thecapitol | And I'll blend up that rainbow above you

Entry tags:

And I'll blend up that rainbow above you

Who| Terezi Pyrope, OPEN!
What| Terezi is making it her job to "redecorate" the training area. After that arena, everyone could use a little more color. So she's putting it everywhere.
Where| Training area
When| About a week after the arena ended, timing can vary.
Warnings/Notes| Nothing yet!

Another arena has come and gone, leaving dozens of emotionally-troubled tributes back from the dead--and one no-less-emotionally-troubled Victor, she's sure. Pretty soon, people will start lining up to work on their skills for the next round. It's relatively quiet right now, though, as she stands in the middle of the training area. She's been here for three arenas now--not even the longest running member, and it's not any surprise to her that she's starting to feel run down. It's tiring, throwing so much energy into those death matches, only to be rewarded with yet another and another and another.

What she really needs, and what some of these other tributes need... is color. She remembers smelling the colors that the Initiate had painted on the wall the first time she came in here and how touching that had been. That was what they needed. Something to make them feel like people again, not animals. Primed with the paints from the painting station, pastel chalk from her personal collection, and the best of intentions; Terezi Pyrope gets to work.

At first, she just paints swirling colors, mixing paints and pastels and smelling how they work together. She trails across the wall, stopping by the knot-tying station to spill onto the floor with deep greens and browns. Once the paint dries, she scratches whimsical bits of flora overtop, things she's found on her own forest floor. On the other side of the station, she scribbles a forest of tall blue-trunked trees crested with fuchsia canopies. She stops on that wall and restarts again across the room by a rack of weights, reaching up on her tip-toes to scribble mountains and clouds and fearsome beasts flying across the sky--dragons of every shape and hue, big and small. After spending no small amount of time on that, she stops and moves to a new place. This time, she's not working off of personal memory, but she tries anyway. She haphazardly spreads blue paints across the wall, dripping onto the floor. Overtop, she scribbles every manner of sealife she can think of. There's a lot of empty space when she's done--places for other people to fill in what they want.

Near the center of the area, she leaves some paints and chalk and a scrawled note on the floor in big bright letters.

It reads: "Help yourself."

[OOC note: There's one closed thread in the comments, but the post itself is open to anyone who wants to reply!]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

She knew she would run into a snag at this point. It was inevitable, especially with the resistance that Meulin has given her already. But she squares her shoulders a bit and moves out in front of both of them, turning to face them.

"Because. You're both my friends. I'm not going to stop, not with either of you. So this is something that you need to understand. I know you both think I'm crazy for liking the other. You haven't said it in so many words, but believe me, I've gotten the message. I just want a chance to show you what it is I'm finding that you're not. That I'm not as crazy or as misguided as you think." She pauses, hesitating on her next words.

"...This was how I first found it. I wanted to show it to you, too. So... Please. Switch places."

He stares at Terezi a long moment, then sighs. Up he rises. He steps far enough back that there's a decent space-- they can't attack one another without really trying for it-- and he waits for The Disciple to pass by.

She's visible annoyed at first, mostly because this feels like such busybodying, it feels ashen, it feels weird. But she slowly lifts herself from the floor, letting the chalk fall from her hand and roll towards Terezi, then steps across the line. The mess of colors that awaits her is more confusing than anything else and she's not sure if Terezi wants them to continue what was started or paint something new.

She doesn't want to ask either.

Whatever this is accomplishing, she's not sure it would help to get directions about it. She glances at him, her gaze mostly hidden by waves of hair, and ponders him. Terezi's not crazy for being his friend, she thinks, but she's slightly crazy for being both of theirs.

"I think it's the contrast that makes you a little crazy."

"Maybe I don't think there's so much contrast, then." She is of the firm belief that she's not crazy... despite whatever they might happen to think. But she does seem mildly relieved when they finally do switch places. She waits for Fraysong to make it to Meulin's old spot before seating herself as well and issuing her new instructions:

"Okay. You can keep drawing, now."

