Posted originally on the Archive_of_Our_Own at https://archiveofourown.org/
works/933791.
  Rating:
      Explicit
  Archive Warning:
      Underage, Graphic_Depictions_Of_Violence
  Category:
      Multi, M/M
  Fandom:
      Homestuck
  Relationship:
      Sollux_Captor♥The_Psiioniic, Sollux_Captor/Feferi_Peixes, Sollux_Captor/
      Karkat_Vantas, Terezi_Pyrope♣Sollux_Captor
  Character:
      Sollux_Captor, The_Psiioniic, Karkat_Vantas, Feferi_Peixes, Aradia
      Megido, The_Condesce, Terezi_Pyrope, Vriska_Serket, Tavros_Nitram, Nepeta
      Leijon, Equius_Zahhak, Eridan_Ampora, Kanaya_Maryam, Tiresias_-
      Character, Sollux's_Lusus, Gamzee_Makara
  Additional Tags:
      Alternate_Universe_-_No_Sgrub_Session, Body_Horror, Dream_Sharing,
      Helmsman, Captorcest_-_Freeform, ancestorcest, Age_Difference, Flushed
      Romance_|_Matesprits, Pale_Romance_|_Moirallegiance, Caliginous_Romance_|
      Kismesis, Hurt/Comfort, Dream_Sex, Weirdness, Mental_Health_Issues,
      fixing_Alternia_is_hard, it's_hard_and_no_one_understands, Everything_is
      Beautiful_and_Everything_Hurts, Revolution, sort_of, Explicit_Sexual
      Content, Blood, Abuse, Suicidal_Thoughts, Identity_Blurring, Quadrant
      Confusion, Ashen_Romance_|_Auspistice, Codependency, Relationship
      Problems, PTSD, Neuroplasticity_Horror, Brain_Hacking, medical_ethics
      problems_writ_large, Brinksmanship, holy_fucking_shit_brinksmanship, good
      grief_Sollux, Minor_Character_Death, Major_canonical_character/minor_in-
      story_character_death, Large-Scale_Geopolitical_Shenanigans, Medical
      Procedures, ritual_cannibalism
  Series:
      Part 3 of Wires_and_Stars
  Stats:
      Published: 2013-08-20 Updated: 2018-03-07 Chapters: 15/? Words: 79310
****** Wires and Stars: Consummation ******
by tatterdemalionAmberite_(amberite), titianArchivist
Summary
     ==> Present Sollux: You know what you have to do.
Notes
     As usual, warnings will be added as content is added, and specific
     chapter warnings will continue in chapter notes when it seems
     appropriate. (The M rating starts at chapter 2, and goes to E
     somewhere within a couple more chapters of this juncture, so we added
     that early.)
     Consummation is where we start having an entire shipping grid (which
     Titian and I legit doodled in crayon when we met in person. EXCELLENT
     LIFE CHOICES I say.) I'm not going to post every single relationship
     in the tags right now, so as to avoid spamming them, as the focus is
     still on Sollux and what he sees and feels and goes through, and most
     of the others are in the periphery. But the open_spoiler_policy still
     stands. We will happily not only tell you if our story will punch you
     in the feels (answer: probably) but also exactly how it will punch
     you in the feels and what the aftercare will be like, because
     aftercare is important.
     New soundtrack songs for Consummation are:
     ThouShaltNot - Trial By Fire
     Loch Lomond - Wax and Wire
     Chapter titles may be lines from these or sometimes from songs used
     in Initiation.
***** here and now it doesn't matter the highway you have taken *****
==> Present Sollux: Awaken.
You're already awake. You're in your recuperacoon, and it's the crack of dusk
(odd, being awake right then, not so much earlier or later) and you don't
remember sleeping - no, you do, you saw Astris, like always, and -
And it makes you suddenly breathless to feel the ongoing rhythm of starship
noise in the back of your mind, not on the frequency bands of the dying,
because you remember what was about to begin, and you're tight-chested and glad
and sorry - you remember everything.
Your ablutions are cursory and by the time you're done Trollian is already
dinging. You take a deep breath and look.
 -- apocalypseArisen [AA] began trolling twinArmageddons --
AA: s0llux
AA: what did y0u d0 t0 the timeline
TA: ii don’t know, aa, are you 2tiill a collectiion of robot2?
AA: n0
TA: what do you remember?
AA: i remember things that didnt happen
AA: like being a c0llection of r0b0ts
TA: yeah me two.
AA: n0 i think i remember m0re than the rest 0f y0u.
AA: i remember things that didnt happen even when 0ther things that didnt
happen happened
TA: what doe2 that even MEAN.
AA: its hard t0 explain
AA: i kn0w i was supp0sed t0 tell y0u i was s0rry
AA: 0nce
AA: but i d0nt kn0w what i meant by that n0w
TA: no, don't even 2tart that 2hiit, ii thiink we have e2tablii2hed that you
are not even allowed two be 2orry for anythiing untiil ii have been
apologiizing for longer than eiither of u2 could normally be aliive.
AA: that w0rd
TA: what word?
AA: n0rmal. was it supp0sed to be
AA: a funny j0ke
TA: ...no, ii don't thiink 2o.
AA: 0k
AA: i remember that y0u like it when i laugh
AA: s0 i am trying t0 remember t0 d0 that
You sit there for a moment so completely stunned that you can’t think of what
to say, frozen in place until a tear falls into the keyboard of your husktop
and you jerk back, irritably, swiping at the keys so the sensitive hardware
won’t gum up.
TA: aa, you don’t have two do that.
you type, wishing desperately that she’ll respond, react, argue with you,
insist - that somewhere in that strange placid collection of impressions and
memories and voices you’ll strike a mark, find a stray ornery feeling, but:
AA: 0kay
You're not sure what to say to that, so you just open up another tab.
-- twinArmageddons [TA] began trolling cuttlefishCuller --
TA: hey feferii.
CC: You )(ardly ever call me by name! 38D
TA: 2o you remember me, then, that'2 good.
TA: what el2e do you remember?
CC: EV--ERYFIN! I t)(ink.
CC: And Eridan remembers me breaking up wit)( )(im, at any rate. )(e's trying
to get me to )(ake )(im back. 38C
CC: Wow, t)(is is reely complicated. Your matesprit... is alive now, again?
TA: ye2.
And the memories you're integrating are all starting to fold in on you, to
coalesce at some gravitational center that you didn't know you possessed; that
you didn't possess, yestereve, in this timeline. You're going to need to speak
up, you're going to need to act; it's taking shape in your mind, outside your
mind. Of all the stupid pivot points for the fate of the world, a Trollian chat
seems the most ridiculous, but you can feel the probabilities winding about you
and Feferi, pulling heavy and tight.
This is going to be the most impossible thing you've asked of anyone, ever. And
you still don't feel worthy of demanding the respect it will require to be at
the center of this. But at the same time, there's no one else who can start
this off and see it through, and you feel more certain of that with each
passing moment.
You take a deep breath and type:
TA: feferii, do you tru2t me?
TA: no, wrong que2tiion, what ii need to a2k ii2 how MUCH do you tru2t me?
CC: I said I would bereef you, and I did; does t)(at answer your question?
TA: maybe.
TA: if ii told you we would need two change the world, what would you 2ay?
The chat window is dead for what you know is less than half a minute, but it
feels like sweeps pass while you wait for her answer.
CC: I would say I've known t)(at was true for a long time!
CC: But you manta t)(at more t)(an abstractly, didn't you?
TA: ye2.
TA: and thii2 ii2 goiing two requiire you front and center, ii thiink you know
why.
CC: I'll follow your lead w)(et)(er or not you still )(ave romantic feelings
for me, Sollux.
CC: And gudgeon some sense into you w)(enever you need me to. 38D
TA: ii have a lot of feeliing2 about you, ff.
TA: ii don't know how two cla22iify them riight now becau2e of everythiing that
never happened.
TA: ii mean iin thii2 tiimeliine we techniically haven't kii22ed yet, but that
doe2n't mean ii don't remember kii22iing you, ii do, and ii want you iin my
liife and iin my quadrant2, and not iin a caliigiinou2 quadrant, but out2iide
of that, everythiing ii2 compliicated.
CC: It sure as S)(-ELL is!
CC: But you're s)(rimportant to me and you minnow your s)(it.
CC: Yea)(, we need to do somefin. T)(e question is w)(at. I've t)(oug)(t aboat
t)(is before and I don't want to sea our friends )(urt for nofin. 38C
TA: ii wa2 thiinkiing that way two, but now ii'm realiiziing they have 2kiin
iin the game them2elve2.
You double-check your proxy settings before going on, even though you're not
using words that should trip a surveillance bot.
TA: efiin iif any iindiiviidual troll among them could 2urviive a2cen2iion, a2
a whole... ii know two many of theiir 2ecret2 now two thiink they could all
make iit.
TA: two many mutatiion2 and iidiio2yncra2iie2.
TA: ii mean a2iide from the problem of kk'2 blood, or what'2 goiing two happen
two me by majoriity, iif ii don't cull my2elf fiir2t, whiich we can all agree
ii2 ju2t...
TA: well... ii thiink ii have a 2liightly 2maller a22load of nope for culliing
my2elf but we don't need two 2pliit haiir2, eiither way we are up two our nook2
iin metriic a22load2 of nope.
CC: You alwaves )(ave suc)( lovely mental images, Sollux!
TA: ii aiim two plea2e.
TA: anywave2...
TA: wow, iit feel2 weiird u2iing your oceaniic pun2, liike ii've been doiing
iit for nearly a periigee, and at the 2ame tiime ii know ii've never done iit
before.
TA: iit'2 liike we've...doubled back.
TA:
[http://www.mspaintadventures.com/storyfiles/hs2/scraps/trollcool.gif]
CC: 38D
Three more alerts are going off at the same time. You open up the chats all at
once, squinting at your screen, as if that would somehow shield your eyes from
the unknown contents.
-- gallowsCalibrator [GC] began trolling twinArmageddons [TA] --
GC: 1S 1T JUST M3 OR D1D MR V4N1LL4 M1LKSH4K3 T4ST3 L3SS OBNOX1OUS 1N TH1S
T1M3L1N3 >:P
-- carcinoGeneticist [CG] began trolling twinArmageddons [TA] --
CG: SO I GUESS THAT WAS ALL YOUR FAULT.
-- grimAuxiliatrix [GA] began trolling twinArmageddons [TA] --
GA: What The Fuck Should I Do About Vriska
GA: She Thinks We Have Yet To Play The Game
GA: Which Is Technically True Only Im Pretty Sure We Will Not Be Doing That
Anymore
GA: She Doesnt Remember Anything
You copy-paste the same line into all three windows.
TA: how the fuck 2hould ii know, ii'm only the 2oftware engiineer.
==> Sollux: Deal with these trolls later. Get back to FF.
TA: let'2 meet up a2 2oon a2 we can, ii don't want thii2 two waiit.
~~~
==> Reader: Wait a minute here. The game isn't going to happen in this
timestream, right? So why am I getting these command prompts?
Ah, yes. You have waited so patiently; what am I to do but resume my expository
function for you? I was telling you about CANCELLED SESSIONS, and now you have
the background knowledge to understand the implications. Very well, then. I
shall continue.
A CANCELLED SESSION results when a player makes a decision in the course of
play which restores their universe to a pre-Reckoning state and removes
gameplay from the timeline.
However, due to TIME SHENANIGANS, events which happen within the game are
always necessary antecedents for events which have happened prior to the
Reckoning, including but not limited to ectobiological loops and interventions
of First Guardians. Like the original White Text Guy, who has now never
existed.
==> Then how did all the...
That’s where I come in. Or rather, came in at the beginning of the universe, in
this iteration. You may call me Tiresias.
The template that gave rise to Doc Scratch, AKA Mr. Vanilla Milkshake, AKA
White Text Guy, in the previous iteration of the universe, birthed me instead
in this one. Call it the stray whim of a universe never to be born. The private
joke of a fertile imagination so interwoven with the Horrorterrors that its
tendency toward obscure references has carried through into timelines that
preceded it; timelines it would not otherwise ever touch.
But leaving aside the significance of my moniker: in a CANCELLED SESSION, the
game elements which are retroactively necessary to the universe remain in place
- or more accurately, are substituted with elements of identical function.
Or mostly-identical function. Despite the sterling quality of my sinister
machinations and near-omniscience, I am an utterly terrible host. And I am not
shepherding the universe toward apocalypse. Rather, I deal in the dangling and
resolution of loose ends; I supply alternate beginnings and endings to devices
within the framework of the game that would otherwise be at a loss.
==> So do you really have, you know...
The context here is a planet full of hermaphroditic aliens. My gender
presentation is the most irrelevant thing we could possibly drag into this
meta-narrative sideline.
But I have inherited my predecessor's infinite supply of command prompts. Take
as many as you please.
~~~
==> Sollux: await and plan.
Even with all possible security measures, you think it's prudent to wait to
meet in a physical location before laying out plans in their entirety. So
you've arranged to see Feferi first, have her check whether your nascent ideas
seem sound, and then…
Then you're going to involve everyone else. One at a time, mostly. Somewhere
where communications aren't recorded, which feels threatening to you even
though it's for your own protection.
But right now: right now you're hearing that shift in the back of your mind,
the distinct sensation of attention that you feel when a part of his
consciousness peels away from the ship, restless, searching, scanning - alert,
maybe, to the difference in your own mind - and you switch off the speakers on
your husktop and close your eyes, breathing, bringing into focus - feeling the
sudden vertigo of reorienting, in dream you're standing, and he's -
You throw yourself into Astris’ arms while the dreamspace is still half-
raveled, shaking and clinging even though you’re being too abrupt and he is
startled, still getting his bearings, phasing in and out of solidity. “I’m
sorry, I’m so sorry,” you’re saying, the words coming out your mouth faster
than you can actually think them through. “I - I think I chose the wrong way, I
didn’t know what he was saying, what he was offering me, and I’m too selfish,
I’m always too selfish -”
With the final flicker he gathers you in but it’s automatic, it isn’t really
comforting, he doesn’t know. “Sollux, d -” He stops, his face half-buried in
your hair. You hold your breath - “Your memory” - but he only pulls you in
tighter - “What happened to your memory?”
“I haven’t, I haven’t lost anything, I remember too much,” you stammer, “I
don’t know if I can explain everything -” and for once you’re the one being
judicious, the one holding back floods of information, scared that the wrong
thing let slip might devastate.
But what you are not being now is tenuous. Frightened and exhilarated, giddy
with relief soured all over with guilt but you know what you know and the only
way to go is forward. You don’t know if you can tell him the right things, or
if he’ll believe you, but that matters less because there are other secrets
now, and other reserves against doubt.
“Too much -” he echoes - “Too much - it’s blurred - planets -” - his hold
shifts, measuring - “You’ve changed, your... shoulders are - no -” His hands
grapple frantically at the back of your head, rush down your spine, and you
have to tell him.
“It’s okay, I - I’m still real,” you blurt out and it’s only when you do that
you realize one of the things that’s changed for you: that you’re more sure of
him than you ever have been before, you’ve completely discarded the last shreds
of doubt that cast him as a projection of your own mind. Both your hands still
brace on his ribcage, as you draw back just enough to look him in the eye -
“The timeline changed. It - there were things that were going to happen in the
next half-sweep, to the - the machinery of the universe. Things that did
happen. I lived through it all and I remember - and I’m not the only one who
remembers -”
You’re trying every tactic you know to dim or dull the memories he shouldn't
hear, but there’s one that in your rush of apology you couldn’t help but let
slip - that crawls bare and readable across your mental screen every time you
hear him speak -
“Your voices,” he whispers, and brushes fingertips across your temple as if
that would help him draw the memory out, as if just listening to him hadn’t
turned your thinkpan into a broken wireless tower broadcasting echoes of old
grief. “You never told me.”
And then he pulls you back in and presses his cheek to yours and just listens
and you know what he’s listening for but can’t tell what he’s finding until -
“But you don’t hear me anymore.”
“I never told you because that never happened. It happened and then it never
happened. I would have started hearing you just days from now - but now I
won’t, now I -”
It catches in your throat, a swallowed sob, and the words break into pieces on
it, this roiling mess of emotions so violently felt and so contradictory that
they push and shove at each other and make a hot blur of distress, the selfish
grief that gnawed at you and the profound relief of knowing he finally had
peace, would never be hurt again, and now both of them are over and all you can
say is “I’m sorry,” again, “I’m sorry.”
“Sollux, my own,” quiet and close in to your ear and how can Astris be so calm,
reaching up to rub near enough to one of your horns to comfort (but you don’t
want to be comforted, don’t even -) but not so close as to stifle - “I... gave
up that right for you. Perigees ago.” Until that point you could keep the tears
in, but you choke and shut your eyes hard and they still come spilling out and
he keeps saying these things while you try to get a breath to speak, to protest
- “I still wish for my life to end, but... I have no right to leave you. Or to
mourn that I am still here and... yours.” Quiet, even calm - but so close in he
can’t hide that his voice goes hoarse, can only keep you from seeing what the
dampness on your neck is.
"No!" You're almost shouting, volume too loud for the proximity but if you try
to control your voice now you won't be able to speak at all. "No, no, don't,
I'm not worth that, not what they do to you, don't tell me I am, I don't think
anyone is -"
He has to bend you down a little, now, to press a kiss to the crown of your
head, and your mind rebels against the tenderness even as your body leans into
it and he murmurs into your hair, "You say that you were offered my life and
did not have the strength to refuse it. Sollux, if I were offered death, I
would have no right to accept - and yet I have no doubt that I would embrace
it. Even though you... are worth so many millennia of pain to me that this ship
would grind into dust before I could serve such a sentence."
You are bristling, still, your arms braced against him even as you cry
helplessly into his collarbones. The discord drags a purr out of your throat,
involuntary, loud anxious precarious balanced in that space between resisting
and seeking comfort - but when he says I would embrace it the tension starts to
ebb out of you and you go quiet and still and soft and press into the warmth,
breathing out hard. Your mind still blazes with guilt, but only for right now,
not for everything that happened before or will happen after this, and your
voice is small and hushed. “I didn’t even know what I was choosing, only that
we were leaving behind the game,” you confess miserably. “But on some level I
think I did. You got to die, before - you got to die and I fucked it up.”
And Astris grasps at words, at your back through your shirt, mouths no but
doesn't say it as a shiver runs through him, warm breaths into your hair – "So
weak for all our power, you and I..." he mumbles half-audibly to himself, and
for what seems like a very long time he just looks at you as you drift and let
tears fall. When he speaks, you force your watery eyes to focus and his cheeks
and chin are just as sheened-over and blotchy as yours are. "I believe you. And
I forgive you, always, as many times as you need me to. As many times as I hope
you will forgive me, in the end."
"In some ways I have already," you tell him softly, remembering echoes of his
voice.
And for a moment he freezes tense against you as if you've shocked him, eyes
teary and lowered and watching your mouth as you speak – gaze slipping down to
the dingy green carpet, and in a rush, "I pity you so much, I want - to feel
everything you lived through, while - " And he gives up and just kisses you,
then, slick and urgent and tasting of salt.
You kiss him hungrily, half-disbelieving, still, distressed and comforted,
purring and crying at once, guilty even somehow for how hard you’re pulling him
to you, as if it wasn’t a manipulation of fate but the sheer force of your
wanting that turned the clock back and dragged the wretched world back into
being - you ready yourself to open your mind, and then realize -
“I can’t,” you tell him, “I’m sorry, I - some of it, yes. But not all of it.
Because it’s connected - it’s connected to something I can’t share.” You
breathe in deep and shaky, try to compose yourself, hands tight on his
shoulders - “I’m going to make you a promise now and it’s very large and I’m at
the very beginning of it. I won’t leave you this way forever, Astris, I swear
to you.”
