; the splatter dots Karkat's face with little blooms of pink.
This time there is nothing awkward or tentative about the glances they exchange.
As they dive toward you with hungry smiles, you tip back your head and laugh.
You have never been more glad to be alive.
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End of Story
---------------------------------------------
Well, that ended up being unexpectedly personal. *blinks*
Hi, my name is Liz. I have periodic clinical depression and spent several years in the early 2000s thrashing my way free of some screwed up thought patterns that repeatedly shoved me into guilt spirals, made it impossible to catch up on any work or relationships I let slide during depressive episodes, and convinced me that I wasn't allowed to be happy even for a minute unless I had done everything right that day. (Protip: doing everything right is impossible.)
It was a deeply weird feeling to look at my life one day and realize that A) I was happy, B) I'd been happy for a while, and C) I felt no need to justify this to anyone, least of all myself.
...
On a completely different note, this fic makes my second single-line bingo on this card. (Yes, I have filled seventeen prompts -- that's 2/3 of the card -- with only two bingo victories. *sigh* And this one doesn't even count since both the round and the amnesty are long over. I'm just doing this for personal satisfaction at this point.)
Note: This fic was written for Cotton Candy Bingo Round One in response to the prompt: healing, and to the following suggestion from Asuka: could be terezi post breaking up w/gamzee & throwing away addiction and/or fixing her bonds with dave and/or karkat? all about how she likes herself better now and is happy with how her life is going?
[ETA: the AO3 crosspost is now up!]
---------------------------------------------
The mind is its own place, and in itself
---------------------------------------------
Here's the thing: nobody ever deserves happiness.
This doesn't mean that everyone deserves unhappiness, though that might seem to follow logically. It just means that happiness isn't something people can earn. There isn't any law laying out what crimes merit the permanent loss of happiness as a punishment, or what penance must be done in order to regain the ability to smile and laugh and enjoy your life.
Sometimes you think the world would be easier to accept if there were such a law.
In retrospect, you suspect you were trying to write one with your own actions -- to hurt yourself enough that you wouldn't feel that horrible black hole of guilt pulling you in every time you dared to feel good even though half your friends were dead, many of them either at your hand or because of your negligence. You're a Seer. You should have known what was going to happen.
But you didn't know. And trying desperately to drown yourself in misery only meant you stayed in that trap of ignorance and blindness. Maybe Lord English and Doc Scratch built it, maybe Gamzee shoved you in, but you're the one who shut the door and turned the lock. You're the one who made the trap your home. You didn't know what was going to happen in the new session, didn't know what the Condesce had planned, didn't know how to fight Lord English.
You won anyway. You built a new universe. Half your old friends are still dead, you still hate Gamzee for how much he made you hate yourself, still wake with a nagging thirst for Faygo, still wish you hadn't let Vriska's sickly-sweet trap-spider Dancestor restore your vision. But if you could forgive Vriska and she could forgive you, maybe you can try to forgive yourself. You have a whole new world to explore. Half your old friends are alive, to say nothing of the new friends you made along the way, and you can't box yourself up forever. You open the door or you die.
It hurts like hell to straighten the parts of yourself that bent and warped to the shape of the trap, but it's a good hurt, like blood flowing back into sleepy limbs. And eventually you look back at the dark, barren place you escaped and wonder how the hell you ever thought you could fit inside. Maybe a small world was simpler, everything pared down to misery and failure, but there is so much more to life outside that intangible box, so much more you're rediscovering every day.
Here's the thing: you think you might be happy.
You say as much to Dave and Karkat one evening as the three of your sprawl on your roof watching the cute yellow sun turns huge and brassy on the western horizon and the stars ease into sight in the eastern sky, away from the glow of the two crescent moons.
"No shit, really? I'm in shock from the magnitude of this revelation. Catch me, Karkat, I feel faint, all this happiness is going to my head. I might swoon," Dave says, not moving an inch from where he is lying with his hands crossed behind his head.
"Your hypothetical medical emergency fails to engage my worry glands. You're already flat on your back. The only difference is you'd stop talking," Karkat says, tossing a handful of dead leaves over you to land on Dave's face. He turns back to you, eyes big and worried. "Is it mind control? Is someone fucking with your think pan? I knew this victory bullshit was too good to be trusted."