The Disciple calls her crazy and he actually laughs. "Only a little crazy?" He snickers.

He settles down in place, legs folding again, and he beholds a memory.

He finds those silhouettes. They could be anyone, truly. This could just be shadows. He doesn't think the are. His finger tips hover over one what all he's already guessed. He wants to mark there, but this, this particular part of this particular motherfucking time, ain't for his sinner's hands to touch.

They pass over the homes, just a regular hivecluster, something he's passed on mission countless times. He doesn't draw the look of nothing there. He draws the feel. In the background bursts off each little hive, he paints waves and swirls, growing off and out from the buildings in intricate pattern. Light blue there, orange there-- all the little textures and layers of fear felt and passed by.

He paints anxiety, he paints worry for a quadrant, he paints that long stretch where one feels like they're holding their breath in wait of something, he paints a scream, he paints a rush of adrenaline. The swirls and colors in such a close hive cluster interlock and tangle in the backgrounds.

He paints tree roots at the furthest edge like fingers dug into the earth, spreading upward into an arm of stars and midnight. The darkness and stars dotted within make an indistinct form of some great being. A crescent pink moon make the lashes of a closed eye and a half-full green moon make an opening one. He smears a mark of red blocked out mouth, but from it, he makes more pattern, like the way the fears were patterned but different too. They start in lime and bleed slowly into teal then blues and eventually his own indigo. Like the figure above is whispering, breathing a sacred fire, but one what all would cast a blanket down on the other half of un-star-marked sky, pooling down to flat indigo before it can meet the other side. From that indigo, another star made hand, cradling the world made there as it digs into the other side.

Up above, between the eyes of the figure, he paints yet another star, the light of it so bright its beams divide the face in two. The star is made of blue and gold.

He is drawn back again to the four figures and his lack of knowing what to do there. He puts the lime whisperings in the dark behind them. Unable to help himself, he marks gold on one silhouette's heart and hands.

She almost turns her back on his painting, unsure of what to do with it, unsure of what it is or what it means. He paints color for the sake of it, she thinks, where she paints it to portray or to show lines and shapes. It's strange and she wants to see what she can make of it at least. So she reaches for chalk and starts where the paint has dried, up in the fractures of the sky--it's the sky she thinks, melding into sea--and she gently puts a line of white, separating sky from sea, ground from heavens. The colors above are mixed like clouds, tumbling over mountains and shore.

Brown and red mountains along the back of the shore, just shapes, beneath a sky, along the sea, back beyond it. Then skimming across the ocean, lines of color from a city that is only light in the darkness and soft patches of greenpink from the sky reflecting bright and beautiful. A few ships are scattered far back in this bay and she put them in in night colors, the colors of indigo and black, framed in in her green as the light touches. She tries to work in color, not lines now, patches of brights and darks.

The shore is harder, beyond the dots of light of a city so far back, away from the land in the front and so she simply adds by taking away. The land disappears beneath deep browns and indigo, spots of reds and greens and teals. No hives here, just land, like the land near where they set out on the First Ship, quiet and free from trolls. Lusus white is grey as she draws in small beasts, a tiny barkbeast in the shadows of a tree and a strange mix of bird and beast she once saw with its paws in the shallows and head dipped to catch fish.

When she pulls back enough to look at it all, it looks strange. So obviously the work of two people that she wants to wipe it all away. He paints and she sketches over it, adding in lines and places and things--she thinks he'd hate it. Her adding in the things she sees in it without even asking.

It's a world with only the barest touch of the trolls who ruled it and it's so peaceful. She wonders if he wanted peaceful in this.

Terezi returns to her own drawing when she tells them to start again, but she remains keenly aware of what they seem to be so absorbed in. It's not that she doesn't trust them not to be jerks about this, but she knows how fragile this is. There's a tension in her shoulders that she can't relax away, and her own doodles are more stilted and unfocused.