His mind is so close against the edges of yours, stretching for nearly-given
snapped-shut memories, that perception swims with a marbling of his emotions
and yours when you make your promise, colors and edges and gratitude and guilt
–
- an almost-audible roar of something like angry helplessness, new or old you
can't be sure -
And his mind goes dark and detaches and you're separate again, all in less than
an eye's blink, and he hasn't stopped crying, didn't even while he kissed you;
says, resonant to reverberating in your chest, "Then forgive me now, my love –"
He's standing to his full height, for once, not echoing your habitual slouch –
hands on your shoulders, slow-blinking searching you – "Because I do not have
it in me to unconditionally say no. I believe that you mean this, and this is
not the first time I have told you that if anyone could find a way through an
impossibility, it would be you; and – oh, I can see how this might be that way
too–" It flickers through your mind, the fragile hope of avoiding conscription,
at the surface again now that the world is no longer ending - And he stops,
eyes luminous, on the edge of things forbidden, where you can only trust him to
step back, and he does. "Just know in every moment of this what it would be for
me if you sacrificed yourself in it and failed. That is what I ask in return.
Don't condemn me to that lightly, please, my light –"
He watches for your answer as much as listens, all pent-in light and shared
thirst for knowing and claws digging in where they rest, collarbones and
shoulderblades –
“I won’t act rashly, nor lightly,” you say, a bare whisper, “I swear that, I -”
You can’t tell him that you already have the fragile stretching roots of a
plan, a plan that if it kills you will kill him first. You’re going to need his
help, and he might guess it in time from what you ask of him, but it will be in
fragments, so that the pieces can’t be put together easily - and you’ve closed
your thoughts and memories to him before but never so completely as this,
building a blank wall in your mind where your strategies live, perfectly sealed
and textureless, a wall he could break through if he tried, with his superior
strength and amplification, but if he knows where it is he won’t trammel over
it by accident -
So much has to go behind that wall, Feferi’s identity and her face, and in a
way you never felt guilty for your flushed dalliance you already feel guilty
for having to hide her away - to pare away parts of the story, to edit it down
to what you can safely tell. But then, he’s always needed to keep back certain
things, and you’ve never held it against him, even when it’s caused you
anguish.
“You wanted to know everything,” you say finally. “I can’t - too much of it is
tied in. I’m not alone in this, though, I can tell you that - I have - a highly
placed friend, more than a friend, and I know you’ve said I should seek pity in
the waking world, but I won’t blame you if you’re jealous -”
"Not jealous," he says, careful, word by word, but his hold on your shoulders
stays just this side of too tight – "Concerned. If that's all you can tell
me... that's a lot to hide. You – you aren't just with them for your plan. For
me. They're good to you."
“I can tell you more than that, I just can’t show you, can’t go that deep into
it -” You breathe in and out, trying to discern where to start, where to go
with it - “She’s - I wound up with her as much by accident as anything else,
but I trust her with my life. She’s made good on that trust more than once. I,"
and the words catch in your mouth, this is the difficult part, "I trust her
enough that I told her about us.” The fact that you’ve pailed Feferi seems
small and incidental by comparison.
"You don't know how much I wanted that for you," he says in a lit-up relieved
rush, his smile genuine but visibly blinking back tears again; beneath it, you
know, is wanted to be that for you, equally true but not dulling the relief,
and there's no hesitancy when he slides his palms off your shoulders and clasps
both of your hands in his. "But – If you ever look at me and see only the
burden of the immense promise you just made, don't hide it from me. Anyone
could tell that you've changed, you've become more than you were, and if that
makes you realize how much I'm static and limited – I would be happy just
knowing that you have someone out there to rely on –"
“No, oh, Astris, I just -” His hands are your lifeline, and his eyes something
you never want to lose again, and you feel peeled open looking into them, but
with an effort you don’t drop your gaze - “We haven’t quite settled out a
quadrant yet, exactly, sometimes flushed and sometimes pale, it’s still in that
nebulous kind of place, even counting things that haven’t technically happened
- though I think it might be more pale, I - but that’s not the point, not what
matters; she’ll never replace Aradia either, she’s a different person; and the
trust I have with her is founded on - on the fact that I could tell her about
you, that she’s willing to understand -” Language caves in on you, then, and a
beat passes in silence. “How deep this goes,” you finally say. “Willing to see
that and accept it, for some reason I don’t entirely understand.”
He shudders all over at how deep this goes, his hands trembling in yours. But
he's crookedly almost-smiling when he says, "Then she's either very kind or
very crazy – it took us long enough to accept this, and the unreal is sort of
our purview..." And then, squeezing your hands tight, "But I still want you to
show me what you can of what happened inside the code you made – unless it's
too painful, I – want to feel like I lived it all through you, even if it was
difficult and strange. Because it's – something outside of this – but also
because it's yours, and I want to understand –" He gets more forceful, more
certain as he speaks, but then he breaks off, leans in and softly kisses your
forehead – "And after, there's something I've wanted to do for you, and I think
now is the time."
And his mind opens to yours, more tentative this time, less insistent, but the
hunger for experience is still raw and close to the surface and he lifts his
mouth from your forehead slowing into motionless waiting, careful as a held
breath.
"Okay," you say, "I'll try," and you begin to sift through the memories,
bringing them to the surface one by one -
Aradia’s ghost appearing outside your window - you wake on Prospit, and wander
in visions - the moment when his voice joins the dying choir of Alternia, and
you struggle to seek the dreamspace but cannot arrive there -
- wake, suddenly, to urgent messages - guide Feferi through her journey,
manipulate the strange opulence of her seadweller hive - the back of your mind
crying out for your love, that last narrow contact - but you know he wants -
wants you to live, to save the life in front of you -
You know how to work through great pain, it is easy and practiced; was,
somewhat, before he ever entered your mind, just from your own difficulties, so
when the sound that isn’t a sound begins to build in your mind, a resonant
frequency gradually shattering you to pieces, you
just
keep
going.
Astris takes you into his arms as you relive his death and your own, curls you
up against him on the couch, your head under his chin and his whole body
unnaturally still - only once failing to suppress a thin, tiny whine that you
know is loss for a thing that never happened -
Then waking -
The view of her face carefully excised, leaving only the sound of her voice,
the transferred-in structure of your hive, the creatures - the planet - doing
battle, back to back - (and Astris relaxes around you, content to settle into
your narration) -
- but you haven't been careful enough, something about her silhouette as you
follow her up the stairs of your hivestem, her hair, her horns -
“Wait, stop -” His claws hard against your arms - “I’m just going to assume for
a minute that you can give me some alternate explanation for what I just saw.
Because if that girl is - if you just showed me who I think you did, I think
you know exactly what I am going to say. So - tell me I’m wrong.”
"Damn.” You let out your breath softly, rueful, chagrined - as much by your
failure to realize where the tight lock should be set as by his outrage.
“Audacious plans require audacious allies,” you tell him, by way of
explanation. “And apparently better secrecy than I'm accustomed to keeping
around you."
Walls ascending in his mind where before he was drinking in memory thrown-open
yearning, and his eyes snap bright controlled from throwing off sparks but
barely, lips retracting from his fangs but holding the snarl back from his
voice when he speaks, low and almost-level and grasping at reason – “You’ve
spent all this time marveling at how much we are alike - you’ve reevaluated
everything about yourself again and again in light of me, I haven’t been able
to stop that in you - you of all the trolls on Alternia should be most aware of
the extent of what is passed down and unchangeable, or have you forgotten what
your own moods can do to you? And yet you are about to gamble everything on the
prospect of her descendant being somehow different. Laws of nature don’t just
stop working because you hope hard enough, or because you find Heiress
beautiful, or because she saw fit to have a high-leveled psionic by her side to
keep her from danger and was kind to you - we know what she is made of, and
that should be enough. Do I even need to mention what else you may have
inherited from me: the capacity to fall into the thrall of a young fanatic and
follow them to your doom? And this is who you have chosen to ally yourself to?
I do not know which of her powers are stolen and which are hers by birth, but
if this Heiress has swayed your mind through that means -”
"You spend so much time worrying that you’ll change me. That you have. And it's
true." It's true in ways you don't mind him knowing, and other ways you're not
so comfortable talking about, but the principle is there. "I'm conceding that
because I want to remind you. FF is the same age as me. If I'm malleable,
Feferi is, too. I don't know what... she was like at that age. A lot less
doomed, I'd guess, and a lot more isolated, but ... I'm analyzing at a great
distance. Still. I wonder, did she have any checks on her power? Do you think
she grew into it with anyone at her side who was unafraid to challenge her? To
tell her when hoofbeastshit was hoofbeastshit? - before she became the kind of
troll who’d never be able to hear it?" You’ve seen just enough of the Condesce
through his eyes to cast about at these guesses, and you're aware you're
treading precarious ground -
"No, I never thought that I would change your basic nature, but that I would
bring the worst of it to the forefront. We are malleable... within limitations
that we inherit. You and I saw when we dabbled with the polarity in your
thinkpan what disaster you can court if you try to alter what is written into
your flesh. What you're saying is that you think you can heal the Heiress with
your pity and others' friendship. But even then – she faces the boredom and
loneliness of an interminable lifespan and the grief of seeing everyone she
cares for die, including you. She faces the avarice of having everything she
wishes for the taking. Do you not wonder that she went murderously mad with it?
Do you not think the worst in your Heiress' nature will reemerge? I just – I
thought you had escaped the part of my nature that compelled me to hang my fate
on my belief in one troll, and what I thought I could do for him," he says,
burned-through bitter, "I'm in no position to hide from you how deeply it pains
me that I was wrong."
You're treading in dangerous territory now, you know you'll need him to hide
from himself or even overwrite the things you're saying next, but enough of
these words are obvious that he could guess them if you didn't speak them aloud
- "Don't forget, I will only die before her if we succeed. If we fail - if we
fail, Feferi will be dead, I will be conscripted, and the rulership will remain
as it has for centuries, as I don't need to remind you - If we don't try - the
same. Even if I saved myself - the rest would stay the same. She'd never have
the chance to go mad," you point out. "Just as none of the others of her line
have had that chance, unless they're in hiding at the bottom of the sea, would
you really this rather -"
"I don't have answers," he whispers, "Not anymore. I'm only throwing myself
against the bars of this. I don't have enough information to be of that kind of
help to you and I can't be, you're right, it isn't safe –" Responding to unsaid
things, watching your thoughts – "I just don't want that to be you, any sooner
than it has to be. Maybe neither of us can know about the whole of this, but
her wrath is also tiny when she wants it to be, it's personal, are you watching
for it? If she tried to hurt you –"
You catch at his hand, squeeze it instinctively, your bloodpusher still racing
hard with the anger that you don't feel any longer; whisper his name, spread an
arm across his shoulders - You can't help but admire him, paradoxically, for
managing to be sharp-tongued enough that it knocks you out of remembering how
fragile he is, even as your chest fills with a surge of pity and queasy regret
- and your tongue sticks to the roof of your mouth, pressing up against things
you can't begin to know how to speak aloud.
"She could snap me like a twig," you finally say, tired and honest and close
enough to speak very softly. "And I'm drawn to that, and maybe I'm sick for it.
And you can keep these words, when you lock the rest of it away - it's only a
secret of the heart. With everything that happened in the game, exhausted and
communications breaking down and surviving at each other's backs, I told her
even that - and she went to remarkable lengths to live up to my trust. Maybe
she's a monster, but she's made sure to be the safest possible monster, even
when I - handed myself to her on a platter, like I wanted - That's her
identity," you say finally. "And it must be why she accepts this, too -"
"That... really isn't making me any less worried, love." Astris rubs at the
back of your hand with his thumb, feeling new callouses – "I understand
wanting... to let your watch down in pity, there's always an acceptance of
danger in it – maybe moreso for us, our stakes are just higher, maybe that's
how it has to be – It's just who you – But by comparison to what you're used
to, at least you found a monster who for the moment has herself in hand..." He
shakes his head, rolls his shoulders under your arm, and you're tightening your
grip around him trying for comfort. "I'm sorry, I keep sounding jealous and I'm
not, I'm –" His mind says helpless, but his mouth isn't ready to form the word;
he speaks around it tight and quiet – "You try not to remind me of the more
painful impossibilities, but sometimes I still find myself choosing to feel
them."
His words make you want to promise things you can’t promise, or ask for - “No,
I don’t think you understand, I -” You feed him more images, more memories from
the game, knowing he’ll have to censor them away but at least showing him,
first, the way he wanted - “Don’t you see, I was being rash at the outset, I
flung myself at her because part of me wanted destruction, I - If she’d wanted
to break me to her use, it would have been all too easy. I was already -” lost,
bleeding inside - “She could have taken me apart and I’d have been grateful for
it, but instead she nudged me into caring a little more about whether I lived
or died, because I wasn’t doing a great job of it. I was half mad from barely
sleeping and from dealing with all the mayhem, and more than that from losing
you -” Your voice cracks and you just press your forehead into the crook of his
neck, closed-eyed, warmth and darkness.
He makes that little escaped keening noise again and wraps you in gentle weight
and warmth like a distant breath, pressing you to him more like a shared
blanket than like holding arms. "Oh, I – I'm here now but I know that doesn't
fix what you lost – I wish I could make you unhear the voices, I wish I could
erase it all for you, the way I'm going to forget about your Heiress, I wish –"
“Don’t wish that, I - it’s probably good that I lived through that, for more
reasons than one.” There’s more than one way your promise could go, but - you
know you need to be strong, to be prepared for - to be willing to survive his
absence, again in this new timeline, if you must.
And a part of his mind speaks directly to you that doesn't quite settle with
the rest of what you know of him: all illogic and yearnings, and I wish I could
promise to stay for you, I do want to, when you're in my arms I want to, I know
exactly what I would say – I want to but I can't – But what he says, finally,
is, "Holding us back from destroying ourselves is a thankless, endless work. I
think I understand now, as much as I ever will."
***** my mind holds the key *****
Chapter Summary
     You're among the stars in overlay, without leaving here, his hands
     and voice simultaneously anchoring you to the couch in the familiar,
     contained space that you created together as he changes to speaking
     aloud. "We are so much beyond our minds and bodies by nature that
     they rebel from holding us..."
Chapter Notes
     This chapter is technically a smut chapter. But if you are a reader
     who typically skims or skips the smutty parts (as I know some are,
     and that's cool; it takes all kinds; no shaming in comments please!)
     I recommend reading this one more closely than most: it's not very
     explicit on the physical level, more on the order of deep
     communication and uncanny starship porn.
“Do you want the rest of it now?” you ask, and Astris nods, eyes locked on
yours solemnity and caution, mistrustful of speech, and the narrowed conduit
between you expands until the flow of memory can start again.
- and you take him through memories of converging and circuitous timelines,
through the unfolding intrigues of Prospit and Derse and the tangled
conversation with your Denizen - through bitter feuds with Eridan and friendly
ones with Karkat, through your awkwardness with Aradia and her steely distance
towards you - skimming lightly over the times you pailed with Feferi because
you think there are things he doesn’t want to see, shouldn’t have to expend the
effort to hide away; still giving him enough emotional inflection to see the
pale-flushed tangle of your alliance, the way she never tried to push you
toward or away from fearing her, but kept you safe. Through the animosity and
the teamwork, through the final puzzles, until you all stood together, prepared
to win.
And the voices of your friends rang out on that hidden frequency in your mind,
and something was wrong, very wrong. You remembered the choice afforded you by
your Denizen: your doom or the doom of your doom - the hints at terrible prices
to pay - and you turned the key in the lock and opened the other door, not
knowing what lay behind it, for once, discarded winning, discarded your
precognition and its wretched comforts, chose the unknown thing because it
couldn’t possibly be worse.
Woke up with two sets of memories and every Trollian window going off at once -
Astris is carding his fingers thoughtfully through your hair when you finish,
dragging against your scalp as if trying to soothe a migraine – not like he
doesn't believe you, but like he can't quite believe how well you're holding
together with two timelines all stitched up in there, and after a while he says
so, palming one of your outer horns, "It was a terrible choice either way, and
you faced - you do face - awful tasks going forward, and I'm just..." He rubs
light and distracted at the base of the horn for a while, the silence of
carefully stringing words together – "I'll do what I can to be here for you,
but know that – that there isn't a moment when I don't ache to do more."
There's a movement in your mind, something slipping back across the connection
where you shared the color and texture of the game. "I want to sustain you as
much as you uplift me, I want to –" And he pauses, one hand still on your horn
and the other at the neck of your shirt, strangely hesitant, and the
awkwardness of it weighs against the boundaries of your thinkpan, his awareness
of the differences in time and experiences and the distraught muddle of emotion
you were when you materialized here –
"You've given me so much -" For a moment you've reached ahead of where words
just stop, somewhere in your mind's attempt to recount to yourself everything
he's been for you - "You've saved me from myself, taught me so much - you
understand things no one else understands -" and, you think out loud, unvoiced
to save him the abashed moment of having to respond, given me yourself, here,
impossibly precious - "No matter what words we use, no matter what I do or say
outside of this place, no matter who and what else I pity: to me you're my
matesprit, have been that in the depths of my soul since before I could even
dare to speak the word pity to you for fear you'd mock me or turn away." And
you run out of words again, and just lean into his touch, sharing perceptions
again, trying to show him this time a flicker of how it feels when he looks at
you with such adoration, to be given such an impossible gift, fortunate edging
into dizzy disbelief.
You, the centuries and then you – He's responding entirely inside your head,
his lips on your temple and his fingers dappling at new muscle in your
shoulders, delicate and careful – I cried out to you not knowing that you
lived, I craved your pity when I was dim and dwindling and couldn't have
thought what pity was to want it – Just – let me lay it here before you, what
you are to me, let me show you –
And with no warning that built-up moving thing is overflowing from his mind to
yours, wonder like starlight, wonder that is starlight, a hot flood of stars
and a cold hiss of void and emotions that he can't untangle from substance and
vision that overlay above and within senses that you can't name and know only
from these brushings against the parts of his mind where everything merges –
But it's nothing like the last time he brought you to this place. You're among
the stars in overlay, without leaving here, his hands and voice simultaneously
anchoring you to the couch in the familiar, contained space that you created
together as he changes to speaking aloud. "We are so much beyond our minds and
bodies by nature that they rebel from holding us... This is what I can do for
you, lift you out of it all, now when you've been through so much – there's a
part of myself that I can only give you here, where your sense of place can
bounce off galaxies – can I –" Palms stroking down your arms, down your sides,
purring under speech, rumbling at once resonant-emotive through your mind full
of vastness and warmly content against your back.
