Author: Wallwalker
Title: Cold-Blooded
Fandom: Homestuck
Character: Aradia
Word Count: 268
Challenge: Warmth
Rating: SFW, canon character death mention
Summary: Ever since Aradia was put into a new body, she's been far too cold.

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Aradia can't help being angry. She hates it, she struggles against it, but it's nearly impossible not to give in. It's the only thing that keeps her warm.

Being in this robot body wasn't the same as being dead. She was used to being a ghost, feeling nothing; she'd barely noticed the temperature at all. It was just the wind that blew through her, nothing more. But she'd had her memories, and somehow that had sustained her, in the absence of any other input.

But this was so much worse! The metal shell and its blue blood might as well have been ice water; she couldn't stay comfortable, even when she was standing in a literal fire. She wants her old blood back, the rusty red that warmed her from within, and she doesn't care if she burns out! Living like this, or whatever it was she was doing... that wasn't living at all!

She wasn't given a choice in any of this, and that's what really kills her. She knew, on some level, that highbloods saw lowbloods as playthings, but it was an entirely different thing to have her body stripped away by one and then rebuilt by another, only completely wrong. Sometimes she just wanted to send all of her clones into the sun at once, just to show that she still could make a decision like that.

But that would doom them all. And not everyone deserved it. That's the only reason she keeps going.