But they seem to be behaving, and that's as much as she could hope for in this case. It's impossible to tell what they're thinking. She hopes that they're gaining some kind of understanding... that this isn't some pointless thing that she's forcing on them. She hopes that they won't walk away and forget it as soon as they're done.

"Okay, you can stop," she says after a lengthy amount of time. She moves out of the way again, scooting back and facing them from across the drawings. She doesn't doubt that curiosity will draw them to look at what the other had drawn with their picture, but she doesn't provoke any kind of conversation just yet. Instead she turns her head slightly, facing one and then the other, waiting expectantly for one of them to say something--either to her or to the other.

He looks. His eyes trail over each added in line, hers so set, neat, distinctly being. She takes the fractures and the holes of the world and she puts the world in them. In the empty, she puts things there and somehow manages to do so without a bit of chaos. It ain't just waters sky. There are things to see and uncover, even as god still lies beyond. He compares them both, and there's almost a glaze over his eyes, like he's seeing something entirely beyond that of drawings on the floor.

"IT AIN'T MEANINGLESS, YOU KNOW. Every piece has a purpose. EVERY COLOR A MEANING. It's all alive. EVEN THE THINGS WHAT AIN'T LIVING. All spirit. EVEN THAT WHAT AIN'T DEAD."

He traces his fingers over the spirals of fear, soul, come from each and every motherfucker in her drawn in hives. "In all the little places it comes apart... IT PIECES BACK TOGETHER AGAIN WITHOUT FAIL, ONE WAY OR OTHER." He lifts fingers away from those interlocking lines and pieces. His eyes close and his head tilts back. The revelations come easier that way, like a prayer made without the press of palms.

"You said, the spectrum here is made from pigments, not blood," He says. "BUT YOU REMINDED HIM. His brother spilled blood all of his own. YELLOW HE ALL DID AND IN SO HONOR OF WHAT I HAD GAINED, I SOUGHT TO PAINT. I did not thieve from him. I ASKED AND SO HE OFFERED. Freely given. FREELY TAKEN. A hand up an extended where blade could so have been, even knowing who all I was to be more so than myself."

He's already damned. By association with all them, the reason has already been committed. He can't ever go back. His head lowers.

"I CANNOT PAY THE DEBT THAT IS OWED. I ain't understand for the goddamn life of he your motherfucking ways. I AIN'T ALL ANYONE BUT WHO ALL THE FUCK I BE. But things are different now. YOU ARE, THE WHOLE GODDAMN LOT OF YOU HERE, THE STRANGEST TROLLS WHAT AS HE'S EVER KNOWN, BUT... IF HE MAY BE SO ALLOWED..."

He lifts his hand up to his teeth, pressing into and breaking the scarred flesh in the center of his palm. He pulls it back and squeezes the hand shut tight as the indigo wells up.

He says, "I want at to finally see where the pieces come back together."

He opens his hand and holds it between them, over where the line separates each piece. Some of it drips through his fingers, erasing that white mark. He still does not look at her or Terezi, yet his color is there to take.

Edited 2014-04-15 19:59 (UTC)

She doesn't know what to say. Seeing what he added to her memory, her time, and she wonders what it means really. The colors mean something, she thinks, something more than just what they are, because the color form something that is more than just the small shapes of each pull of the hue. It's odd, in a way, because the world is colored in such vibrancy and light when he paints in the things around them.

Gold heart and gold hands and stars above and she doesn't know what to say, not even when he speaks. Her eyes don't lift from the floor, because she doesn't want to do this. She doesn't want to try again and she doesn't want to do this out of some sheer stubbornness. Maybe it's because Terezi made this happen--or because Terezi couldn't leave it alone. Or maybe she just doesn't know what she wants out of this.