"Yes," softly murmuring into his collarbone, "oh, yes, I -" and you're hanging
onto him, both hands clutching at his waist - braced against the dizzying
vision, against phantom motion and indescribable wisps of sensation and it's
almost too much and you didn't realize how much you needed to - needed this -
to be loosed of the cramped whirlwind of your own head - but it's not a
mindless thing, either, it's fantastically intricate - light and motion at once
perceived as feelings and described in mathematics, no, those aren't separate
layers, information is a feeling - and it goes in alongside the feeling of his
dream-fingers rubbing against you, the rise and fall of his chest, thinking in
words is more and more difficult and you make a small sound against his throat
-
The pit of your stomach prickles with weightlessness, not like flying on
Alternia but like being cut free of the planet's pull altogether, like falling,
and you feel that you are tangling, tumbling with him at a standstill, vertigo
without accompanying motion, and your surroundings shimmer – But his hands
cradle and pet and slip up your spine under your shirt and down the neckline to
reach at your shoulderblades and he's thinking at you There's more than this –
Open to it, it's from me, it's all right, I have you –
And there's a shiver all along your bare arms, the back of your neck, the span
where your shirt is rucked up around his wrist – where your skin is bared to
the cosmos you start to feel it, and more where his hands have touched, a sense
that is a non-sense – Like starlight that has traversed emptiness hundreds of
sweeps to you is suddenly embedded into your skin, each speckle of it tiny and
distinct and each a hue within white that belongs only to itself. It's a
construction from psionic sight, tracing the shape of rooms and bodies, it's
like something you've done, but this –
It's like it's poured over you as he gently pulls your shirt off altogether,
it's so closely knit into your body, so accustomed and yet so expansive that
it's like seeing with your skin, and he thinks It seeps into you, doesn't it,
it's so beautiful, the firmament at once unfolding boundless on all sides and
pressing in like a mist condensing into droplets without number, strangely like
an infinity of tiny kisses, and his lips on yours one central kiss with all
else in its orbit, and you're aware that there are other sensations from the
hull that he isn't feeding you, curled away behind walls somewhere in his mind;
that the pain you usually carry for him is locked somewhere further away than
you've ever seen; aware of his steadying hands on your waist, but they're
backgrounded, dim by comparison.
Bright prickles along every inch of you, like the way Astris has held you in an
embrace of psionic force except that in some other way it’s exactly nothing
like being held, freefall keeps you exhilarated-breathless and you only
remember your hands when you know they’re clinging tighter to his hips, digging
in - and each pinpoint of light too unique to swirl together or tune out, so
much information through your skin, you can feel color and the faint
interlacing of rhythms like music - you gasp against his mouth at once very
close and very far away -
He keens a little at the clinging press of your hands and the sound comes from
behind and around you (and in front of you, there and directed, where part of
you is still awake on the couch and solid and warm and ready to retreat to, if
you need –) and when you open your eyes you see him twice, there and here, and
here strange and amplified – and like you could see through him if you tried,
and you can, you can see – how his skin goes dark to drink in the light – you
see what he can't help sharing with you, invisible lines vibrating through dim
reaches, dipping into wells in the way the universe curves, all converging into
his body here, into his eyes that are more than eyes...
You can see the way his skin lights up with close-gathered points of sensing
and attention everywhere it touches yours, measure his pulse to the merest
sliver of a second as it speeds, and he knows it, flushes burning against your
face, laid open in embarrassment at the sheer detail you're seeing but not
trying to hide it – and his voice inside your head is awed and breathy-
vulnerable and almost words without a voice at all and saying Would you believe
that I see this reflected – all of this – every time I look at you – and your
cheeks go hot with self-consciousness, some part of you wants to curl away
small and uncertain, but everything is enormous and you’re both larger and
smaller than you ever imagined being. And you’re pulled in, fascinated, so
rarely does he let you see the way his dream-body coheres, meshes from force to
form, and - the sense of engineering and structure and perfection and precision
hits you right in the thinkpan, even as the far-off animal part of you moans a
confused oh and presses to him for warmth, some soothing counterpoint still
against the dancing points of radiance and the translucent complexity of him -
And in his thrown-open mind you read that this is just as muddled for him as it
is for you, as much as this is more his element, the transcendent and the
corporeal and their interweaving – the reacting to your reaching and mewling,
wanting to press and rub pleasure into your body as it is now, there in his
arms still small and smooth and comprehensible – but wanting even more to
transmute and elevate and his hands are smoothing down your sides, fingers
brushing and circling around your grubscars and you don't know when you've been
fed all this sensitivity, only that his hands have become their own colored
maps of temperature and pressure and digits and precision. You know his mouth
on your neck in licks and feather-kisses that pass into you blended with the
light, so that each touch of lips reads sunburst and gauzy nebula, close-in
little touches and vast distant smears of galaxy and glow.
He just keeps peeling away construction and illusion, offering you glimpses and
layers and veins inside him that are light, that are psionics and electricity,
until you resonate with the rushing away of the great strobing pulses that he
throws exploratory off into the dark and still with the sweeps he waits for
echoes – And he holds you so close, touching and coaxing and infusing, that you
feel the return of ancient light as if it was yours and came back to you –
And you never felt, never knew, never could have imagined that there would be
this much, that the universe is so soaked with his sensory power now that you
touch the dead cinders of long-dark first stars in the cold distance with one
hand and the hot onrushing edge of the expansion of everything with the other –
and all between your outstretched fingertips must be you, and you are so vast
and spread so thin and wrapped around him so tight, all as you are skin to skin
and red light to blue, all as he tangles in, legs and horns and curling
brightness, and moans long and catching on itself and washing over you all
desire in its strained-down core –
You want him and everything that entails, and you're aware in some distant
analytical stratum of yourself that that is what he's giving you, and it's
glorious, but somehow more difficult than the worst of his pain because there's
nothing to brace against, nowhere to hide and nothing to hide from. You're
blown open and it's engulfing, overwhelming, but you don't ever want it to stop
- these sensations aren't, they don't belong to the shape of your body, but
they have nowhere else to go - shuddering and crying out and - too much, this
is too much - (reality is / you are) a paradox puzzle, inside-out and glowing-
enfolding bright and impossible and perfect, even his lips on your neck
deconstructed ruthless into light-halo and nerve impulse, and your hands grasp
compulsive frightened of losing him but he's never been more here - and he's
showing you how he's here, folding serpentine arcs by which he crosses the
distance.
Always with you, his mind is whispering to yours, misplaced shards of concepts
and thoughts that arc back on themselves like orbits, No matter what happens,
always, always yours – all of this – curled up in your every cell – and here
where the boundary between intention and possibility crumples to meaningless
and the most intricate calculations yield trajectories that curve parabolic-
simple - not sexual except that it is. His thoughts are like incantations and
his power crashes cascadic over you and through your body, tiny and physical-
real and tumbling like a leaf in a river current - the sounds you're making in
your own throat are like radio transmissions from somewhere further away still,
little Sollux self sweat-moist and keening pressed up against Astris, warm skin
and blinding abstractions looped through you looped through space-time through
the base of your spine and even with your eyes pressed tight you see everything
and it's maddening and perfect and floods over you, grounds back into you and
you howl - shudder and shake and rock and you don't even know what your body is
doing any more only that you're feeling so much that you're simultaneously
dwindled to a point and expanded beyond belief.
The space where you are caught up alters, hisses like a drawing-in of breath –
and all through you and far away and against your skin this whole place – or
his sense of it – everything, stars and psionic waymarks and bluing dark all
ripple and flicker and shudder around you and your mind swirls with mangled
diffuse chords and torn-apart words in languages you don't understand, aren't
sure exist, but all so soaked with adoration that their meaning is unambiguous
and heavy-laden into them, gasped and stammered and seeping in. Pleasure pushes
hard and turbulent through every vertebra and crashes through every nerve-
ending in your nook, crashes you back to here where you're making loud gasping
inarticulate noises into his shoulder and he’s sobbing out the end of a moan
that sounds like heartbreak and your name, brings you back even though you've
never left - back and down to ringing silence, the light of galaxies blurring
to spots behind your eyelids.
His clinging has gone to stroking before your eyes can open, hands shaky-gentle
in your hair and down your back, and when you look he's all soft-painted still-
flushed moonstruck smiling, mouth open and breath unsteady and eyes all blown
wide and taking you in (you feel a strange certainty that if you looked too
deeply into them you might see starfields, or gridlines –) Power sparks from
their corners and from his horns, careful to avoid scorching you but still
imperfectly held into containment here, and he blinks and works his tongue over
his lips and finally gives up and asks you without speaking, Hey – hey, love,
are you OK – do you need –
For a moment you don't want to break from this endlessness, not yet, so you
just let him in, into amazement and sated contentment and drifting, and the
glimmers of confusion that are going to be questions when you let them out,
when the clamor of your own mind returns, but right now for just a little while
it's good to let go of language and just focus on breathing and the feel of his
hands. And he sighs into a reassured purr, goes all unfolded-relaxed and drifts
with you, his fingers tracing slow arcs and whorls like maps onto your skin.
But when you resurface it's into questions and uncertainties, your mind
stirring into a host of restless thoughts, about logistics and your own
longings that are too complex to articulate and the uncomfortable sense of
yourself as tiny against vastness, a cramped enclosure for mental noise, an
awkward ill-fitting speck against the backdrop of everything he shared with you
- "So much," you breathe. "Thank you -" and you're aware that your voice
falters, abashed, the same wrigglerish shyness you used to exhibit when the
terrible parts of his existence slipped through, only this was wonderful, and
you don't know why you feel like you're going to cry.
"Whenever you need it," his voice just as swallowed-up small and thready-tired
as you feel, now that he is speaking with it. You can't help drifting through
parts of his mind that rebel even against vastness and glory as poisoned by his
imprisonment; that the euphoric outstretching of it is still shot through with
shame for him and that opening it to you was a work of will and pain as much as
love. Somehow seeing that distress mirrored in him soothes you, answers the
part of you that feels guilty and terrified for how much you want - how much
you don’t understand wanting -
Still, he's tracing your shared sign across your shoulderblades, breath held
and hitching in even further when he senses the edge of tears in you, and he
whispers, "Oh – oh, my light, it's –" (A wash from his mind of old, old
overwhelmed tears, of opening eyes and breathless incomprehension and
loneliness like stillness after wind –) "I know, I know – but you'll be all
right, you will, some just – vanish into it, forget everything, but not us, we
dive under it all, to what –" (Calculations and equations, elegant laws and
inscrutable constants; you saw it all and yet you saw just the start –) "- To
what gives it form, that's our hatchright, you've said so yourself, we just
keep reaching and wanting and trying to understand –" We know the worth and
rarity of anything that remains undiminished in beauty and mystery for the
knowing, the thought dropped whole-cloth into your mind as he flushes and glows
and his fingers dig into your back and he has to stop and look away from you,
eyes faraway-unfocused –
- and from the babble and din of half-formed thoughts you manage, “Everything I
have to share with you is so - tiny and biological, I - I know you want that
but -” but it seems insignificant by comparison right now, a crude and
wrigglerish gift to lay in front of everything he is, and you’re uncomfortably
aware you’ve soaked your jeans, that here and now in physical overlay there’s a
difference in kind, that the release you felt blazing through him barely
touched the outlines of his dream body at all while you sit here at the
doorstep of his presence wet and chafed and awkward, and being so animal in
this feels like an intrusion, to him or maybe to yourself.
That snaps him out of his moment of abashed distance, his gaze returning to you
as if you'd been too bright to look at for a moment, and he grins small and
reassuringly smug, "Well, yeah, I want that, have you been too busy conspiring
since you came back to look in a mirror?" Astris pinches at your shoulder and
laughs at your surprised shiver, but then quiets, suddenly indecisive, even as
you start chuckling giddy-nervous. "As much as it doesn't make any damn sense
for you to write yourself off as merely physical – you made this space with
your mind, you're continually making it – Don't think I'll ever let you forget
for a moment that these –" He makes a show of bringing a hand to your face and
stroking down your nose with four fingers, swiping a thumb over your mouth,
while the other hand shifts and rubs circles into your back – "Are yours, and
how immense that gift is to me and... I didn't tell you the first time because
I wasn't sure, but it happened again just now, just before I took you up – I
felt something there. As if a muscle twitched – it felt like the inside of my
wrist somewhere – I'll have to stop it from happening again, they can't know,
but – oh, Sollux –" His hand wraps around your chin and stills there and he
just stares at your face and his own fingertips like he's on the verge of being
pulled apart, distraught and overjoyed.
Openmouthed and silent and staring, you reach up and stroke his fingers -
"Wow," you say, a barely-voiced breath, "I -" You swallow then, close your hand
over his, uselessly protective - "You're so beautiful and so remarkable and I'm
afraid for you -"
He flinches a little at your praise and more at your fear, that too-common look
like he wants to argue with your view of him but can't stand to spend what time
you have together retreading that ground – "I'll be all right, I've been hiding
something so much more important for a sweep now–" He threads his fingers
through yours and clings with them, his other hand going to push your hair back
from your forehead, slow, comforting strokes – but still he's staring, hesitant
and conflicted – "You would tell me if you thought I was imagining it? If you
think I'm – losing touch with things – I want you to tell me."
You breathe out softly, leaning into his hands. "I - I know mostly what we do
here doesn't reach you physically, but I also know I can reach out and find
you, that there's a power ratio and some of it's mine. So I'd be more surprised
honestly if there were no effect - I mean, god knows you do enough to me," and
you laugh helplessly and gesture toward your lap, "and a lot of it comes
through into my waking life, I just - oh, Astris, be careful, I -" Trying to
name your fears has no place in this moment, you don't want to break the
stillness and wonder to cast about in the horrors he's lived, still lives, when
he's not here with you, or in the part of him that's not ever here -
"After all the hurt you've taken for me, I can do this, I can learn some
measure of healing -" and Astris is still shakily smiling and the smile is
ruddy-warm in his voice, upturned, he folds you in reaching with a surrounding
fuzz of power, holding you to him so tightly your ribs ache, you breathe light
this close to him, breathe enthralled pity – but this close you also see his
throat move with tense swallowing, hear his breath slowing as he dims his light
until the lines of his face come clear, and he answers your unspoken fear in a
scraping-low whisper, "I'll endure, I have endured." And if that claim is shame
and bitterness for him, an opening into chasms and dark in your connection to
him, a tear in the tapestry of stars in their millions that still wheel before
your eyes if you let yourself pull that link close – then beneath the dark is
still the warmth of his trust and the way he could begin to form to your
promise as to your hands, the way he already has. I'll wait for you, his mind
speaks to you in layers beneath his voice – I've waited for you, I'll wait.
***** I'm setting you in motion and opening your eyes *****
Chapter Summary
     The first thing you do when you meet Feferi (for the first time,
     again) is kiss her.
      
      
     "You're a lot less dead this time," she says, grinning.
==>Sollux: Plan.
The landscape of futures stretches out before you, and in some of them you live
for a very long time. You feel so many different things about that, you can't
hold them all in your head at once. It makes you dizzy and you give up trying,
and turn your attention to easier thoughts, like engineering governmental
overthrow.
You're not cocky or foolhardy enough to think you can do this by yourself. And
yet there are certain parts of it that only you can do; others that need to be
delegated - you need to hold the strings, you need to mastermind it, you're
frightened that they'll believe you to a point and then stop, pull the floor-
covering out from under you, and that's a possibility too - you feel it in the
fate-lines and it scares you.
You are divided, as usual, one half a piece being moved upon the chessboard and
the other the chess player, watching from outside.
Small things first: you hack into KK's machine and delete the viruses you've
sent him; delete your own copies, too, even though you suspect the Mobius
Double Reacharound Virus would no longer actually work the same way. Still, the
fresh chance given you by the cancelled session is not something you're going
to risk wasting.
Then you contact NP.
AC: :33 < im sorry i missed your message sollux, i was asl33p!
AC: :33 < that final battle was expawsting!
AC: :33 < what do you n33d?
TA: 2orry np.
TA: ii'm ju2t lookiing for 2omewhere two meet up wiith ff, preferably not iin
plaiin viiew of all alterniia.
TA: and ii thought you miight have 2ome iidea.
AC: :33 < ooooh
AC: :33 < *ac scampurrs off to update her shipping wall, which has b33n
pawfully neglected!*
TA: np.
TA: np waiit.
AC: :33 < *ac swishes her tail impatiently!*
TA: 2orry, we don't have a ton of tiime.
TA: iit ha2 two do wiith kk.
AC: :33 <
AC: :33 < *ac stalks around her cave d33p in thought*
AC: :33 < i know a place where no one will s33 :))
AC: :33 < but bring your eye lasers and tell ff to bring her fork, its mountain
roarbeast whelping season!
 
~~~
The first thing you do when you meet Feferi (for the first time, again) is kiss
her.
"You're a lot less dead this time," she says, grinning.
"Ehehe, thanks, I guess."
"You don't lisp any less, though."
The clearing near Nepeta's hive is a place where Feferi has never been before,
and neither have you; there may be a lot of holes in Imperial surveillance, but
there's no such thing as being too careful. "And what were you expecting?"
"You," she says simply, and throws her arms around your neck. You're suddenly
conscious of the breadth of her frame, the way her fingers spread on the back
of your neck, cool and strong and foretelling potential; you haven't much
taller to grow - even if you didn't know from the shape and size of Astris'
dream-projection what your final height would be, you know the average growth
statistics of your hemotype, know you're likely to go into season for the first
time within a sweep from now and reach final bone length within a sweep after
that. There are no public statistics about Tyrian growth patterns, just ED's
hemotype on down, but you know from vids of the Condesce that Feferi will grow
into a very large troll indeed, eventually, slowly.
Right now her head fits below your chin when she bends it forward to press her
face to your chest, hair still damp from the swim upriver, and your frantic
thoughts fade out into cool stillness, and you find that despite yourself
you're smiling, gently, vaguely, closing your eyes and breathing into a near-
silent purr.
But even in your relaxation, you take care not to lose the lock on the back of
your head - so used to letting Astris ride along when he can that closing that
door to him seems a cruelty. And yet it's absolutely necessary. Something under
the surface of your consciousness is telling you that this is only one of many
small things you will have to be callous about before this is over. You're not
certain whether it's your prophetic sense or just plain common sense.
Feferi pulls away and look you in the eye. "Whale?" she says; and you take a
deep breath and trip forward into a stream of ideas for how to bring down the
Empress.
You've actually been thinking about the practicalities for quite some time,
compartmentalizing, dividing it off into a carefully abstracted section of your
thinkpan. It's evidence of how well-matched you are with FF that she can keep
up with you while you blurt out your conclusions in the absence of buried
context - or maybe she just catches the context without your saying it
outright. But she agrees with you on most things. That you'll need support from
offplanet; that you'll need to have infrastructure laid out; that you're
uniquely positioned to try, between her bloodline and your connection to Astris
and your knack for accessing and manipulating information; that this is going
to take a while but you need to start right away -
There's a rustle in the underbrush, and before you know it NP's appeared with
cups of tea in both her gloved hands, and you thank her quietly but do a
double-take. How long has she been listening? But you do trust her, for some
reason that's hard to describe: maybe her lack of involvement with the FLARP
meltdown - maybe her inherent resistance to social conventions. It's why you
let her offer up her hive as a meeting place, without knowing the full story.
And yet something breaks down here, and you lose your train of thought and
stammer irritably for a minute at FF until a loud hissing and the crunch of
some woodland creature's snapping neck in the distance tells you NP is
otherwise occupied. Then -
"It's - Feferi, we have nothing to lose," you say suddenly. "You and me and KK
- we're walking dead either way. But people like her - a tail isn't a cullable
mutation, it isn't even considered a defect unless she wanted an acting career,
she could reach Ascension age and make it through pailing year without a missed
beat and do anything she wanted and what are we doing -"
"Shooooosh," she's saying and her claws draw down the back or your scalp
careful-tingly and your bloodpusher runs a little less hammery -
"- with the lives of our friends," you finish, slow and plaintive.
"We're setting fins right," she says, quietly, and her eyes glimmer in the
moonlight. "We're - whale, I'm at least - learning to rule. You," she says, and
presses the pad of one finger to the center of your forehead, "are using that
clever thinkpan of yours to figure out all the complications and help me get
through them. And you're helping your ancestor."
And it's true, but it's also - "I can't add it up in my head," you say
miserably, "not all of the contingencies, or rather I can, but it adds up too
many different ways - FF, what if we're wrong, are we leading everyone to a
traitor's death?"