You sit up and poke the tip of his nose with one finger, just to watch his eyes cross. (He holds still for you. He trusts you not to hurt him. You don't deserve that any more than you deserve happiness, but it's his choice and you don't really want to argue him out of it, any more than you want to argue Dave out of his reconsideration of the idea that love can involve more than two people at a time.)
"It's not a bad thing, Karkat," you say. "It's just a little bit of a surprise! Half a sweep ago, I was sure I would never be happy again, and equally sure that that was the right and proper order of the universe."
"Bullshit," your two knights say in chorus. There is a pause while they exchange a rapid-fire conversation in awkward glances and strangled body language.
"Any universe with your misery as one of its fundamental laws isn't a universe I'd want to live in," Dave says, rolling onto his side to face you and Karkat. "We all fucked up--"
"--beyond the power of troll or human consciousness to comprehend--" Karkat interjects.
"--yeah, what he said, and yeah, we all felt like shitheads, but hey, twenty zillion wrongs sometimes do make a happy ending, who knew. Not a perfect ending, sure, like that was ever in the cards, but it's got a sweet planet and awesome powers and you guys here with me. I'll take it."
"What he said," Karkat agrees. "It will all collapse hideously when we're least expecting it, of course, but I for one am going to wring the last, desperate drops of non-catastrophe out of my life while I still can." A pause. "You're one of them. You make me--"
"--make us--" Dave corrects.
"--fine, whatever. You make us happy."
"You make me happy too," you assure them. "I'm glad to feel that again. I'm glad I'm able to feel that again. For a while I thought I could only feel hate and guilt and other emotions that are like rolling around in a pile of shit and broken glass."
Dave makes a terrible face at your analogy. Karkat's mouth quirks up in a tiny smirk.
"We were all in a bad place by the end of our journey between sessions, and we made those bad places worse by not talking about them. But I think we're getting better," you conclude.
"Yeah," Dave says.
Karkat takes your hand in silence. After a moment, Dave sits up and takes your other hand. You watch the stars come out together.
Then you go back inside for ice cream, because if anything in the universe counts as a non-catastrophe, your vote is for ice cream. And sex, of course, but that's for later. You have priorities!
"To getting better," you say as you raise your spoon.
"In every day, in every way--" Dave begins.
Karkat shoves a spoon into his mouth to shut him up.
You think Vriska would have laughed to watch them squabble. You almost pity Gamzee for fucking up so badly he doesn't get to see Karkat like this anymore. You still have a little voice in your head saying you don't deserve this, you shouldn't be here, you need to hurt and writhe and grovel and wallow in your own failures and flaws.
Here's the thing: maybe everything that voice says is true. But it's not the only truth, and you don't have to listen.
You brace the handle of your spoon in one hand and pull back the bowl with the other, then release the tension. Strawberry ice cream flies across the table to impact Dave's shades; the splatter dots Karkat's face with little blooms of pink.
This time there is nothing awkward or tentative about the glances they exchange.
As they dive toward you with hungry smiles, you tip back your head and laugh.
You have never been more glad to be alive.
---------------------------------------------
End of Story
---------------------------------------------
Well, that ended up being unexpectedly personal. *blinks*
Hi, my name is Liz. I have periodic clinical depression and spent several years in the early 2000s thrashing my way free of some screwed up thought patterns that repeatedly shoved me into guilt spirals, made it impossible to catch up on any work or relationships I let slide during depressive episodes, and convinced me that I wasn't allowed to be happy even for a minute unless I had done everything right that day. (Protip: doing everything right is impossible.)
It was a deeply weird feeling to look at my life one day and realize that A) I was happy, B) I'd been happy for a while, and C) I felt no need to justify this to anyone, least of all myself.
...
On a completely different note, this fic makes my second single-line bingo on this card. (Yes, I have filled seventeen prompts -- that's 2/3 of the card -- with only two bingo victories. *sigh* And this one doesn't even count since both the round and the amnesty are long over. I'm just doing this for personal satisfaction at this point.)