In another lifetime they were close, very close, but how close is too close and how close makes things fracture all the way into another life. Her breath catches when his hand reaches close, over, when he talks about debt to paid and understanding.

Her fingers touch in the space between them and she doesn't look at Terezi because this feels more private and initimate and for all she feels for Terezi, she doesn't want to be congratulated for this. She doesn't want teasing when this is done, when whatever this is is done. It feels too fragile, if anything, to subject to someone else's gaze.

Warm blood on her fingertips and his palm beneath that. She lifts her fingers, letting it drip and pool in the cup of his hand and she finally speaks.

"Did you want mine?" She doesn't know what is expected or needed in this, what he wants from her, beyond the trust to try. To try something.

For all of Meulin's fear that Terezi might take the opportunity to tease her for this, her fears are unfounded. She sits there, quiet and respectful as the grave, as if holding her breath while they exchange words. Her fists are clenched tightly in her lap, nails digging into her palms.

She wants to hope that this means things will be okay between them, but she doesn't dare to just yet.

The blood is taken. Initiate's eyes close again.

"YOU AIN'T GOT TO," He says. "Freely given, freely taken."

He dips in his own fingers with the other hand and begins to smear out that white line. He doesn't mind. He just wanted that gesture returned, where all it could mean something.

And his is the darkest color, erasing the white.

Does he still feel like she could turn on him? Yes, he does. Truthfully, there is still an ever present tenseness in his muscle, fear rung in his bones. That all be still a thing. It's everything he wouldn't have wanted to do not so long ago. He's making an offer, accepting hers. He wouldn't dare say it was easy. Easy would've been just killing one another when they had the chance. A small part of him hates them all for it. But enough of him doesn't.

He wants something more to hold onto here, so in selfishness, he takes. He asks, "WHY DO YOU TAKE TO THE PICTURES AS ALL YOU DO? Why do you paint?"

The blood on her fingers is cooling and she looks at the art in front of her. Chalk and paint mixed in lines and shapes. The indigo is bright but dark on her fingertips, standing out against the gray of her hands like a traffic signal, like a warning. She smears it as a figure on the shore, quick little strokes with the very very tips of her fingers to make the person small in the overall picture. The scale is off in places but she doesn't want that to be the focus.

Her gaze lifts to his when he asks her a question and she could answer it with a shrug but it seems like he's done all the talking--maybe to make up for when she did all the reaching. But she wants to at least try.

"I paint to show things that happened mostly. Because I enjoy it and people can understand things better with a picture to go along with it. If you're saying heretical things like--well the spectrum is a circle with no top of bottom, they don't understand until you can show it."

She runs her hand into his paint and darts it out, reds to oranges, skipping from color to color until tyrian lays smashed back up against red and any point of the circle could be the top or the bottom of their worldview.

"Or--just to keep memories alive. I suppose I've done that most of all. Like that--that's the last night I had with all of them."

She gestures at the town, "Before we were caught. Ironic I guess."

His breath catches just that little bit, when she paints the indigo figure down on the shore. An insignificant figure there, but the only one to be seen. His eyes lift back up to meet hers a second too slow, still caught by the figure there.

He nods at her explanation, watches her continue to paint. He tilts his head at the spectrum turned in a circle. The royal fuchsia joins right up to the lowest red, looking like it's just natural progression, while all the same setting old instincts alight, old things learned and taught up in the empire's structure, in the subjugglators. She calls it like it is; heresy. At the same time, he's painted royal violet and rust next to each other plenty before.

She explains more still-- his eyes moving over to the picture before him-- and at the end of explanation he winces. He hasn't the words that could suffice. He doesn't want to ask what happened. He doesn't want to know the details of it.

Again he hesitates over the silhouettes. Again he thinks, he shouldn't touch them, but he does. He's felt Mituna's fear-- he can draw it perfect around him. He doesn't know hers, hasn't felt it personally and that's strange in itself, to know someone without have felt that. He guesses the shapes of hers from the way she moves, how she's been in the past.