"Terezi tells me the law is clear on this point," Feferi says, and you wonder
how long she's been making these connections - "Kelping me ascend to the throne
my hatchright is not treasonous. Everyfin we do to reach that goal is legal
after the fact, so long as I win." Her voice is emphatic, and somehow the
certainty doesn't sound unrealistic, coming from her.
"But if we don't -"
"Then we're fucked," she says cheerfully, "but what else is new? And Nepeta, do
you think I cod stop her from following if I tried? Cod I stop any one of our
friends?"
"You could do anything," you answer immediately, and then you realize you're
making her point for her. Half-defeated, you continue, "Sure, I can point to
individuals this would help, but I also feel like I'm being incredibly
shellfish." After all, one of those individuals is you.
And then your palmtop buzzes, suddenly, multiple times in a row. There should
be no service out here, and you'd shut off its connection, and for a paranoid
heart-pounding moment you think they've found you - until -
AA: y0u are n0t the selfish 0ne s0llux
AA: every0ne wh0 tried this bef0re l0st f0r selfish reas0ns
AA: they put self-preservati0n in fr0nt 0f the l0nger view
AA: s0me 0f them did
AA: their c0mrades died because 0f their aband0nment
 
Instead of saying anything out loud you just show Feferi the screen, your
'pusher hammering now for different reasons. She nods, silently giving you
permission to pay attention to the device, and you set down the empty teacup on
the ground and tap a message back.
TA: aa are you here riight now?
AA: yes in a manner 0f speaking but that is n0t relevant
AA: there are imp0rtant things i need t0 tell y0u
AA: t0night and 0ther times
TA: tell me.
TA: about the one2 who lo2t.
AA: i can 0nly speak t0 the 0nes wh0 died
AA: s0me 0f them gave up and lived 0n
AA: they were c0wards
A pause, and you start typing, inquiring further, before the palmtop buzzes
again.
AA: they say
AA: i mean the 0nes wh0 died 0f c0urse
AA: they say y0u can always save y0ur 0wn hide
AA: that the dr0nes c0me t0 make it s0 y0u have t0 ch00se
You're showing Feferi silently - as if speaking out loud would disrupt the
torrent of messages, shoulder to shoulder with the flickering screen in hand.
AA: als0 that is why the imperial bureaucracy makes y0u fill 0ut f0rms all
sweep
AA: it is a diversi0n t0 0ccupy y0ur time
You'd always wondered why they stuck juveniles with massive piles of tricky
useless data entry to qualify for basic training, if the need for military
personnel was so great. It hadn't seemed logical.
TA: aa, who ii2 telliing you all thii2?
TA: ii mean, ii know iit'2 gho2t2.
TA: but ii2 iit any rebelliion ii've heard of, or what?
As soon as you send the message you realize you haven't heard of that many
rebellions. Even with your information access being several layers deeper than
it technically should be, you've only managed to dig up a few relatively famous
ones from rumors: the existence of the Signless and what he did has been swept
as far under the table as it's possible to push something that large, and
between then and now there was only the incident with the Summoner - which you
also suspect must have been larger than it looks from anything you can find
out.
AA: they never hear their names sp0ken any m0re
AA: and they kn0w 0f 0lder generati0ns wh0 they can hear and i cann0t
TA: how many troll2 ii2 thii2, are we talkiing liike two group2, ten, twenty?
AA: there is always a new attempt as s00n as the last has been f0rg0tten
AA: 0r whenever an heiress emerges and attempts the thr0ne
AA: m0st 0f them have fallen quickly and quietly
AA: but the dead remember
Though you're accustomed to Aradia being spooky, though you were already used
to it even before she died, that still gives you shivers down your spine.
TA: ...keep talkiing.
Feferi puts her arm around you and watches as lines of text appear on the
screen. There's no reason to keep silent that you know of; but nonetheless she
mouths tell her thank you, and you do. Aradia doesn't react, just keeps
flooding you with messages. So many stories - and you have the feeling this is
just the tip of the iceberg, with uncountable dead revolutionaries frozen
underneath the surface.
Neither of you hears NP circling back toward the clearing, but by that time the
messages from AA have faded from a flow of story-scraps to yes and n0 responses
to questions, and you and FF have broken the silence to whisper guesses and
interpretations and, maybe, the beginnings of a plan.
NP has more tea but also the news that it might be "purrspicacious" (FF smiles,
you wince) of you to retreat to her hive, since she's picked up the tracks of
hill-dwelling roarbeasts nearby and you might have eye lasers but they hunt in
packs. She leads the way as silently as she arrived, the path to her hive
winding through undergrowth and twisting around fallen trees, more of an
antlerbeast-track than a trail. The hive itself is half-cave and completely
impossible to spot from the air – circling this place in flight when you were
first looking for the meeting point was like finding the proverbial sewing-
stick in the haystack – and judging by the size of NP's lusus greeting you
outside the hiveportal you won't have a problem with marauding roarbeasts here.
She greets Pounce with a whole-body flinging motion that ends up being a hug,
and leads you through the portal, and then you freak the fuck out.
There's somebody here waiting. There's somebody here. Your defensive instincts
kick in and you're crackling with a shield of sparks before you recognize
Equius Zahhak. Now you have to look nonchalant while bristling with psionic
defenses. Real smooth, Sollux. Real smooth.
"Equius!" Feferi says and smiles warmly, not managing to conceal her surprise
but turning it into cheerful excitement. "It's an unexpected pleasure." She
saves you the trouble of more than a muttered hello, and you squeeze at her
hand gratefully, because if words were going to come out of your mouth right
now they would not be calm ones.
Nepeta... doesn't look surprised. Nepeta is crossing the room over to her
moirail with a downright triumphant look on her face, and your stomach drops.
You're not sure what she has in mind and you were going to fully fill her in on
the plan next but now you're unsure of the territory - and Equius seems pretty
unsure, too. His expressions, transparent as always, go from friendly
recognition toward Feferi to a struck-frozen discomfort, and you remember it's
also his first time seeing her outside the game, and he's a loyalist to Empire
dogmatism more than anyone you know, even more than Karkat.
EQ stands up so suddenly and sharply that the pile of furs and hides he was
sitting on slides apart, even as Nepeta says, "You know our furrends!"
cheerfully, as if nothing is happening -
He is not done growing, and already quite tall, and his muscles quiver tense
and alert and perspiration beads on his forehead, his face looking like he's
going to either bare his teeth and growl or flee the cave. But instead he bows
stiffly. "Heiress," he says.
Nepeta approaches with what you can only describe as a kind of subdued leap and
stretches up on her toes to tap her moirail's shoulder with her claws, starting
to hiss, "Be nice," but -
Feferi squeezes your fingers back, then lets go and steps closer. "You know
what that means," she says, looking Equius in the eye.
"Yes, I do," Equius says, tight like a strung wire. And you realize that if you
ever for a moment thought he wouldn't reach a rapid and obvious conclusion,
whether or not Nepeta passed your hints along to him, you were being naive;
Equius is no fool. A sweaty arrogant jerk, and overly attached to his notions
of aristocracy, but not inobservant. You scowl across the room at Nepeta, not
so sure of her own common sense. Pale feelings aren't supposed to muddle up
your thinkpan, but romance is complicated and you're pretty sure it doesn't
always go the way it's taught in schoolfeeds, to put it mildly. He could turn
you all in - well, he could try. You realize you're clenching a fist at your
side when you realize you've stopped; Feferi's reaching behind herself
surreptitiously, brushing her fingers against your arm, soothing and warning at
once.
"Will you stand with me?" Feferi asks him, deceptively light and whimsical,
like she's asking for a dance at some gala in the movies.
"I stand with Alternia," he says. "Your challenge will tell, when it comes to
that." He's doing his best to sound diffident, but it comes off oddly guilty.
"You're smart," she says. "You're a smart troll and you know your fishtory.
Now, please, if you can, look me in the eye and tell me that by any reach of
the imagination, by any stretch of probability, the Condesce doesn't glubbing
cheat every single time."
"Tradition says the fight should be fair, but the Empurress has the whole
Empire fighting for her!" Nepeta interjects, latched onto Equius' side like a
tree-climbing squeakbeast. "Fefurry is just one troll with a fork by herself –"
She's eyeing Feferi brazenly, none of Equius' diffidence, sizing her up as if
for a fight – "Who will stand with her if not her furrends?"
But Equius is staring at Feferi silently, mouth slanted sideways as if to say
that's not the point. You get the sense that it is, and it isn't; there's some
context here standing in the air between the neurotic thinkpan in that
oversized cranial casing and FF's uncannily advanced social skills, and you're
not sure you care what it is, so much as you'd really like to know how it's
going to impact your long-term survival.
"What do you bereef?" she asks him.
"What are you fighting for, Heiress?" Equius asks, and you know there are a
thousand answers she could give and speak truly, and most of them would not
satisfy him.
"For the right to do this by the book," FF says at once. "Schools of other
reasons too, but that's as true as any. I might meet my end, but I won't go to
it on less than honorable terms! I am the one troll who can possibly challenge
Her Condescension on still waters. No matter who holds the throne, no matter
who wins in the end, it is my right." Damn she's good. "And I will hake that
right by force, if I must," she continues, and her voice goes quieter. "Because
it is also my duty. To my friends and to my people and to Alternia. To you,
here and now, efin if you swim against this current." She doesn't say although
then I'd have to kill you; just lets it stand in the air, obvious, unspoken for
the sake of dignity, the readied stillness of her trident hand bearing the
culling fork speaking for her – sometimes the weapon seems almost comically
larger than she is, but right now Feferi herself fills the room and she holds
the double trident as if its symbolism weighed more than its metal.
He takes a step closer, looming like he's going to question her or worse, and
you brace automatically, this time managing to keep your shielding near-
invisible – Nepeta drops from his side to watch the proceedings, one hand in
her coat pocket that you're sure is on the specibus key of her sylladex but
you've fought by her side in the game and she looks more like she's ready to
intervene but doesn't think she'll need to, huge eyes and a thin focused smile
– and then he drops his head. One more step forward, and very slowly then he
goes to one knee. "Then you stand above me," he says, an oddly literal
figurative sentence.
"Yes, and so does the Condesce," Feferi points out, sharply, testing.
"No further above," Equius admits, word by word deliberate like bracing himself
to shoulder a weight. "You do not wear the crown yet, but you are my Empress.
By hatchright at the very least, until you succeed or foa... fail." It's a
decision. And you're none too impressed with the hierarchy and order that
governs his life, but you're also realizing gradually that the way Feferi made
him justify it is going to keep him more solidly on her side than if she'd
wheedled and cajoled. And at least although he's kneeling he doesn't cringe;
even in the game Equius never stopped acting like he labored under some immense
and mostly made up burden of class dignity, but the act admittedly became
marginally less of a cringefest whenever he actually did have an important and
dangerous job to do.
"We already did the impawssible together," Nepeta chimes in, ducking her head
in a quick half-bow that doesn't conceal her fanged grin of excitement – "I'm
not letting my meowrail do it again without me!" Equius eyes her sidelong,
affects a look of chagrin, and pushes at the back of her knee with his large
hand until she goes into a kneeling position alongside him.
"I will do my best to justify your loyalty." Feferi smiles at Nepeta, then
reaches out her hand and touches the tip of Equius' unbroken horn, and there's
something weirdly ceremonious about it; you're never sure you understand this
kind of thing, a communication highblood to highblood that's not quite ritual
and not quite not.
"Justified or not," he says, voice rough, "you are right. I cannot support the
Empire as I believe in it without supporting your bid."
"And if that means hiding in the shadows? If it means conch-eeling our ends? If
it means breaking awave from our roles in the hemospectrum?"
"Then I will accept that as the cost of loyalty and loyally serve you for the
rest of my life." It seems an extreme statement, but you realize it's not
emotional hyperbole; he's just baldly stating the possible outcomes. Either
Feferi will be Empress, or he will be culled in the attempt along with the rest
of you.
"No pressure," you mutter under your breath. Feferi ignores you. She starts to
say something and you can't quite make it out - no, you can't and you can, it's
like a whisper that turns melodious at the edges and there are pieces of Old
Alternian that you recognize, just out of reach, like and unlike. This is
something like the voice she uses with Gl'bgolyb, you know this without asking,
but it's also an actual sentence and Equius seems to be understanding it and
you don't think you're understanding it but you know what the words feel like
they mean and the paradox makes your head hurt.
I accept your oath, she's saying. You don't understand what's going on. No,
that's not true; you do, and you want to pretend you don't, at least for a
moment, because the sudden determination and devotion Feferi has catalyzed is
something you can't hide from - and it won't be the last time. The last part of
you that believed you were preparing for Ascension like a regular schmo is
dissolving away. This is your life from here on out.
~~~
After that business with Nepeta and Equius, you're inclined to code up some
Trollian updates for everyone - both to add an extra layer of security and to
serve as an early warning system for you. You don't want to be caught unawares
like that again.
The hacks are mostly what you use yourself, security-wise, tightened up and
tweaked a little: and with the addition of a logging function that reports
directly to your mainframe in an encryption scheme that requires the epigenetic
signature of a particular strain of bees (which is to say, yours) to unlock.
That should keep Imperial snoops from getting in through your back door; it
should also mean that if any one of your friends ever gets good enough at
computer fuckery to notice the Trollian tap (you have a good laugh to yourself
over that one) they'll know to place blame squarely on you, and not think the
operation compromised.
KK says straight up I BET THIS IS SO YOU CAN FEAST YOUR LOOKSTUBS ON MY JUNK
THROUGH MY WEBCAM, RIGHT? and you answer there'2 a 2ecret way two fiind out the
an2wer two that que2tiion, iit'2 called… learniing two code! 2o ii gue22 we can
2ay iit'll alway2 be a my2tery.
You wouldn't mind if he did find out. The thought of the heated look on his
face…
(He really does leave his webcam wide open, but you've just locked that down
for him rather than ogle through it. You have the sneaking suspicion you'd
stumble into a quadrant-filling endeavor you really didn't want to see, given
you're not sure exactly what irons he has in the fire right now.)
In any case, you roll out the updates to everyone, even the people you're
specifically avoiding bringing in on the plan. It's not the first time you've
sent everyone you knew a software upgrade; and you've also made it so that old
versions will experience a little bit of artificially generated lag when
communicating with your version, just so that if anyone holds out, they'll end
up complaining about it and the others will harangue them to install your
patch.
Sometimes, you really do think of everything.
~~~
Feferi brings Kanaya in. Nepeta slyly lets Tavros know something's up, as you'd
thought she might. You get the story both directly via Trollian and thirdhand
through Feferi, but even if you hadn't, you have no reason to doubt it. Tavros
has as much to lose as any of you and nothing appreciable to gain by playing
the squeakbeast, and by now Aradia has gleaned enough information about his
Ancestor that you suspect he's going to prove useful on more levels than you'd
originally thought.
It doesn't take long for TZ to troll you. You were going to contact her; you
were just biding your time, but she gets there first; and when you're in the
middle of double-checking the anonymity of your latest information requests,
too.
GC: 4PPL3B3RRY
GC: H3Y 4PPL3B3RRY
GC: SOLLUX 1 KNOW YOUR3 TH3R3 YOU 4R3NT 3V3N S3T TO W4T3RY GR33N1SH
TA: 2et two what now?
GC: 4H4H4 1 KN3W 1T
GC: ONL1N3 TROLL14N 1CONS T4ST3 L1K3 4PPL3 JOLLY R4NCHOK3RS!
GC: 1NV1S1BL3 TROLLS 4R3 MOR3 L1KE W4T3R3D DOWN L1M34D3
TA: tz.
GC: OFFL1N3 T4ST3S L1K3 NOTH1NG OBV1OUSLY
TA: 2orry tz, ii've been kiind of up two my horn2 iin bu2y.
TA: can you maybe troll me agaiin when iit'2 not a22 o'clock iin the eveniing
or 2omethiing, ii don't know.
GC: >:P
TA: tz what are you doiing.
GC: >:P >:P >:P
TA: ii really wii2h ii had tiime two 2hoot the 2hiit, ii would 2hoot that 2hiit
2o hard iit would fly through a wiindow and cull random pa22er2-by.
GC: BL3CH >:(
GC: YOUR T3XT T4ST3S L1K3 MU2T4RD 4ND POORLY CONC34L3D S3CR3CY
GC: BOTH STRONGLY 4ND UNPL34S4NTLY
TA: ii'll have you know ii conceal my 2henaniigan2 quiite expertly, and ii
thiink you are u2iing your 2eer power2 two wiind me up.
TA: and iif that ii2n't the ca2e, tz, you had better tell me riight now before
the wa2te hiit2 the aiirflow generatiing deviice.
GC: TH3R3 1S SO MUCH UNN3C3SS4RY PROJ3CT1L3 W4ST3 1N TH1S CONV3RS4T1ON!
GC: BUT 1LL 4DM1T TH4T YOUR3 R1GHT 4BOUT TH3 S33R POW3RS >:]
GC: OR POSS1BLY JUST MY POW3RS OF N3RD OBS3RV4T1ON
GC: YOUR S3CUR1TY 1SNT BROK3N
GC: MY SN1FFNOD3 1S JUST TH4T GOOD >:]
GC: NOW R34D M3 1N 4LR34DY B3FOR3 TH3 S3CR3TS GO ST4L3!
And you remember FF has been obliquely asking her legal questions, and the idle
concerns that were making you wait melt away. You give her the Clliff's Notes
version and she fills in the rest, about as astutely as you'd expect. The next
few nights aren't so bad. It's hard to find ways to speak freely, but in
between the lines it's clear that your loose-knit cadre of allies mostly aren't
pulling in radically different directions.
Then something happens that you wish you could call surprising. You weren't
expecting it, but not because it wasn't obvious; just because you didn't want
to think about it.
grimAuxiliatrix [GA] began trolling twinArmageddons [TA]
GA: Sollux Would You Look At This Hoofbeastshit
--grimAuxiliatrix sends file: WhatEvenTheFuck.Txt--
TA: kn why are you a2kiing ME?
You've been giving VK's chatlogs a wide berth, knowing that you'd have to get
to them sooner or later but dreading it, so you're entirely uncertain what to
expect.
AG: Everyone is 8eing all hush-hush and weird a8out the game 8ut I know it's a
crock. Either they're all going to play in secr8 or there was no game to 8egin
with. I know how these things work. I'm pretty savvy like that. ::::)
AG: 8ut I know I can always trust YOU to level with me!
GA: Vriska I Do Not Know What To Tell You
GA: I Am Not Sure Who Else You Are Talking To But I Have Told You The Truth
GA: We Played The Game Then Time Itself Was Reset
AG: Why is everyone in on the joke 8ut me????????
AG: I thought I could trust you 8etter than that.
GA: What Are You Doing
GA: Stop It
GA: Sollux Foretold Doom During The Final Battle And Created An Exit Portal
That Led To Our Own Universe In A Reset Continuity
GA: We All Argued But Everyone Went Through Except For You
GA: You Said You Would Have The New Universe To Yourself And We Were All A
Bunch Of Suckers
GA: Apparently Not Going Through The Portal Meant That Your Reset Self Did Not
Retain Memory Of The Game
GA: ...
GA: Are You Happy Now
GA: Having Shoved Me Around With Your Mind To Say What I Already Had Said
GA: If Somewhat Less Brusquely The First Time
AG: UUUUUUUUGH! You're useless!
AG: I am going to g8 to the 8ottom of this if I have to 8reak every one of my
f8lse fri8nds to do it!
GA: ... Is That A Threat
AG: T8ke it however you please! It's not like you're listening to me anyw8y.
AG: I'm tired of 8eing a8andoned 8y you jerks.
GA: That Is The Opposite Of How I Remember It
AG: What8ver. Th8re's more than one w8y to get h8lp feeding Spidermom.