"Would she believe him if he said, when at he was young, he didn't know the spectrum were to be a thing up at all?" He asks. "THOUGHT THERE WERE ALL KINDS OF COLOR WHAT ALL HE HADN'T SEEN JUST WAITING AT TO BE FOUND. Not just twelve." He pauses in the confession to then add, "THIRTEEN."

He... does remember the shape of his. He doesn't want to paint that one's. But it won't work without all of them so, reluctantly, he does.

He continues, "Never painted for no one else. WEREN'T NO POINT." He gestures to the figure on the shore. It never really mattered much out there. "But it be true," He says, "In what utterances be of she. YOU CAN UNDERSTAND COLOR. You can take what don't make sense none and all as such it becomes a thing what all does. YOU CAN TAKE THE INTANGIBLE. You can make safe there. YOU CAN MAKE IT ALL SO THE PAINT IS TO BE KEEPING ALL THE FUCK SAFE." Clarity. Security. Prayer.

He hesitates even longer on the last and final figure. He has no idea who this is. A guess, sure, but no way to know.

She shakes her head as he goes on, shakes it harder when he says the paint keeps it safe. Keeps what safe? She doesn't understand. But she understands not knowing what the spectrum was, not knowing colors stop in clear lines like that or that there was a finite end to the possibilities. It doesn't stop, not in clear lines, if she melds hte edges together, mixes and she does, blending the edges together until the space between teal and cerulean is just a gradient, until rust and royal melt into each other and look beautiful in their heretical melding.

"No one knows it from the beginning. Someone teaches us and we learn and we have to unlearn it again. Or realize that not everything we learn is true." She lifts her head, watching for the Peacekeepers or someone to notice their conversation, but they're lucky and the Capitol has better things to worry about than three trolls painting.

"I don't make anything safe, I just...try to pull a picture from it. It's not magical or anything, it's not even right I guess. You paint for the sake of it but I have to go in and make it into something." Shoulders shrugging, she hesitates at the last figure he is paused above. Her name is sacred, something special and she doesn't want to speak it. She's so afraid of calling her down onto them, of bringing her back to watch the death over and over.

"His lusus. That's her. What--what are you painting around us?"

She doesn't get it. He could explain, maybe, but he decides not to. That ain't a part what needs to be understood. If she can't guess, he doesn't want to explain it for the intimacy of it.

She speaks of unlearning the spectrum like it just be damn logical as of to do. He never saw no fish to be better than him. He never saw anyone to be better than him. Maybe the empress-- before her sins were clear-- but only in loose terms, only for her power, her highness up and meaning it, every stride worked for. The Messiahs were better. Those in the highest reaches of the church were higher. Everyone else? Well, he had figured everyone else could just be damned. Now? Mituna was better. Others. The Disciple doesn't want to hear about all that, he's sure.

But her last question, he can explain. (Even as his thoughts falter over the last figure being called a lusus. He gets a suspicion then.) "He can feel fear," He says, looking up at her. "TIMES PRIOR TO WHAT BE OF NOW, WHEN HIS POWER WAS HIS OWN, HE COULD FEEL EVERYONE. No one likes it, fear, but its part and important, ain't always bad. IT ONLY MAKES TO FADE UP OUT OF REACHING WHEN ALL THE SOUL GETS GONE. It's being part of the soul, don't you know? EVERYONE'S GOT AT FOR A DIFFERENT FEELING. Different form. DIFFERENT MOTHERFUCKING MEANS. But when motherfucker's be all nearlike such, it gets on bleeding on together. TAKES WHOLE NEW FORM, ALL THEM SOULS."

The cities were always overwhelming like that. The church, even more so when he could feel everyone else up and prodding back, everyone taking and giving little pieces of each other without even meaning to, even as it was done in spite.