GA: If You Really Mean What You Seem To Be Saying
GA: I Dont Expect It Will Be Taken Lightly
This is so not your purview. In fact Vriska Management is pretty much the exact
opposite of your specialty, but on a scale from one to what she's capable of,
this is like a 0.2. You mostly keep poking at the windows where you're
monitoring a bug-riddled alpha of some malware that's failing in various
informative but exasperating ways to make headway through an abandoned corner
of the Imperial Network and obsessively rereading every relevant text you've
received from AA for the two hundredth time, but you still troll KN back,
stomping down the queasy irrational anger that you've been skirting around this
subject trying to avoid. This is wriggler stuff if anything, nothing really
new.
TA: 2o vk ii2 pu2hiing you around, diid you expect anythiing diifferent.
GA: I Am Not Sure It Is That Simple
GA: We Shall See Whether She Follows Through But I For One Believe We Need To
Keep A Close Watch On Her
TA: you alway2 u2ed two want two keep a clo2e watch on her rumble 2phere2.
GA: Although I Admit They Are Very Handsome Rumble Spheres
GA: They Do Not Pose A Danger To Our Current Audacious Plans
GA: Or Perhaps I Should Say Our Future Audacious Plans And Our Current Planning
Disarray
GA: But I Am Entirely Convinced You Take My Meaning And Are Just Attempting To
Get My Miniature Hornbeast
TA: who even thought of that iidiiom, ii2 what ii want two know.
TA: liike what would ii do wiith a miiniiature hornbea2t, and why would ii
acquiire iit by tea2iing you anyway.
GA: Sollux You Are Changing The Subject
GA: We Cannot Just Assume Vriska Serket Will Behave Herself And Stay Out Of Our
Shit
TA: and you're telliing me thii2 why, becau2e ii have 2uch a good track record
of keepiing vk iin check?
GA: I Am Telling You Because You Always Get Into Information Sooner Or Later
Regardless
GA: And Because By Nudging Everyone Into Action You Have Implied That You Would
Like A Background Administrative Role In Our 'Shenanigans'
GA: Which Requires Having Information
GA: Also Self Pity Is Obnoxious And Masturbatory
TA: thank2 kn, ii can alway2 rely on you two blow 2moke up my wa2te chute when
ii need a piick-me-up.
GA: Youre Welcome
GA: So How Are We Going To Deal With Vriska
You unclench your jaw, pry your fingers from the keyboard and stretch. Fuck all
mind readers with a rusty culling fork; you would be 200% done with this but
you haven't even started this yet. You set a time and date at Kanaya's hive,
because if you bothered to set up a chatroom and ask everyone about a meeting
you would probably wind up with a date sometime after the end of your projected
lifespan, and start spreading the news. Vriska could end everything with a snap
of her fingers and a well placed text message – or get bored, wander off and
leave you all to your audacious planning disarray, but so much of this business
inherently involves taking too many chances that the part of you that manages
risks and probabilities isn't going to let this one lie.
twinArmageddons [TA] began trolling cuttlefishCuller [CC]
TA: ff
TA: after a concerted effort by kn two diig my head out of the 2and, ii thiink
we have two actually deal wiith thii2 vk thiing
TA: meetiing the day after tomorrow?
TA: al2o everythiing about thii2 2uck2
twinArmageddons [TA] began trolling carcinoGeneticist [CG]
TA: hey jerkface do you have anythiing iimportant happeniing thur2day
TA: iif 2o then two bad, cancel iit
TA: and tell the other u2ual 2u2pect2 the 2ame, ii don't have tiime two lii2ten
two hii2triioniic2 and excu2e2 riight now.
And you keep going down your contact list, your hands forming words but your
thinkpan a blur of hastily constructed walls and static and possibilities.
***** so many things can look like blood *****
Chapter Summary
     TA: 2o you wouldn't by any chance be planniing two briing along a
     gue2t ii'm not expectiing, riight?
     TA: liike a certaiin noxiiou2 viiolet bulgebiiter, for example.
     CG: I KNEW IT.
     CG: I KNEW YOU WERE SNIFFING MY PANTIES THROUGH YOUR VIRTUAL AIR
     SHAFT. I CALLED IT RIGHT THE FIRST TIME.
     CG: YOU ARE SO PREDICTABLE, CLOCKS SET THEMSELVES BY YOUR MOOD
     SWINGS.
     Well, at any rate, the game was great meowbeast-herding practice.
Chapter Notes
     Note: this is where the shipping grid starts to get complicated, so
     if you like that sort of thing then this is the thing for you. Big
     thanks to Aewin for beta and to trickshire for being our Eridan
     wrangler! Auspisticism in Wires and Stars basically follows these
     headcanons.
See the end of the chapter for more notes
twinArmageddons [TA] began trolling carcinoGeneticist [CG]
 TA: 2o you wouldn't by any chance be planniing two briing along a gue2t ii'm
not expectiing, riight?
TA: liike a certaiin noxiiou2 viiolet bulgebiiter, for example.
CG: I KNEW IT.
CG: I KNEW YOU WERE SNIFFING MY PANTIES THROUGH YOUR VIRTUAL AIR SHAFT. I
CALLED IT RIGHT THE FIRST TIME.
CG: YOU ARE SO PREDICTABLE, CLOCKS SET THEMSELVES BY YOUR MOOD SWINGS.
TA: 2eriiou2ly though, WHY.
TA: iit'2 not liike our liittle 2hiindiig ha2 anythiing two offer mii2ter neck-
giill2-deep-iin-the-2tatu2-quo'2-nook.
CG: CALM THE FUCK DOWN, SHORT CIRCUIT ON LEGS.
CG: I SWEAR HE'S NOT GOING TO DO ANY DAMAGE. I TAKE PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY.
TA: why would you even do that, you don't have friiendleader dutiie2 anymore or
anythiing.
TA: ii2 thii2 out of 2ome mii2guiided 2en2e of...
TA: oh.
TA: plea2e tell me you're not buyiing hii2 nobody love2 me nobody hate2 me
gue22 ii'll go eat 2oft 2egmented iinvertebrate2 quadrant faiilure piity ploy.
CG:...IT'S NOT REMOTELY LIKE THAT.
TA: gl'bgolyb'2 tiittiie2, kk, what the fuck are you thiinkiing.
CG: CEASE PSYCHICALLY PERTURBING YOUR SOUPED-UP COMPUTER KEYBOARD FOR A MINUTE
THERE AND LISTEN.
CG: I DID NOT LET ERIDAN AMPORA SEDUCE ME. I AM NOT PLANNING ON LETTING ERIDAN
AMPORA SEDUCE ME. HE COULDN'T SEDUCE A MACKEREL WITH ITS CENTRAL NERVOUS SYSTEM
SCOOPED OUT.
CG: AND YES, THAT'S ONE OF SEVERAL THINGS ABOUT HIM WHICH ARE MIND-BREAKINGLY
PATHETIC.
TA: ugh, gag me wiith a rounded 2erviing uten2iil.
TA: you diid not ju2t 2ay that.
CG: WHATEVER. FOR THE LOVE OF ALL YOU HOLD SACRED, WHICH IN YOUR CASE LARGELY
CONSISTS OF INSTANT GRUBNOODLES, CODE AND BEE GENETICS AS FAR AS I CAN TELL, DO
NOT UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCE TELL HIM. I WILL CUT YOU IF YOU DO. I WILL CUT YOUR
*BEES*.
TA: ii beliieve you kk, at the very lea2t becau2e no one would tell me 2uch a
humiiliiatiing excu2e iif iit wa2 a liie.
TA: are you 2ure you don't want me two tell hiim for you, ii'm not entiirely...
TA: no, ii can't 2ay that wiith a 2traiight face, dammiit.
TA: your head of 2team ii2 thoroughly conviinciing, ii have no doubt you would
come over here iin a lather and TRY two cut my bee2.
CG: THE BEE-GUILLOTINE IS BEING PREPARED AT THIS VERY MOMENT, YOU DISBELIEVING
DOUCHE.
TA: diid you ju2t not get the memo, ii 2aiid ii beliieve you.
TA: ii won't go blabbiing, your nau2eatiingly moroniic feeliing2 are hereby
added two the extremely long document iin my head tiitled 2ollux'2 endle22
lii2t of thiing2 two not blab.
TA: but why ii2 iit 2uch a 2tate 2ecret, iit'2 not liike he'2 goiing two turn
you down.
CG: IT'S COMPLICATED. JUST. WOULD YOU TELL ERIDAN AMPORA IF YOU WERE FLUSHED
FOR HIM?
TA: for 2tarter2, ii wouldn't be flu2hed for hiim.
TA: we'll talk about thii2 later.
The meeting rolls around, and you take the four-wheeled transit vehicle to its
last terminus, then fly through a few miles of uninhabited (well, mostly
uninhabited) desert. It's late enough at night that the undead are in whatever
odd lull passes for sleep. Kanaya, herself, has dark smudges of emerald under
her eyes when she greets you; you've pulled her off the diurnal schedule she
keeps, though she's otherwise immaculate besides a bit of grumbling.
You, on the other hand, are decidedly jumpy. Your original expectations for
what a first group meeting would be like: quiet, determined, lacking in
highbloods other than Feferi. The actual: spurred on by a state of emergency
and every highblood invited except VK and GZ.
You expected FF to arrive with you or nearly with you, but she's late; says
there was a slight delay in feeding her lusus, and that's not something you
remotely want to mess with. You hope it doesn't have anything to do with ED.
Speaking of whom: in struts sir twerpface, awkwardly clinging to KK. Okay, he's
several feet behind KK and trying to look slouchy and disinterested, but you
know a cling from across the room when you see one. And you're not going to
hide your suspicion, no matter how glad you are that your early warning system
told you something was up. Admittedly, he's only a liability where Vriska is
actively dangerous. Or rather: he might choose to be dangerous, but if that was
his game, being a spy in your midst is probably not the way he'd go about it.
Nope. Not trusting that guy.
You get the chance to act on your misgivings pretty much the minute they walk
in the door. Kanaya and Karkat get into the kind of overlapping, hand-
fluttering conversation that you would normally only expect to see on Gossip
Pupas, and you're able to cut Eridan off from his awkward hovering like a lone
herdbeast. Not literally, of course. You tap at your phone in your pocket with
faint light.
TA: thii2 ii2 a very iimportant text that you have two an2wer iin the hallway
iimmediiately.
CA: wwhat
TA: ii know you can read, miight po22iibly be the only thiing you have goiing
for you at thii2 poiint.
TA: NOW, ed.
It's not like that's much bait to take, but it's mere minutes of slouching
against the wall in what passes for dim light here before he takes it; stalks
around the corner rolling his eyes and opening his mouth to start whining.
"What I want to know," you hiss, lifting him up by the collar with invisible
hands so his feet still touch the ground but only barely, "is where do you get
off."
"The fuck do you even mean, Sol," he says. He tries to punch your shielding but
his arm doesn't actually go anywhere; then you think he tries to knee you in
the bulge but all that happens is ridiculous squirming. You wonder how he ever
survived all that FLARP. Oh, right, Vriska.
"Some of us literally can't live with the status quo, but you have that luxury.
You're not going to be culled for - if that's even a mutation and not hair dye
-" You gesture at his purple streak, hands totally free, grimacing
disdainfully; some of you have real mutations - and okay maybe you're also
showing off that you can totally manhandle him with your mind while talking
with your hands: if he's going to betray you, how much he knows about your off-
scale power rating is the least of your problems. "And FF dumped your ass,
like, your ass is the most verifiably dumped ass on Alternia, even if you
didn't remember the things that never happened which I'm pretty sure you do,
you made her have to dump you again. And last I checked you wanted to kill us
on principle."
"So I'm not in the good graces of some a you weirdos, fine." Eridan kicks out
halfheartedly at your shin, aware by now that the gesture is for show at best,
before giving you his best seriously offended glower. "But if you think I'm
gonna let Fef get culled you better think about that again real quick. Just
‘cause I’m rightfully upset over her tossin’ me overboard don’t mean I want her
dead. I've done nothin to Vris, have I, and Vris was never half as – fuck, I
don't have to tell such as you any a this, lemme go." He headbutts thin air
furiously, this time as if he means it, and you're reminded with muted
amusement of something you read about the memory span of goldfish.
"Last I recall, your relationship with VK was a case of special circumstances,
am I wrong? No, don't answer that, I'm usually right. And I don't think it
exactly helps your case either." You mimic his voice - ugh, god he's whiny.
"Hi, I'm Eridan Ampora and I go slummin around with bluebloods sometimes, see,
you common folks can trust me!"
"Oh look, I'm Thollux Captwor and I mithplathed my aural shells becauthe
they're not ethential computing equipment," ED spits back at you. He's even
worse at mimicking your lisp than KK; in fact, he sounds exactly like a shitty
imitation of KK mimicking your lisp, while also being on the verge of panicking
or crying or something equally embarrassing. Ugh. "I said I'm not gonna let Fef
get culled. And it ain’t as if she’s the only one I give a squid’s shit about
in this mess either! I’m not gonna turn my back on Kan. Or Kar." He turns a
stupid shade of violet just saying his dumb nickname for KK. Double ugh.
"They're my friends, not that you would have the first idea about that, and if
you must know the only ones I've got anymore are in this creepy daywalker
infested hive, ya meddlin sulfur-for-vasculars – ugh, forget I fuckin said
anythin."
And there are hornets' nests you're not going to poke, but - "Oho! So VK did
de-hatefriend you on Trollbook, then," you say, trying to make it come off as a
casual smug assertion, feeling like your dig for intel is way too transparent.
Then again, ED never was great at noticing the obvious.
"What's it to you? I bet she defriended the rest a you losers too," he snips,
pulling a sneer to cover a muddled hurt-relieved grimace. "...and blocked you
on Trollian, an' stopped answerin text messages," he adds despondently.
You don't suppose that cracking up is helping you intimidate this walking
mistake of a seadweller, but you can't help yourself. Reluctantly, you let him
down from the wall; you're giggling hard enough that you don't want to bother
having to pay attention to your powers, and frankly, you were sold on his
loyalties at about the point where he started blushing stupidly. You're keeping
up enough of a force field not to let him take a swing at you, though. "...All
right, I guess you can stay. Just -" you force your voice serious again - "- if
you got it into your head to snitch, something happened and you got frustrated
with the lot of us, whatever, just remember it's not like the Threshecutioners
are gonna look at you and say ohh well he's got well-formed earfins, we can't
cull HIM! - You're in or you're out, is what I'm saying."
ED rubs dramatically at his shoulder even though seadwellers are resilient and
there's no way he actually injured himself with the feeble fight he just put
up. "...and I'm not already bein' treated as a traitor how?" he whines, then
takes a look at your shimmering shielding, grits his teeth and changes tack.
"I'm aware a the penalty for double crossin, unlike some a you uncultured
bilgebloods that used your Imperial History schoolfeed books as husktop stands
or huntin ammunition, and... I've done my own share a cullin, all right. I know
what I’m in for, an’ I probably know it better’n the rest of you do." And he
turns his back on you and starts down the hallway, still holding ostentatiously
onto his shoulder.
~~~
 
In the petty chaos that is Kanaya being aggressively conciliatory at everyone
present – Eridan drinks in her annoyed tisking and offers of tea alike as if no
one has spoken to him in nights; KK alternates between blaring-loud and
sullenly silent hunched over his tea like some kind of quillbeast or armored
beetle trying to shelter curled up under its own back; FF has somehow managed
to graciously and enthusiastically make herself useful with the snacks and tea
before anyone notices she's arrived – the additional ruckus of Terezi prying
her sandy shoes off with her cane in the entryway and yelling "What's the news,
Appleberry?" before she even gets into the same block with you is almost a
relief.
"Someone we both know and dislike might be up to some shit. Or not," you wait
to tell her until she's actually within normal speaking range. She nods like
she's known all along and wanders off, leaving you to your husktop. By the time
Tavros arrives Terezi is bickering with Karkat like you've all been stuck in
this block for more like fifteen perigees than fifteen minutes, and then Nepeta
shows up with no idea where Equius is. You type what the glub into your phone;
Feferi shrugs at you from across the room. You give up on trying to start the
meeting and keep yourself busy by sweeping the hive for bugs again; the first
two checks came up clean, but a third certainly won't hurt.
Eridan is starting to complain that it's near enough sunrise he won't be able
to get back to his hive. You're about to go off about how dumb it is to live in
a shipwreck when the wayward blueblood slips in and shuts Kanaya's hiveportal
behind him.
"Finally," Karkat says. "I was starting to think you'd been clawed to pieces by
the undead hordes." He somehow manages to sound both alarmed by the prospect
and like he wouldn't be annoyed if it happened. EQ looks intact, but his
composure is ruffled and his forehead soaked with sweat; still, for him that
could just be weather.
"No," Equius says quietly, "I've been saddled with a different set of
inconveniences," and something sharp in his tone makes you look up.
Everyone's quiet for a moment, until you dispense with waiting for a cue.
"Okay, so, you're late. You've been detained by some circumstance. Shit, EQ,
what happened? Please tell me it doesn't involve, say, anti-insurgency drones
about to descend on us right this minute."
KK quietly mimicks the way you say 'insurgency'; you pretend not to hear him.
"Rein in your paranoia," EQ says. He sounds tired. "Vriska Serket cornered me
for maintenance on her arm. Which I supplied, despite the inappropriately
demanding tone she used to ask." You start to wince. His preoccupation with
hemocaste isn't going to make this easier; he and Eridan are the two who
outrank her in that department, and historically they've... well, you're not
even sure what to call ED's failed attempt at kismesissitude with VK, but
you're starting to worry that some of your friends might be too attached. Hell,
you feel sick thinking about going after her. Not that you don't want Vriska
gone. Just that the idea of doing the dirty work yourself puts a knot in your
stomach, half from worry about what could go wrong and half because the idea of
killing has always been rather less comfortable to you than the idea of dying.
You and KK both were so explicitly and repetitively clear about the absolute
secrecy of this meeting that you were pleasantly surprised that no one told you
to knock it off with the reminders - not that that prevented KK from having
told ED before the meeting was even scheduled. In any case, you aren't going to
have time to put up with the kind of confused, circular flow of orders,
misunderstandings, and snark that characterized the game, though you're certain
you'll eventually find yourself dealing with a communication clusterfuck sooner
or later. But it's not like Equius to just open his trap for no good reason, so
he can't have told her; can he?
"She seems to know something is ahoof," he continues. "She pressed me on the
subject a bit, while trying to seem as if she wasn't doing so. That part made
it easier to avoid her inquiries. Then she turned to making a fuss of how tough
she was and how she needed to be prepared to fight anyone. Did we intend....?"
He leaves it dangling, and you're unsure whether he's asking if the plan was to
bring her in or fight her.
Kanaya saves you from having to explain. "She threatened me baldly the other
morning," she says, blunt and to the point. "I doubt if she has any idea what
we intend, but her meddling could nonetheless ruin our chances. I say we cull
her." She winces a little saying it, but is no less firm for that.
A murmur runs through the block, but it doesn't sound anything like dissent.
Karkat mutters something like "Here goes;" Feferi glances at you, just a quick
look to make sure you're all right.
"Isn't there anyone else in here who thinks this might not be entirely fuckin
necessary?" Eridan pipes in, fins nearly flat back against his head and looking
distinctly like he expects to be slapped, possibly by you. "Vris is just
blusterin because she thinks we're messin with her. She's bein irrational about
the game an won't listen to logic, but why not just leave well enough alone and
ignoooooooore her until she gets boooooooored," he imitates the completely
insufferable droning yowl of Vriska when she gets agitated, then glances around
grinning sheepishly as if he expects to score mocking Vriska in-crowd bonus
points.
It's Kanaya who answers him, and for all it's a brisk smackdown, she sounds
more sympathetic than the words let on. "Do you believe she'd have any qualms
about throwing you under the four-wheeled transit conveyance if the situation
were reversed? And, more to the point, has she ever responded less than
catastrophically to being ignored?"
"Her energy needs to be harnessed, at the very least," Equius begins, but
Karkat is already trammelling over him.
"I don't like this either!" he's saying. "But Kanaya's right. 'Just leave her
alone' is not an answer; it's letting a cholerbear loose in a brooding cavern."
"Thanks for the vote of confidence," Eridan mutters, his chin drooping until
half his face is hidden in the collar of his cape.
"There are lots of pawsible ways to deal with the situation," Nepeta says,
loudly and not looking at anyone in particular. It's weird for her to be
hedging like that; Karkat doesn't notice, just interjects brusquely.
"There sure are, now can we hear some of them before we all pass away
tragically from terminal indecision?"
Kanaya picks at a cookie, nervously crumbling pieces between her claws, but her
face stays smoothly resolute. "Vriska's hive is still in rather perilous
proximity to a cliff's edge," she offers, "Most of the paw – possibilities I've
thought of run that way. But I'm not a strategist, I'm afraid." Awkward silence
descends again.
Eridan, of all people, speaks up: reluctantly, quietly, his mouth quirked
sideways with dissatisfaction. "Vris is still playin' FLARP," he offers. "I've
seen her listed in ranked matches. It's the best pretext we could ask for."
You're surprised that he manages we without stumbling; he's still holding
himself with his shoulders almost drawn up to his ears, a bit like you all
could somehow pollute his blood by proximity. Equius solemnly nods agreement.
"I would pike to get unanimity on this," Feferi says softly, continuing to look
from troll to troll, but for a moment no one seems inclined to answer.
"I have a consideration." The voice is sharp, carefully enunciated, and Terezi
rises leaning dramatically on her cane in what you've all come to recognize as
one of her courtroom addresses. "I'm not advocating restraint or hesitation!
Our true adversary is vast, and we are... well." She scans the room in a
sightless approximation of a significant glance, one eyebrow raised almost to
her hairline. "But this treachery suspect is a single troll without the weight
of the Empire behind her, and this should be settled accuser to accused, not by
mob culling. Otherwise we aren't just proving our movement unjust, but too
cowardly to stand up to a single mindreader throwing a tantrum." She's taut and
shaky with anger, but not at anyone in the room. You don't like anything about
where this is going.
"She doesn't just read minds," you point out, sounding rather more bitter than
you meant to.
"I can hold my own against that," Terezi snaps, although the corners of her
mouth quickly tug down apologetically.
"Well, isn't that nice for you," you fire back without thinking.
"I, uh." Everyone turns around to look at Tavros. His voice only wavers a
little. "Give me a chance to deal with her."
Terezi and Feferi look thoughtful, but Equius stifles what you're pretty sure
was going to be a snort. "Uh, Tavros?" Karkat blurts out. "Do you have a fever?
Are you sure you didn't get gnawed on by a zombie on the way here? Even a
little bit? Then what the blistering fuck –" You elbow him in the ribs across
the room with psionics to shut him up. Nepeta does something with her hand that
catches your eye. You wouldn't honestly notice except she's wearing her claw
extensions and they flash in the light; she's giving Tavros a thumbs-up sign,
and you think there must be context here that you're missing.
"Three nights," he says. "Three nights, and if it doesn't, uh, work out, you
can go after her. But. I've got this. Don't believe me, that's fine, you can go
after her when I fail, right?"
Terezi turns to face him, wearing a concerned frown. "Dude, you haven't exactly
come away from your dealings with Serket before looking much better than any of
the rest of us who've been shortsighted enough to try." Terezi actually waggles
her eyebrows a bit at her own joke, though the usual expressive acrobatics of
her face are subdued with worry.
"If I," Tavros says, "told all of you what I had in mind, I think it would be a
security flaw in what is, otherwise, a completely badass plan, which if it
succeeds will make Vriska totally aware of my intentions towards her, and give
her some motivation to support us rather than hinder us." Nepeta is doing the
thumbs-up thing again and both of Terezi's brows are at full mast. My
intentions towards her, eh?
"What about if it fails?" Kanaya asks. "Have you given a thought to that?"
"If it fails, we'll probably have to kill her, but, back to square one, right?"
His voice barely wavers.
"Then you'd better have let someone in on your plan so we're not all stuck here
scratching our horns like chumps if you don't get back in good enough shape to
tell us what you did and what we're dealing with!" Terezi either forgets about
her dramatic cane leaning or changes tactics and winds up waving the dragon-
shaped handle at Tavros as she interjects, the other end swinging and barely
missing Nepeta. "So I'm volunteering for spider backup duty – if this assembly
approves."
"I'm certainly not arguing," you tell TZ, drowning out Karkat's stammered but.
"Redundancy is good."
"Nepeta has, uh, already volunteered to be my second," Tavros finally hedges,
looking awkward. Suspicions confirmed.
"We'll tail you what you need to know," Nepeta says briskly to Terezi.
"Consider it a bargain." Terezi nods to each of them in turn and drops back
into her chair looking pleased with herself, which – Terezi being pleased with
herself makes you kind of reflexively worried, but this is still on the better
end of the scale of outcomes you envisioned for this meeting (zero being
"everyone dies.")
"We're all going to die," Karkat mutters, hands clapped to his eyes.
"Hey! That's my line, assface." But is it? Is doom still your purview, now that
everything has changed? That's too confusing a line of thought, and you shelve
it for now.
"And you bunch always say I come over all inappropriately romantic," Eridan
mutters, accusatory. You ignore him.
"In the event that we don't go up in a cloud of post-larval hormones and
ambition fumes," Karkat says, "- Why am I even hedging. We all know why we're
here, which is because we want to do something grander than staying out of the
way of drone sweeps and avoiding the business ends of culling forks. Grander
even than eliminating our enemies in faux FLARP style. Yes?"
"Yes," Feferi says, and draws herself up.
"That is why we're deciding it's worth going after Vriska, instead of correctly
concluding that we'd have to be complete morons to want to poke that with a
stick to see what happens, yes?" Karkat continues.
"Yes," Kanaya answers. You can hear the glare in her voice, and you guess she's
none too pleased with being left out of the loop, though Tavros is right that
it's better if fewer people are in on his plan.
"Then maybe we'd better figure out what the hell we're doing next, to avoid the
inevitable conference in which everyone stares at me with their jaw hanging
open, being all help us Karkat what do."
You don't seem to remember the game actually going that way, but you hold your
tongue; he's got a point. "Nothing too specific yet," you amend. The less stray
information capable of getting out of control, the better.
"Very whale then," Feferi says. "Generalities."
You're not sure if everyone turns to look at her just then or whether you've
all been watching her already. The way she commands attention, the shift in
focus is so sudden and subtle that it reminds you of the time you were at NP's
place and there was suddenly a meowbeast in your lap, with no sign of how it
had arrived there.
She turns to Equius. "We may sometimes forget ourselves, in opposing the old
order. That isn't always a bad fin, but we need to be able to make peace that
lasts. Rein in our worse impulses."
"Is she actually making horse puns," Karkat says. "Cull me now." The idea of
Equius as the voice of moderation is still somewhat jarring to you too, so this
time it's Eridan who nudges Karkat (more gently) to shut him up.
"I accept the task at hoof," Equius agrees, ignoring the outburst, although he
does shift awkwardly, his chair creaking like it's supporting twelve trolls
instead of just one, and scrub at his forehead with the back of his fist after
getting an order from the Heiress. "And will do my best to keep the troops in
line."
She plants herself inches before Terezi, so close you're sure the tealblood can
feel her breathe. "Pikewise, with you - we've spoken about this, it's no news
to you. But make sure everything we do holds up to scrutiny."
"Remember who our enemy is!" Terezi responds, voice ringing with deliberate
projection, clearly addressing the entire assembly rather than just Feferi.
"And don't take your sniffnodes off the mark! Then our skulking and dastardly
deeds will be only the most justified."
Gesturing with her hand to include Nepeta, Tavros and Kanaya, Feferi says,
"Aside from current affairs, the three of you are mostly going to come in handy
later on - tactics, fighting, ground-forces stuff. Which we're hopefully going
to do as little of as possible, because if it came down to numbers we'd almost
certainly lose." Tavros nods fervently. "Except -"
She turns to you. "You understand systems, the spread of information - you get
to work out logistical details, large and small. How to feed my lusus more
sustainably. How to sway the public. Work with Terezi and with Aradia." You
think you hear the sound of a few pairs of eyebrows hitting the ceiling. Terezi
just shark-grins at you like she's actually looking forward to keeping her
tongue stuck to your husktop screen for the next however many perigees. You're
not even sure how Eridan manages to be so obtrusive about standing next to the
wall shifting from foot to foot, but it's getting on your nerves. FF must
notice, because she looks to him next. "You're a decent strategist. We're going
to need that; we're also going to need to communicate with other seadwellers
unobtrusively, and I'm a little too obvious."
By the way she's laying everything out, it almost sounds like she's planning a
FLARP campaign. But of course this is something even more serious than that.
Eridan nods to her and grumbles, "Whatever you say, Fef," and you're not sure
whether he's trying to conceal uncertainty under indignation or vice versa, but
you're not sure you care.
She looks at Karkat then, just looks at him, and says firmly, "I'll need a
Discordictator."
He chokes on his own spit. Then, "That's nice," he says deliberately.
"Let's try this again. I need you to be my Discordictator."
"There hasn't been a proper one of those in fuckin centuries," Eridan rambles
cheerfully, "not since Her Imperious Condescension disliked the advice a' hers
and made the position sorta ceremonial, after a few heads got knocked off,
anyway -"
"Ugh, and that sure makes me feel confident about what was already a dubious
clusterfuck of a suggestion," KK grumbles -
"It wasn't a suggestion," Feferi says, "And removing formal fishidence is
exactly where she went wrong!" She has this way of dragging everyone back to
the topic that reminds you of Nepeta pulling a kill behind her, and she's pink-
cheeked with vehemence as she goes on. "I have every intention of being betta
than that. But intentions are things they write in your epitaph, and if I
survive as long as I hope I will, I'll need more than intention, on every side.
And you, Karkat: you're not easily intimidated. Shore, if we need a symbol that
I'm not like the last Empress - you can be that symbol, it's true. But so could
Sole-lux! You, on the other fin, you know how to shout at people. You know how
to be a friendleader. And we need someglubby to be that. I'm too intimidating,
whether or not I want to be."
KK casts a darting sidelong glare around the room, the kind of 'anyone who
notices me freaking out is getting their ass handed to them on a silver sickle'
fierce-scared look that makes your stomach do an inconvenient little flip.
"Thanks, I guess," he growls, and leaves it at that.
Chapter End Notes
     Trickshire is our co-author on an upcoming parallel series which
     focuses on vignettes of some of the non-Sollux-centric relationships
     in the story; the first piece will be going up soon. Feel free to
     subscribe to any one of us to get an announcement when it starts
     being posted!
     And yes, Sollux did just mentally insult Eridan's nickname convention
     while using his own. It's like he's got a ... double standard. [http:
     //www.mspaintadventures.com/storyfiles/hs2/scraps/trollcool.gif]
***** the sound of hornets swarming *****
Chapter Summary
     AT: iT TURNS OUT, tHAT i AM NOT PARTICULARLY, pERSONALLY ATTACHED TO
     YOUR LUSUS,
     AT: aND MY AUSPISTICE, rEMINDED ME THAT AS LONG AS SPIDERMOM, wAS
     WEAVING THESE SHITTY WEBS, aROUND YOU,
     AT: i MIGHT AS WELL BE ATTEMPTING, tO GET DOWN WITH AN IMPERIAL
     DRONE, wHICH IS TO SAY, yOU SIMPLY WEREN'T CAPABLE OF THE RIGHT KIND
     OF HOSTILITY, }:/
Chapter Notes
     Reminder to readers that Wires and Stars ashen romance is slightly
     different,_and_more_expansive,_than_in_canon: an auspistice serves as
     a sort of blackrom coach to their auspisticee(s), not only steering
     them away from ill-fated pitch flings but also matchmaking and
     helping the auspisticee fine-tune their advances.
     (This chapter, if you haven't guessed, contains Tavros <3< Vriska and
     a heavily implied ashen ship in the background. Putting it here
     rather than in tags because it's not a central focus of the whole
     story and we don't want to mislead readers.)
arsenicCatnip [AC] began trolling twinArmageddons [TA]
AC: :33 < *ac leaps off the top of your gaming tower and into your path, b33ing
careful not to get mind honey on her paws*
TA: don't thiink ii don't 2ee your terriible, awful pun.
TA: ii know where iit liive2, ii know where iit 2leep2.
AC: :33 < puns don't sl33p! they are ever vigilant.
AC: :33 *ac sidles up to pawllux to ask an impurrtant fafur*
TA: ii'm kiind of bu2y, but then ii don't 2ee that changiing any tiime thii2
century 2o go ahead.
AC: :33 < we n33d a memo!
AC: :33 < and since you are the code maintainer on the purrent fursion of
trollian that we are all using, that means you n33d to reactivate the memo
feature!
TA: hell no, iit'2 the lea2t 2ecure of any of the experiimental feature2.
TA: and a2 far a2 ii can tell there ii2 no way two make iit 2ecure, ii'd have
two rewriite iit from 2cratch.
AC: :33 < *ac gives a stubborn furown* it's absolutely necessary!
AC: :33 < what if i purrmise no one will say anything sensitive in it?
TA: how can you even promii2e that?
AC: :33 < you can tail them so yourself! and shut down the memo if anyone
breaks secrecy.
TA: but people are 2tupiid, iit'2 a con2tant of the uniiver2e.
AC: :33 < then they'll find some other way to be stupid even if you don't start
a memeow! at least this way, you'll be able to overs33 the stupidity, and
pounce on it as soon as you catch it. :33
TA: you've got a poiint.
You grudgingly set up the memo. To be honest, you're not sure her logic quite
works for something that exists simultaneously at all time points, but you'd
also rather find out sooner than later if anyone's going to flame out via
failure to follow directions.
You don't find out the rest of the plan until the night everyone else does –
the details are actually safer on a hard drive than in your head, for once,
which is an incredibly uncomfortable thought during the rare times you stop
working long enough to think about it – but you scrape the latest chatlogs from
the phones and husktops of everyone involved as soon as you can afterward.

arachnidsGrip [AG] began trolling gallowsCalibrator [GC]
 AG: We're still fr8nds, r8????????
GC: 1T D3P3NDS WH4T YOU M34N BY 'FR13NDS' >:P
AG: People who help each other out when the other one's in trou8le????????
GC: BUT TH3 GR34T VR1SK4 S3RK3T SUR3LY DO3SNT N33D H3LP FROM 4NYON3!
AG: I'm not joking!!!!!!!!
GC: N31TH3R 4M 1 >:]
AG: Seriously Pyrope, you gotta h8lp me, I'm stuck up a fucking TREE!!!!!!!!
AG: What is this even a8out? What did I even do to anyone? D::::
GC: 1F YOU N33D H3LP F1GUR1NG OUT TH3 LOGG1NG FUNCT1ON ON TROLL14N 4SK SOLLUX
GC: OH W41T
GC: S33
GC: TH4T W4S 4 JOK3
GC: NOW YOU KNOW HOW TO T3LL TH3 D1FF3R3NCE >:]
AG: I'm surrounded 8y a mad meow8east whisperer and a pack of r8venous lions!
AG: My toes are in d8nger! Is that your idea of a joke????????
GC: NO
GC: BUT 1T SOUNDS L1K3 QU1T3 4N 4DV3NTUR3!
GC: TH3 K1ND YOU W3R3 H4TCH3D FOR BY V1RTU3 OF YOUR 1LLUSTR1OUS 4NC3STRY M4YB3!
AG: Th8s 8sn't funny!!!!!!!!
GC: 1 JUST S41D 1T W4SNT 4 JOK3
GC: W3R3 YOU 3V3N P4Y1NG 4TT3NT1ON >:[
AG: That implies you DO know something a8out this.
AG: ……..
AG: You sent her, d8dn't you?
AG: Couldn't do your own dirty work, Pyrope? I'm disappointed in you. ::::(
AG: 8t least she's not hard to overpower!
GC: 1 C4N N31TH3R CONF1RM NOR D3NY TH3 4CCUS4T1ON!
GC: BUT 1F YOU B3L13V3 TH4T YOUR TH1NKP4N SH3N4N1G4NS C4N STOP RO4RB34STS FROM
B31NG HUNGRY TH3N 1 4M NOT SUR3 WH4T TO T3LL YOU >:/
AG: I made her tell the mountain roar8easts to leave 8ut they 8ren't leaving.
D::::
AG: If you wanted me to say it, you're finally going to get what you were w8ing
for, ok8y! I'm sc8red.
GC: W3LCOM3 TO TH3 FL1P S1D3 OF YOUR SH3N4N1G4NS
GC: WH4T 1S 1T YOU S4Y
GC: OH Y34H
GC: YOULL 83 JUST F11111111N3!!!!!!!!
GC: D1D 1 G3T 1T R1GHT
GC: 1 COUNT3D 4ND 3V3RYTH1NG >:]
AG: You can tell me what your g8me is 8ny night now!
AG: I can still get my n8gh8or to m8ke new eyes for you, especially since I've
got hold of his moir8il ::::)
AG: 8ut I won't 8e any use if I'm stuck here at day8r8k!!!!!!!!
GC: 1TS 4LL R1GHT M1SS BLU3B3RRY B4CKST4B P13
GC: 1T W1LL 4LL B3 OV3R SOON
AG: So is th8 8 then? Did you get me up here to k8ll me?
AG: Ev8n 8t your worst I n8ver thought you wouldn't d8re to f8ce me!!!!!!!!
GC: YOUR3 R1GHT 4BOUT ON3 TH1NG
GC: 1F 1 W4S PL4NN1NG TO K1LL YOU 1D PROS3CUT3 YOU MYS3LF!
GC: 4ND 1 WOULDNT BOTH3R W1TH 4LL TH1S D1ST4ST3FUL D3C31T
GC: 1D ST1LL S3TTL3 FOR US1NG YOUR OLD TR1CKS ON YOU 1F 1 H4D TO
GC: BUT 1T WOULDNT F33L R1GHT TO S1NK TO TH4T L3V3L
GC: 4ND 4NYW4Y 1 WOULDNT H4V3 TO >:]
AG: Your riddles ar8n't 8ny h8lp!!!!!!!!
AG: 8ut fine, there are other trolls that c8re a8out me and appreci8 my
a8ilities!
GC: N4M3 JUST ON3
AG: It's not my fault my high8lood friends are 8usy! It's the peril of hanging
out with v8ry import8nt people.
AG: 8ut th8 8r8 Tavros cares a8out me!!!!!!!! He c8n't tear himself aw8y.
GC: WOW 1 TH1NK YOU W1LL COM3 TO 4PPR3C14T3 HOW R1GHT YOU 4R3 V3RY SOON
AG: Of course I'm r8! W8, the superior Terezi Pyrope is finally coming to see
reason????????
AG: So does that mean you'll h8lp?
GC: NO
GC: WHY H3LP WH3N 1 C4N S1T B4CK 4ND W4TCH 1NST34D, R1GHT? 1 L34RN3D FROM TH3
B3ST >:]
AG: Ughhhhhhhhh! R8st 8ssured, I'll find out all a8out your o8tuse motiv8ions
l8er!