"He ain't see how all that ain't being magic. CAN'T BE ON SAYING TRUE THAT SUCH THINGS AT BEING SOMETHING. See here," he points to the cracks, now turned anew in her picture, "That's where all the lost things go, sister, what all we forget, them be the holes in the world what all speak." He points to the rainbow shining water and says, "ALL THEM COLORS, ALL THEM LOST SOULS BE GETTING THEIR WHISPER UP AND ON THEY DO IF ALL YOU LISTEN." He touches on the spiral, then on the dark figure cradling her memory. "The wicked mysteries be there, leaving mark. GETTING RIGHTEOUS OBSERVANCE TO THE ACTS WHAT BE." He points to the green whispers coming of the red marked mouth then back to the marks around the figures, and around the hives as he says, "There you see the wicked word in wait. AND IT GETS ON FEELING LIKE ALL THEM SOULS, YOU SEE, ONLY BIGGER." He points to the eyes of the figure. "Look upon, where all such gandering be getting happenstance. THERE ARE TALES, DON'T YOU KNOW. One says at be the eyes of the first empress and the demoness. OTHERS SAY IT BE THE SIGHTSPHERES OF THE HOLY. I heard tell of one, that first Being cast stone up unto the skies, and further still of it being shattered pieces of soul and time. BUT HE DOES KNOW, THEY WATCH. They listen. THIS HE KNOWS TO BE TRUE."

He straightens and pulls back. Beholding again the way her pieces meld with his, the earthly and the greater getting their mingle up and on. You could miss one, just looking at the other. "There's magic up in it," He says. "MOTHERFUCKER'S JUST AIN'T LOOKING AT IT RIGHT IS ALL."

All said and done, he starts to finish the last figure's surrounding spirit, each one interlocking and intertwining then.

Edited 2014-04-16 06:22 (UTC)

She shivers when she looks at the picture again, seeing the fear he painted around the town, the city, the way it poured off in confused tangled waves. She sees the fear around them, down there, small against the wall, the fear a beacon in the dark. If all indigos could see that, it was a wonder they weren't caught sweeps and sweeps ago. She listens, but her world is too grounded in the pratical for it to make sense. The idea of a being there who listens or watches--she doesn't understand what it means. It could be there, it could? But what does that mean, what does it matter?

"The moons...I really don't, I don't think we could agree on any of this. I don't see these things in the world, the moons are there, bright and lighting our way in life, but they're simply beacons in the dark. Stones cast up or the eyes of lowest and highest--they...they make good stories."

She touches the water, feels the layers of color swirled in mass, "This--this though seems more real. I know powers work in ways I'd never understand, I don't know how Mituna lifts things without seeming to think. I don't know how the world looks to Terezi or how Seeing things works. So this--the colors and shapes and whispers of fear, that--"

It seems plausible, real, a picture of the way things feel. IF she painted how she hears things, it might comes like this, colors bright around things, showing the noise, but she doesn't see it in colors in her mind. His whole way of life is a mystery to her, from his religion to his power.

He wonders, suddenly, and perhaps not FOR the first time, how that movement of theirs ever got accepted as a faith. He can't imagine faith without magic. It's an atheist view. It feels real damn empty.

"He couldn't live your way," He says. He states it as simple fact. "THERE'S SO MUCH WHAT ALL TO SEE. Things up and to get an experience on for. TO NOT HAVE AT FOR SUCH..." He shakes his head. It's a desolate existence. He'd rather never to exist at all. "It's much more motherfucking beautiful this way," He insists.

He continues to blend away at line between the two pictures. "SHE SHOULD TRY IT. Just motherfucking once," He says lower. "YOU AIN'T NEED POWER ALL FOR IT. Step outside and feel, that's all what a motherfucker's got at to do."

She reaches for the line, pulls her fingers through the white chalk and leaves little lines there, perfect in the dust. He seems so completely confused by her sometimes, like she's a creature he couldn't understand, but he's the same way. She has faith in herself, in Signless, in their ideals and beliefs. She doesn't need something greater because her world is great as it is. It's alive.

"I do see things--I feel things. Forests are alive, it's not just trolls that feel things, you can see the world in the silence of--of this." She places her hand on the shore, the forest surrounding it, lightly held there to not lift up the chalk.

"You see things in trolls, their fear, and because everyone fears, they're alive and they have--a soul? But I don't need to see fear to know things are alive. That they have souls? Do you not think beasts fear or love or hate? That plants are alive--they are. And silence is never silent, you can hear everything, leaves shifting and animals moving, small things scurrying in the dirt. It's beautiful by itself, it doesn't need some greater person to make it that way."

"HERE PERHAPS IT AIN'T QUIET," He says, touching the forest. "Or here. WHERE ALL THE CITY BE." He touches the hives on the other side. He touches the shore, the indigo figure on it. "Not here." He pulls his fingers away and the indigo from his palm drips in splatters on the painted ground around the figure. "NOT WITHOUT THEM MYSTICS."

It might ruin everything, but for a minute he doesn't care. He picks more colors to dot like splatters around the figure.

"Beautiful, yes," He agrees. "BUT WITHOUT THEM WHISPERS, WITHOUT THE GREATER? It is quiet." And he says that last word just the same.

"THE BEASTS? Probably. PLANTS. Maybe." It's hard to associate those noises with anything but the inevitable strife, the roar of the beast, the rustle of the plants around them.

Edited 2014-04-21 00:46 (UTC)

She just shakes her head, she doesn't know what he means. Quiet isn't bad, it isn't silent ever, the world has sound and life even in the darkest places.

"Does it matter? The whispers, the--greater? What does that mean? If the world is alive without the greater things you talk about, if it's beautiful and lovely without it, why do you need more? I don't get it--"

She shifts backwards, grabbing a piece of chalk and put sound in the world. The soft dull noise of the city is just that, dull and flat, using the side of the chalk to make a little cloud, the waves are highlight in white--splashing in lines that arc out in lines just barely there, the background noise of the world. The trees that same dull noise, the side of the chalk but in little halos around the trees. The line of a song--sweet and yet dangerous, is a wavering line of white. She adds more, the splashing of the beast in the shallows is undulating lines, the bark of a beast is spikes, flaring out. Then she grabs a pink, a green, starts outline the beasts in the bright pink, the plants in greens. Life.

When she's done, she slams the chalk down hard on the indigo figure, creating a smear of pink/green on it. Life.

"Why do you need more to things when the world is beautiful as it is? I don't get it, why do you need to add more color when the world is full of it. The world is ablaze with it!"

"WHY NOT?! What's wrong with that? WHAT'S SO GODDAMN WRONG WITH WANTING AND SEEING MORE THAN WHAT ALL OTHERS UP AND DO, BRINGING THAT UP IN THERE, AIN'T THAT WHAT ALL YOU TRY FOR?!" He stops himself. He's not supposed to be snapping at her. He's supposed to be... he ain't motherfucking know. Trying.

He keeps his eyes close and lips pressed into a line. He breathes, keeping Mituna in his mind, until he's sure he can speak again.

She's a faithless. Of course she ain't gonna hear them whispers. Of course she can't hear the Messiahs voices. Of course she don't feel all of this and recognize it as being part of the same picture as something important, special, beautiful. If she could, they wouldn't be here doing this.

She slaps pink on him, for life. But he doesn't see that. He sees her marking him with the Empress. He sees more death.

"Nevermind," He says. "FORGET IT."

The conversation had been going to well. Terezi was nearly ecstatic with the way that they had been talking. It really felt like maybe she had found something they could both understand. Some way that they could communicate where everything else had failed.

But then the conversation catches a snag. She can feel tempers escalating, the whole thing unraveling in front of her.