 
gallowsCalibrator [GC] began trolling adiosToreador [AT]
GC: H3Y T4VROS
GC: TH3 W3B 1S 3MPTY 4ND TH3 TR33 1S 1N BLOOM!
GC: NO, TH4T SOUNDS STUP1D, 1 MUST H4V3 TH3 COD3 WRONG >:[
GC: ...WH4T3V3R, COD3 1S UNN3C3SS4RY
GC: VR1SK4 1S COMPL3T3LY CLU3L3SS, 4LL PL4NS 4R3 GO!
GC: GOOD LUCK >:]
 
adiosToreador [AT] began trolling arachnidsGrip [AG]
AT: hELLO, vRISKA, pLEASE HAVE MY CONDOLENCES,
AG: W8w! Talk a8out coincidences!!!!!!!!
AG: I was just a8out to troll you. 8oy, do I have a story to tell. You even
have a ch8nce to 8e part of the excitement.
AG: W8. Condolences? Wh8?
AT: tHE OTHERS AGREED, tHAT i COULD GIVE YOU ONE MORE CHANCE, tO GET YOUR ACT
TOGETHER,
AT: tHAT IS ONE, nOT EIGHT, oR ANY OTHER NUMBER THAT ANYONE HAS DECIDED, iS
SUITABLE TO THEIR PERSONAL SENSE OF SYMMETRY,
AT: bUT i DECIDED i HAD TO KILL YOUR LUSUS, fIRST, bEFORE i COULD APPROACH YOU
WITH THIS OFFER OF PROBATION, oR AS YOU WOULD SAY, iN YOUR STUPID QUIRK,
pRO88ION,
AT: sINCE YOU'VE TOLD ME, mANY TIMES, tHAT i SHOULD FOCUS ON THE BOTTOM LINE,
AG: YOU DID WH8???????? I can't 8elieve this!
AG: If rumors are to 8e 8elieved, you were too w8k to k8ll ME when I 8SKED you
to!
AT: iT TURNS OUT, tHAT i AM NOT PARTICULARLY, pERSONALLY ATTACHED TO YOUR
LUSUS,
AT: aND MY AUSPISTICE, rEMINDED ME THAT AS LONG AS SPIDERMOM, wAS WEAVING THESE
SHITTY WEBS, aROUND YOU,
AT: i MIGHT AS WELL BE ATTEMPTING, tO GET DOWN WITH AN IMPERIAL DRONE, wHICH IS
TO SAY, yOU SIMPLY WEREN'T CAPABLE OF THE RIGHT KIND OF HOSTILITY, }:/
AG: Wh8 the fuck are you t8lking a8out?
AG: Your auspistice? 8re you trying to impress me with your ashen score? Could
you even g8 more full of shit th8n this!!!!!!!!
AT: yOUR ESTIMATION, oF MY TENDENCY TO MAKE THINGS UP, hAS ALWAYS BEEN SOMEWHAT
EXAGGERATED,
AT: eVEN WHEN IT'S IN YOUR BEST INTEREST, tO BELIEVE THAT i'M TELLING THE
TRUTH, wITHOUT RESORTING TO SENDING PHOTOS OF YOUR TRULY DEAD LUSUS TO YOUR
SLAPCHAT,
AG: Ugh, I'm so 8ored of wrigglers with Orphaner delusions it's nause8ing. What
m8kes you think you can get aw8 with this????????
AT: iT CONVENIENTLY HAPPENS, tHAT BY FLARP BY-LAW 807.1B, a PLAYER WHO HAS
CHEATED, bY ACTING OUTSIDE OF GAME CONSTRAINTS, tO GET AHEAD,
AT: oWES A FORFEIT, wHICH MAY BE PAID, bY THE LIFE OF HER LUSUS,
AG: So Terezi D8D put you up to this. Is SHE........
AT: nO, wE'RE NOT ASHEN, sHE JUST HELPED FIGURE OUT LEGAL DETAILS,
AT: tHE FUNDAMENTALS OF THE PLAN, wERE OF MY OWN CONSTRUCTION,
AT: bUT YES, i HAD SUPPORT, wHICH IS NOT WRONG, oR EMBARRASSING,
AT: iT TURNS OUT, fRIENDS CAN BE HELPFUL, oF THEIR OWN FREE WILL, aND ALSO THEY
ARE EASIER TO KEEP, wHEN NO ONE IS TRYING, tO MAKE THEM INTO LUNCH,
AT: aND, iT'S HARD TO TELL, bUT i THINK SPIDERMOM AGREED THAT IT WAS BEST FOR
YOU, iN THE END,
AG: Oh my g8d, you are soooooooo em8arrassing. Shitty low8lood pl8titudes? Is
th8 wh8 you have to say for yourself?
AG: Tavros, you could have 8enefited so much from just 8eing my ally and
su8ordinate! Why would you 8etr8y me? D::::
AT: i WOULD THINK, tHAT IT WAS OBVIOUS BY NOW, bUT YOU DO NOT ALWAYS SEEM TO
PICK UP, oN THE OBVIOUS,
AT: a TEDIOUS TENDENCY, wHICH i AM GOING TO HERETOFORE ENCOURAGE YOU TO CHANGE,
pOSSIBLY VIA, wHAT SOLLUX CALLS PERCUSSIVE MAINTENANCE,
AT: aLONG WITH YOUR UNWILLINGNESS, tO TAKE RESPONSIBILITY, fOR YOUR OWN SHIT,
sUCH AS YOUR LUSUS PROBLEM,
AG: Now you're just being a hypocr8! YOU'RE letting others do the work for you!
AT: iN ALL CASES, tHEY OFFERED OR, i ASKED,
AT: tHAT TURNS OUT TO BE, aN ESSENTIAL ASPECT OF THE POWER OF FRIENDSHIP, }:)
AT: aND ANY NUMBER OF US, wOULD HAVE DONE IT GLADLY, iF YOU HADN'T BEEN TOO
CLUCKBEAST TO INQUIRE,
AT: rATHER THAN ME, bEING IRONICALLY, tHE ONLY ONE WILLING TO STEP UP, bECAUSE
i HAVE ENOUGH ANTIPATHY TOWARD YOU, tO CARE, <3<
AG: 8h8h8h8! Look at you!!!!!!!!
AG: W8ving your little sp8des around at me like you even know that means!
Playing along with a 8unch of losers and their m8de up g8me 8ecause you think
it will m8ke them liiiiiiiike you ::::)
AG: Can't you hear them laughing 8ehind your 8ack? I taught you 8etter than
this!
AG: Since you've t8ken c8re of my responsi8ilities, I have ALLLLLLLL the time
in the world to g8t 8ack 8t you and your ridiculous 8and of "fr8nds!" ALL of
them!
AG: Now 8xcuse me, I have important 8usiness to finish!
AT: wHICH WOULD BE, wHAT EXACTLY, ?
AG: M8king sure you 8r8ts never pull this stunt ag8n, to 8egin with!
AG: And then...
AG: Well, then you won't 8e in any position to c8re, will you? ::::)
AT: oK, bUT THE THING IS, tHAT i'M TAKING A GAMBLE, yOU SHOULD KNOW ALL ABOUT
THAT,
AT: eXCEPT, tHAT UNLIKE MOST OF YOURS, i THINK IT'S A PRETTY SMART BET,
AT: tHAT YOU AREN'T ACTUALLY WILLING TO TAKE ON TEN TROLLS, wITH MORE BATTLE
EXPERIENCE BETWEEN US THAN YOU COULD DREAM OF,
AT: wHO WOULD ALL CULL YOU AS SOON AS LOOK AT YOU, eXCEPT ME,
AT: yOU'RE PRETTY FUCKED UP, eVEN i ACKNOWLEDGE THAT, bUT i DON'T THINK YOU'RE
SUICIDAL,
AT: aND WHY WASTE YOUR NEW FREEDOM, oN SUCH A TINY AMBITION, wHEN YOU CAN DO,
jUST ABOUT ANYTHING,
AT: i BELIEVE, tHE VRISKA i'M DOING THIS FOR, wOULD CALL THAT, "8ooooooooring",
AG: ...May8e you've got a point. Maaaaaaaay8e.
AG: 8ut on the other h8nd I also don't h8ve to listen to your hoof8eastshit to
get out of this. You know that, r8?
AG: Now th8 we have a ch8 open……..
AT: wELL, yOU SEE, i ACTUALLY PAY ATTENTION, tO THE DETAILS OF MY PLANS,
AT: sO YES, yOU COULD CONTROL ME LONG ENOUGH, tO MAKE THE ROARBEASTS, lOSE
INTEREST, bUT I HAPPEN TO KNOW, tHAT YOU CAN'T CONTROL ME AND NEPETA, aT THE
SAME TIME,
AT: aND SHE WOULD NOTICE, aND WOULD MOVE TO CONTAIN YOU,
AT: aND IF YOU CHOSE TO CONTROL HER INSTEAD, i WOULD STILL HAVE THE ROARBEASTS,
AT: nEED I GO ON?, i'M PRETTY GOOD AT, sTRATEGY GAMES, aS IT TURNS OUT,
AG: Oh, just shut the fuck up!!!!!!!!
AT: oKAY,
AG: ........
AG: Uuuuuuuugh, it's o8vious I meant th8 rh8orically.
AG: Tavros N8ram, you are H8RRI8LE. D::::
AT: tHANK YOU, iT'S GOOD TO SEE YOU ACKNOWLEDGE THE OBVIOUS, fOR ONCE,
AT: tHIS NEEDS, tO ACTUALLY END,
AT: wE CAN'T GET ANYTHING SERIOUS DONE, wHILE WORRYING ABOUT SUPPOSED ALLIES,
sTABBING US IN THE BACK,
AT: sO ARE YOU READY, fOR THE BIG TIME,
AT: bECAUSE IF YOU ARE, aLL YOU HAVE TO DO, iS NOT KILL US OR RODENT US OUT,
wHICH SEEMS LIKE IT SHOULD BE RELATIVELY SIMPLE,
AT: bUT THIS IS YOU WE'RE TALKING ABOUT, sO i HAVE PREPARED, yOUR REMEDIAL
LESSONS,
AG: I 8et you want me to cave in and apologize for wh8 I did, or something.
AG: I was just trying to improve you. You know th8.
AT: yES, i KNOW EVERY VERSION OF YOUR FAVORITE, fALSE APOLOGY,
AT: pROBABLY BETTER, tHAN YOU DO, sINCE i REMEMBER THE GAME, aND ACTUALLY WE
HUNG OUT QUITE A LOT, dURING IT,
AT: aND i HAD EVERY OPPORTUNITY, tO CONSIDER YOUR EXCUSES, aND DECIDE THAT
ACTUALLY i STILL PREFERRED HAVING, lEGS THAT WORKED, }:(
AG: 8esides, Sp8dermom would have 8een just as happy to have 8 you.
AG: To 8e honest, 8's kind of a relief.
AG: 8ut I don't know wh8 I'm going to do without all th8 hanging over my head
all the time.
AT: wELL, aVOIDING GETTING KILLED SEEMS LIKE, iT MIGHT KEEP YOU 8USY,
AT: cONSIDERING, iT WILL BE DIFFICULT TO CONVINCE THE OTHERS, tHAT YOU CAN BE
TRUSTWORTHY,
AT: bUT, i bELIEVE IN YOU, vRISKA, i AM WILLING TO IMPROVE YOU,
AT: aND MY TECHNIQUE, iS SUPERIOR, iN THAT YOU CAN EVEN, kEEP YOUR LEGS,
AT: aT LEAST IF YOU QUIT WITH THE, ~dESPER8 MANIPUL8TION SCHEMES~, lONG ENOUGH
TO FOLLOW DIRECTIONS,
AT: wHICH IS A NEW SKILL FOR YOU, bUT, yOU'RE SUCH AN ADVOCATE FOR LEARNING
UNDER PRESSURE,
AT: tHAT I TRUST YOU'LL FIND THE ABILITY, }:)
AG: You 8re one stone-cold fucking jerk!!!!!!!!
AT: rEALLY?, tHANKS, i HATE YOU TOO,
AT: tHE OTHERS, tELL ME I AM BEING, oVERLY SENTIMENTAL,
AT: bUT I JUST FELT, iT WAS FAIR TO GIVE YOU A CHANCE, bEFORE WRITING YOU OFF
AS A TOTAL LOSS,
AT: tHOUGH I AM PREPARED, tO DO SO, iF I HAVE TO, bECAUSE I DON'T LIKE, mAKING
THE SAME MISTAKES I'VE ALREADY MADE, aND I REMEMBER THEM, eVEN IF YOU DON'T, }:
(
From where you sit, reading the logs after the fact, you kind of agree with
Vriska for once. This is pretty damn stone-cold for Tavros. And as much as you
have no stomach for it, you kind of wish VK was out of the picture - but you
also feel an odd chill when you read those words, like the direction of the
wind changing, like a magnetic field inverting. That. That change in him, it's
like it hits a resonance frequency with the vision that's still hovering there
too enormous to see; like your attention has been called to a sign tacked over
the world, scrawled History In Progress, and you wonder if Aradia is watching,
was watching this as it happened.

AG: Ok8y, you high 8nd m8ghty dirt-c8ste 8sshole. I get the point! You know
things I don't, you're going to w8ve them over my horns like a p8ir of
Fidusp8wn pr8nt undershorts, 8lah, 8lah, just tell me wh8t I have to DO to g8
OUT of this!!!!!!!!
AT: yES, cERTAINLY,
AT: jUST OPEN THE CURRENT MEMO, iN tROLLIAN, aND TYPE, "i'VE BEEN SCHOOLFED",
AT: mAYBE THAT, wILL BE A GOOD START, fOR GETTING EVERYONE TO TAKE YOU BACK,
iNTO THEIR CONFIDENCES,
AG: Stoooooooop!
AT: sTOP WHAT,
AG: Stop m8king them growl! I get the point alre8dy!!!!!!!!
AG: Gahhhhhhhh you cr8zy cre8ture g8t your claws out of my tree!
AG: Tell them to knock it off!!!!!!!!
AT: wHO ME,
AG: Ok8y, ok8yyyyyyyy! F8ne!!!!!!!!
AG: 8ut we 8re. Going to discuss this. 8t length.
AT: tHAT WAS, tHE GENERAL IDEA, yES,
~~~
PAST twinArmageddons [PTA] 16 HOURS AGO opened memo on board thii2 memo ii2 not
genuiinely 2ecure you nookfart2, watch your 2hiit.
 PTA: ok guy2, iit'2 a memo.
PTA: ii'm doiing thii2 on reque2t, a2 you can tell from the 2ubject liine ii'm
not very happy about iit.
PTA: trolliian'2 tiime-related functiion2 have a backdoor buiilt iin, a2 far a2
ii can tell, 2o don't 2ay anythiing here that you wouldn't be happy two
2kywriite acro22 the moon2.
FUTURE terminallyCapricious [FTC] 6120 HOURS FROM NOW responded to memo.
FTC: so this wicked business goes back a good long while.
FTC: AND ALL THIS TIME I WAS BEING A WASTED-ASS MOTHERFUCKER STARING INTO A
SOPOR PIE.
FTC: ain't no time like the present except maybe the past or the future. funny
how it works like that.
FUTURE carcinoGeneticist [FCG] 4130 HOURS FROM NOW responded to memo.
FCG: AS MUCH AS IT KILLS ME TO SAY SO, SOLLUX IS CORRECT ABOUT THE SECURITY
LEVEL OF THE MEMO.
FCG: ...WAIT, I'M GONNA NEED TO ASK YOU SOME QUESTIONS. IN PERSON, BECAUSE I
DON'T THINK WE'VE TALKED ABOUT THIS YET.
FCG: I'M NOT SURE I'M CAPABLE OF BEING MORE VAGUE THAN THAT. YOU PROBABLY THINK
I'M GOING TO TELL YOU SOME JUICY RELATIONSHIP GOSSIP. HOW ABOUT YOU GO ON
THINKING THAT FOR NOW?
FTC: NO, MAN, I GET YOUR DRIFT.
FTC: did you think i was gonna spill the beans?
FTC: AIN'T NO FUCKING WAY I WOULD NARC ON MY PALEBRO. :o)
FCG: THAT WAS EITHER ASTOUNDINGLY PRESUMPTUOUS OR A HUGE FUCKING SPOILER.
FCG: ...I'M COMING OVER THERE NOW. BUT THEN YOU KNEW THAT, BECAUSE YOU'RE A
COUPLE PERIGEES AHEAD OF ME.
FCG: THIS SHIT MAKES MY HEAD HURT.
FCG banned FTC from responding to memo.
FCG banned himself from responding to memo.
CURRENT arachnidsGrip [CAG] RIGHT NOW responded to memo.
CAG: I've 8een schoolf8d.
CAG: 8re you h8ppy now?
CAG banned herself from responding to memo.
CURRENT caligulasAquarium [CCA] RIGHT NOW responded to memo.
CCA: kan you owwe me fivve boonbucks
CURRENT grimAuxiliatrix [CGA] RIGHT NOW responded to memo.
CGA: I Never Said I Was Taking The Bet
***** you are warm *****
Chapter Summary
     CA: i cant get in touch wwith kar
     CA: im serious though kan hasnt heard from him since four nights ago
     an if you check timestamps on your paranoid fuckin cereal box spy
     goggles i bet he hasnt said anythin to anyone else neither
      
     Karkat gets cold feet. Sollux warms them up for him.
Chapter Notes
     This chapter contains: Karkat-typical language, caliginous sex with
     non-zero amounts of blood and tears, just a lot of mess in general,
     and hella awkward quadrant interactions.
See the end of the chapter for more notes
You set the memo to ping you if anyone as much as coughs the wrong way, then
dive gratefully back into your coding. The Imperial cybersecurity
infrastructure is a tweetbeast's nest of redundancy, often with notes in
dialects that no one has spoken for centuries, and you're probably going to die
of an apoplectic reaction to shitty code and distracting side projects but at
least it's not... whatever the hell just happened with VK. Your surveillance
program alerts you to a few false alarms, mostly your friends' comings and
goings, but not a word from KK since the memo. You try not to worry about it;
he's sulking and you have work to do.
It took Eridan Ampora trolling you to get you to pay attention:
CA: sol
CA: hey sol you lemony lout wwhy arent you answwerin me
CA: sol you gotta do somethin
TA: why ye2, ii gotta do a lot of thiing2 and am iin fact doiing them riight
now.
TA: ii had two temporariily 2u2pend my ab2olutely bada22 lot2 of thiing2
operatiion2 two an2wer your 2tupiid trolliian me22age a2 a matter of fact, 2o
what the fuck ii2 2o iimportant?
CA: its serious man i cant get in touch wwith kar
TA: have you giiven con2iideratiion two the po22iibiiliity that kk miight have
a liife beyond the ciircumference of your 2hiitty cape2?
TA: maybe he ju2t doe2n't liike you enough two bother, who know2.
CA: you dont or youd be rubbin it in a lot wworse than that
CA: i wwasnt hatched last night sol
CA: im serious though kan hasnt heard from him since four nights ago an if you
check timestamps on your paranoid fuckin cereal box spy goggles i bet he hasnt
said anythin to anyone else neither
TA: thank you for the iinfo, creepy mccreepertroll, ii'll look iintwo iit.
twinArmageddons [TA] ceased trolling caligulasAquarium [CA]
Shit. What if they got him.
twinArmageddons [TA] began trolling caligulasAquarium [CA]
TA: 2eriiou2ly, ii'll look iintwo iit.
twinArmageddons [TA] ceased trolling caligulasAquarium [CA]
You barricade yourself in a virtual fortress of encryption before daring to
actually think about what's scaring you. You've been working on cracking sat-
cam feeds, and this gives you an excuse to learn their language more
thoroughly; the way you cover your tracks, if it doesn't hold up to scrutiny,
will get a sad-sack troll across the continent culled before they come for you.