"Why can't it be both things?" she cuts in, after being silent for so long. She wonders if either of them had forgotten that she was still there, overseeing this discussion. She's not sure that she knows where she's going with this--just that she doesn't want them to draw lines in the sand again.

"Sometimes... A picture is good enough as is, and you have to respect the feelings that are already there. Whoever or whatever made that picture, whatever person or group of people or things... They had a reason for what they did and a feeling behind it. That kind of thing deserves respect."

Terezi reaches out to trace Meulin's silhouetted figures with one hand, moving across the city to touch the murky water and sky of Fraysong's drawing. They're both gorgeous in their own right. She honestly believes that. But the images over top add another level of beauty, and she touches them next as she continues:

"But there isn't anything wrong with wanting to make it better, too. Or wanting to add your mark to it, to put your feelings into it for others to experience, to show that there's something more. If we were all content to leave things the way they were, nothing would ever change or grow. The world would be stagnant without that kind of passion. Wouldn't it?"

She draws back and up, her body as tight as a wire as she feels the moment leave them, feels him give up--and she didn't mean his picture. She meant....meant something. Something different. The sound of her huffy sigh is lost when Terezi speaks and she watches the fingertips trace over their pictures. Her hands curl against her legs and she shakes her head.

"I didn't mean his picture--I meant--Things don't have to mean something more to be beautiful. His pictures, they're fine, beautiful, surely, but we both know this isn't about our pictures in the end. We both have passion in the way we draw and paint.

We just see the world in different ways. And our drawings make that obvious. You see the fear in the world and see it as being--I don't know, created or based in something bigger and that's what makes it beautiful to you? But I see it as full of life and things and I just don't need the extra things to make it beautiful. I'm not even sure I could feel the things you feel--it's part of being a blood that has powers."

She reaches over and taps Psiionic, on his heart of gold, "I could never understand his powers and how he sees the world but we accepted we'd never see things the same way. I just don't see why you keep trying to force the way you see things onto me--it's not like how I see all blood equal because that's a philosophy, yours is a fundamental state of being, your powers are a part of you and I can never really understand them. Of course it's both, because we can both see the things at a fundamental level the same way, we're both looking at the same world. We just perceive it in different ways."

He listens to Terezi, feeling on the edge of something. Like he was on that rooftop. And then he's falling again and its slipping away.

"It's not extra. IT'S PART. That's why it's..." He still sounds defensive. He feels like when he was just one among a crowd, an outlier. He's trying to understand but he can't.

"YOUR PEOPLE. They're important to you, aren't they? IS IT BECAUSE THEY'RE ALIVE OR BECAUSE THEY MEAN SOMETHING TO YOU?" And he's trying anyway and it feels foolish. A waste of time. Can't teach, can't learn. He shakes his head. They could, things could change, they had already, and he'd seen it, it helped him.

But he's not going to be part of it no matter how and who is trying.

"You don't have to see it, Disciple. HE AIN'T GOING TO FORCE THIS AS ALL YOU SAY." He starts to stand up. Straight and tall. He looks at Terezi and he looks at her blank faced (as if she were a higher up of subjugglators, as if he's just another faceless soldier). "Permission for him to go, Terezi. THE TWO OF YOU CAN CONTINUE AS IS."

For a moment, Terezi thinks that maybe they'll be able to work past this roadblock. She's hopeful that there will be some kind of understanding reached between them. It feels like two trains passing, and she can feel the rush of their closeness, but ultimately they pull away again, unable to merge. She doesn't know how to change the tracks they're on.

Fraysong stands, and the way that he addresses her with the blank stare has her fumble for words at first. Her shoulders raise a little, defensively. "You don't need my permission," she says, knowing full well that she doesn't want him to go. But she's not going to command him to stay, either. That's not the position that she wants to be in with him.

And I'll blend up that rainbow above you

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Terezi's sitting out for a few rounds (she'll be there just listening in)

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