(Anyone who brags online about entrapping their lowblood friend into servitude…
well, let's just say you have a group of unwilling and unwitting beta testers
for the rootkits you write in your, haha, spare time.)
KK's webcam is taped over – like you told him to, fuck, you're an idiot – or
this tracking operation would have been over practically before it started. But
nothing you can turn up points to disaster either. The most recent pass of the
sat-cams over KK's hive shows an undisturbed lawnring and drawn shades, and
your tracking bug in his husktop pulls up the usual history of news feeds and
casual games. It's almost too normal, you're going to have to go over there –
or send someone, but everyone else who could do the job is either far away or
about as stealthy as a trunkbeast in a living block – and you're about to when
a loud clatter blares through your speakers, followed by STEAMING RANCID SHIT
ON A NUTRITION PLATEAU, I GIVE THE FUCK UP ON SICKLEKIND, IS THERE A FUCKING-
MICROSCOPIC-BLUNT-SHITTY-HORNKIND SPECIBUS OR WOULD MY STRIFE PORTFOLIO JUST
LAUGH AT ME AND SPIT IT OUT, TIME TO FIND OUT –
Relief just barely wins out over chagrin.
And you are going over there, but at least you know what to expect.
~~~
It takes him too-long moments to answer the hiveportal bell, moments in which
you consider if you could have been wrong: maybe someone recorded him - no,
that's -
Familiar aggressive footfalls sound from the other side of the hiveportal, but
it doesn't open. "GO AWAY!" Karkat's voice shouts from the other side:
distinctively not a recording, and loud enough to actually shake the door.
"Hell no," you growl. "You got me out of my fucking computer chair, I want
confetti, ok."
KK's door doesn't budge; his voice is hoarse like he's been shouting even more
than usual, or crying, or not talking at all. "Well, you'll have to settle for
a parade back to your dumb coding throne accompanied by a sweet serenade of 'go
fuck yourself's for the blissfully short time you'll be in earshot of my
lawnring. Go away."
"You'll have to yell louder, I can't hear you with your head shoved so far up
your waste chute. I promise I won't make you cram a party hat down over the
misplaced grubscars you call horns if you open the fucking hiveportal before I
start every digital device in there playing Troll Rick Astley in unison."
The hiveportal swings open a crack. Between a couple of sturdy chains holding
the door mostly closed you catch a glimpse of KK's living block, dim but not
much messier than always, before the view is blocked by KK glowering out at
you, hair in sweaty disarray, the usual dark smudges under his eyes deepened
into purplish half-moons. "Go away before I – you know what, no, I'm not in the
mood for another exploding husktop competition right now. Come back tomorrow
night or something. Fuck."
"...and I thought I was the moody one. Are you actually going to be here and
willing to talk if I come back tomorrow night? Why not explain yourself and get
it over with? You scared the living shit out of us, KK. If you'd really rather
I take the time to come up with a proper revenge for that, I will, but…"
"No, you've got important shit to do. You might as well yell at me now and save
yourself some time." No matter how many times it happens it's still a punch in
the gut seeing KK go from hackles-raised pissed off to totally deflated so
quickly. He fumbles with the latches and the chains on the door swing aside.
"And I'm not being moody. Maybe I'm actually being reasonable for once in my
heinous waste of a life."
"Oh god." You know a bad sign when you hear it. You slip in and click the door
shut behind you, re-bolting it automatically. "Do you even need me to remind
you what you'd say if I started sounding like that?"
Karkat steps back out of your space, actually winces when the bolt clicks. "No,
when you sound like – whatever the fuck it is you think I sound like – it's
because you've just had the exact same epiphany about how much you suck for the
millionth time. My awareness of my virtually limitless shortcomings doesn't
fluctuate with the weather or what I had for breakfast. I meant –" He
hesitates, arms crossed tightly over his chest – "I meant about this thing
we're starting."
"What about it," you say, dubious.
"I'm not sure about this. As embarrassing as this is to say, I'm - it's -" He
stammers for a moment. "This is too big. It's so goddamn audacious I feel like
my head's going to explode, if someone else doesn't explode it for me first."
"That didn't stop you from playing a game tied to the end of the universe."
You're still too near to the hiveportal to be having this conversation, even
though you locked both of his deadbolts with your mind and now have psionics
deployed searching across his lawnring in pulses, listening, and you take the
excuse to step closer into Karkat's space, hiss-whispering, inches from his
eyes with the beginnings of forbidden color seeping into them until he has to
cross them to look at you.
"Maybe that's where I learned what biting off more than I can chew looks like,"
he spits almost talking over you, and he's defensive but not backing away,
shoulders hunched and rigid. "The shit going down with Vriska - my ten foot
pole doesn't want to touch it with its ten foot pole. And it got me started
thinking, and -"
"Always a bad idea." Despite yourself, you snicker a little at your own cheap
shot.
"Shut up. It got me started thinking and I'm not sure I know how to handle this
at all, this is not just games for girls this is games for half-ton seadwellers
on stimulant binges, aka not us. We are nowhere near equipped -"
"We're better equipped than anyone has been before. It's us or no one." Maybe
you sound desperate but you're also right.
But Karkat is jumping on that strained note in your voice, sneering, "And you
won't tell me why you think so. That's really reassuring -"
A crisis of faith is not the right time to tell KK about Astris, but you start
ticking off other reasons on your fingers. "For starters, we do have
seadwellers - and lowbloods, we're all over the hemospectrum, none of the
famous failures were. More people have reason to believe in our legitimacy and
lend their support."
"Assuming we even get that far."
"Are you going to betray us?" You flare your eyes and crackle around your
horns, not that cheap special effects help your case but that you're fed up and
don't care if he knows it and this time when you step forward, half-floating,
he does stumble a short step back into his living block –
"No, but -" He's off-balance, voice wavering like someone winded from a blow,
anger a delayed reaction but beginning –
"Wishy-washy is not an option here, KK," you cut him off, "Passive is not an
option."
And Karkat is growling, "Oh, that's rich coming from you -"
"But you have to lead us. And the tiniest slip could fuck us all over
permanently."
"Is that your creepy prophetic voices talking?" he scoffs, and fuck if you're
going to let him keep standing there and pretending not to take this seriously
when he damn well knows, and your fingers are curving rigid with seething
frustration, claws outstretched.
"No, it's the voice of common fucking sense. Like you said, this is not a FLARP
game, it's something bigger - and you can be scared all you like in private but
you cannot get lazy, you cannot be halfway committed -" You're uncomfortably
aware that your voice is cracking a little, and okay, maybe these are things
you sometimes don't want to look at yourself, you're tired of constant
vigilance and it's only going to get worse.
Karkat sees, he catches the slip, and he takes the opportunity to jeer, "I
guess it's double or nothing?"
You have him by the collar before you can think about it, and you're growling
low in your throat, filled with rage and suddenly lightheaded; if this isn't a
classic leading-with-your-bulge moment nothing is, it's twitching and trying to
unsheath in your pants and your hands are crackling with a faint buzz of
psionics and the air feels thicker around you - "Fuck, KK, really, do you
really have to go there -"
"You tell me," he hisses out, "it's not like I'm the one who's been flaky as a
bowl of grain-based breakfast product until now."
"Like hell you haven't, you're a clusterfuck of hot and cold running sexual
hangups and oh-Sollux-put-your-bulge-in-me-but-don't-look -"
He shoves you back, for that one, not just shoves but presses his thumbs to
your collarbones in a way that reminds you of what an excellent fighter he
actually is; you can feel the leverage in his grip, feel how if he shifted and
pressed harder he'd break a bone and you could stop him with your powers but
you know he won't, and it turns you on so much you stop breathing for a moment.
And then he laughs. "Look at you going all floppy and docile, you're so easy,
you just want me to do all the work."
Quite a lot of the time that's true; more than you'd care to admit, but not
this time, and it can't keep being that way, and you need something else now,
and when you speak your voice comes out quiet but not docile, a whispered growl
- "You're taunting me because you don't want to admit how much it gets to you,"
you say with dead certainty, and the way his cheeks flush in answer is what you
were looking for. You let a pulse of power crackle out from your hand clenched
in his shirt collar, warning and goading, and now he's the one going still and
pliant in your grasp.
"Ablution trap," he gasps out, and it's not like his ablution block lacks for
positive associations but it still makes you suddenly furious, you just called
him on his hangups and here he is giving you the same old hoofbeastshit and
you're not going to back out and you're definitely not going to throw a shit-
fit about where you have to fuck. And you know what you're going to do to him
now, and it makes you nervous-dizzy, anticipating the vicious satisfaction - he
hasn't been ready and maybe you haven't been ready, but now you are - and
you're scrambling for the ablution block shucking off clothing like the pair of
horny adolescents you are, nearly tripping over discarded sweaters and
videohusks. You grab at his hips and shoulders with psionics, to catch you both
from careening into the floor and just because you can, as KK snarls and shoves
back and knocks your horns together crackling-painful and ringing straight down
your spine.
He won't take off his boxers until he's in the trap with the light off, but you
manage to cop a feel on the way there and he actually squeaks when you grip his
bulge between two fingers through his shorts - fully unsheathed and slippery
and squirming under your hand and you're growling continuously, nearly throwing
both of you into the ablution block and slamming the door with a burst of
excess force that cascades sparks down to the floor. No matter what he thinks
he's hiding you can see the red smears across the front of his boxers where
your fingers pressed in, and you mouth at his jaw fangy and sloppy and rumbling
in a heap of limbs against the wall.
Karkat reaches, snaps the light off and you let him. Watching, waiting,
deliberate, pressing a shell of soundproof stillness up against the walls and
the blockportal, and if he sees the flare of power he'll take it for excitement
- he strips down fast and sloppy in the dark and he knows you're aware of his
blood color, damn it, he hasn't been hiding anything for a long time except
from himself, and you're not going to keep doing this. Well. You're going to
keep doing some of this, but not the letting Karkat hide from himself part.
Your hands chase over his body and find his bulge again, uncovered this time,
and he moans into your mouth and you reach out with a tiny careful flicker of
telekinesis and the light goes on.
Karkat bites your tongue, hard, fast enough that you know it's a reflex,
stumbles back a step and snarls at you, wordless at first then "I know what
you're doing, asshole, where do you get off –"
"I will stop if you tell me to, I will turn around and snap the damn light off
and leave you standing here frustrated in the dark, and never tell anyone, and
we'll still be friends," and you say it like it's a threat, so he knows you
mean it - "just say the word, KK, does this go further or does it stop here -"
He's standing in the ablution trap eyes wide and bloodpusher pounding so hard
you can feel it in his bright red bulge when it coils and clutches around your
fingers, and in between little grunting dazed moans manages, "Do your worst,
you fucking bulgetease, or are you losing your nerve?"
And you reach out your other hand and sink your clawtips into his thigh and he
makes this tiny noise of shock, but his bulge squirms harder.
You just want to memorize the look on his face, carve it into some cheerfully
victorious part of your brain and keep it there to set you on fire on a night
when you’re feeling dead inside. So scared at the sight of his own blood on
your claws and blown-open and panting and - “You’re frightened,” you say, and
he stills, like not moving is going to remove the threat - “You’re not scared
of me, though. No. You’re scared shitless of yourself.”
And you dig your claws in, scrape a line down his thigh that wells with bright-
red blood, while he squirms and moans, arcing his back up and snarling in
frustration like he's trying to lose himself when you want him here and he just
doesn't get it yet. “Karkat fucking Vantas,” you say, “you’re scary as hell or
I wouldn’t be here pailing you. You stupid little shit. You’re afraid of
yourself because your very existence is frightening.”
He sputters at you, mouthing the word existence like he’s going to mock your
speech impediment again and you are so done and you shove your hand into his
mouth, dripping with his genetic fluid, and he mmmphs around it and bites you
hard enough that it’s gonna leave a mark. “But you’re even scarier when you
actually bring your force to bear on something. Shit falls down. Hives and
enemies and empires.”
And the sound he makes trying to yell back at you around your hand afraid,
afraid and angry and confused, growl-whining until the bones of your fingers
vibrate in his mouth –
“Yes, I said it. Gonna cull me? I’m committing treason right now,” you say, and
you push two knuckles into his nook and he just wails around your other hand.
“I’m committing treason by enabling you to exist.”
You take your hand out of his mouth to shift position, briefly, and he manages
to choke out, “Dispensations -”
“Are part of the fucking smokescreen. Even if you did get to live. What about
me, Karkat? What about me? What about FF? And I have to fucking see all this
garbage and know that you’re going to need to be an active part of this or we
won’t make it and you. just. haven’t. been. listening. Look at yourself.” He’s
crying now too - you’re a mess of your own blood and his and his genetic fluid
and his bulge is twitching and curling so hard you think he’s going to come as
soon as you’re in him, and you reach up and paint him all over his chest with
the fluids he’s been so carefully, ridiculously trying to prevent you from
seeing. “Look at you,” you pant at him, “So pathetic I’d flip flushed for you
if I didn’t already have a flushed quadrant.”
He goes silent suddenly, stammers out - “When did you - who -”
“Wouldn’t you just like to know. I hate you, god, you little shit, why do you
think we haven’t been in a quadrant before this, it’s because you’ve been too
cluckbeast to deal with yourself.”
Karkat's entire face is flushed ruddy-garish with pailing and crying, the
thread of a tear-inflamed capillary in his eye running mutant red that even
contacts wouldn't cover, and he's hissing and scrabbling at your wrist with his
claws and you're angry and triumphant, but not cold with it, warm to white-hot
in your core. He's glorious like this, and he's giving way to you but not
easily and you want to be stained all over with his brilliant color, you hate
him in all his self-disgust and his cowardice and want to ignite him inside
until he burns away everything in him that flinches. "I'm going to make you
splatter that fucking color over me until you can't remember that you can't
stand it," you grate out in his ear, and he's beyond protesting or making fun
of your speech impediment, he just moans low and desperate and nods his head -
you're nicking his lips with your fangs, licking tears off his face with your
tongue. You pull him to you, roughly, rutting up against his thighs, and he
mutters something half-intelligible and it's almost impossible to stop moving
but you do, just barely, your bulge still trembling and flicking and questing
toward him. "What was that? You're gonna have to repeat it, I didn't hear you -
"
And Karkat lets out this beautiful multisyllabic pleeeeaase that wavers in the
middle with sobbing, and you curl your hand around his bulge and stop
restraining your own, let one tip nestle in - you can manage both, though it's
a tight squeeze, but he's already so incredibly slick and as soon as you're
halfway in he's going rigid all over and clinging to you like he's afraid of
falling over, his bulge spurting and dribbling bright red all over your hand
and you make him look at it, lift your hand and lick it off your fingers, salty
and slippery and he cries out like he can't bear it but just holds you tighter
and oh god the way his nook contracts around you, you shudder hard and almost
lose it right there - but you're not done. You just want to take him apart and
not think about it but there was a point you were making.
"Best possible treason," you whisper in his ear, "hottest fucking treason -
" and he yelps and his eyes roll back in his head as another pulse of bright
red wrings out of him all over your stomach and you guide your other tendril
in, shove deep, press and coil and brace heavy leaning forward against the
walls of the ablution trap with his legs clenched around you still shaking.
You're holding him up with psionics now, your own muscles on the verge of
giving out and you lean forward, dig lines into the skin of his shoulder with
your fangs, something he's never let you do even after he must have known that
you knew about his uncanny blood, and you thought he was done coming but he's
not, he's writhing and twisting in your grip and sobbing near-silent breathless
and clamping down on your bulge flooded-wet and so viselike you see prickles of
light that don't come from your psionics - and that, oh, you're going to replay
that forever in your head, it does you in, exquisite tremors all through your
bulge that you feel all the way to your nook without so much as a finger
touching you there, and you gasp and pant until you're lightheaded and
tingling, sinking to your knees with him still wrapped around you, slumping
against the wall of the trap.
~~~
Later, in the recuperacoon, you fade into dream still woozy and thick-tongued
with sleep – you really need to get KK to change his sopor when you wake; the
evening will be a mess of hassling KK into mending bridges with everyone while
catching up with nearly a night's worth of your own missed work – until a
bruise on your neck throbs, not under the sopor but on your dream-body, in the
dreamt-together version of your hive, and your eyes jolt open and you're there.
Astris is still materializing too, standing in front of you, steadying himself
by the hand on your shoulder, and you go still again. "Hey," he says softly,
eyes crystallizing into brightness, shadows settling around the folds of his
clothing. "You're here – wait. What happened?"
"I - nothing bad," you tell him first, reassuring, and then you try to
formulate a better answer in your mind, which leads to blushing hot as a
miniature sun. "Caliginous things," no, that sounds dumb but it sure as hell
just came out your mouth and now your face must look like an ochre paintpot.
Fragments of the caliginous things that just happened are spilling through your
mind, sopor-groggy and disoriented.
Astris clasps a hand over his mouth with a pfff of air, his eyes pulsing
brighter and crinkled up at the corners, before a chuckle manages to escape and
he flops back on the couch. "Him? Really? I mean, that's great, but also –
eheheh –"
That raises your hackles a bit. You're already answering, off-guard, "Hey, I
may have epically bad judgment in some respects, but my romantic tastes are
unimpeachable," by the time it occurs to you that's not what he meant. Well,
the stealth compliment isn't a bad thing, anyway.
"I appreciate the sentiment – heh – sorry." He wipes at his eye with the back
of his hand. "Are... things going to be OK between you? You aren't – you know –
?" Astris pulls the frustrated face that you've come to associate with him
forgetting a word and makes a dramatic gesture over his head, opening his hands
and pulling them apart like he's miming something exploding.
"...naw, I'm sleeping in his recuperacoon right now, he's been my best
hatefriend for ages, it's just... more official." You're still blushing, damn
it. "I'm probably gonna wake up with a bulge drawn on my forehead but... we got
here because we trust each other to call bullshit when there's a lot at stake."
Astris' face is nearly as yellow as yours from laughter, but he's calmed down
enough to tug at you with psionics, pulling you down toward him on the couch.
"And I'm... only freaking out a little. I think if it was anyone else I might
be – well, freaking out a lot. You look like a woofbeast's chew toy." It's odd
to be having this conversation without actually mentioning Karkat's name or his
ancestor's, and that thought must have been Astris' as well as yours because he
blurts out, "This is so strange."
"I'd ask which part you meant, but... I'm not sure that's a useful question."
You're getting your equilibrium back, starting to laugh a little too. "I uh.
Definitely enjoyed getting like this. Sorry if that's too much information."
"Uhhh." Astris starts out like he's going to try to answer your question
anyway, then – no, he isn't laughing anymore but he's still getting yellower,
definitely blushing. "Not really, I think I misplaced my threshold for 'too
much information' somewhere, just... be careful." He wraps a hand around one of
your larger horns and tilts your head to the side, baring the bruises along
your neck to warm precise kisses that trail up gradually until he's purring
right into your ear. "Still mine," he rumbles, his face so close to your skin
that you can feel him flushing hotter.
Twice in one night is a lot, but being with Astris is everything that being
with Karkat is not, too, a counterweight, balancing you, reaffirming your bond,
softness and light and completion - you need this, and you don't quite forget
where you are, but you don't bother to quite remember it, either, until Astris
fades from view once more, and -
"What the fuck." A splatter of something slimy hits your cheek: Karkat's too-
thin sopor, by the way it drips down your face in gross sticky rivulets.
"Sollux, what the fuck, ewww, get out –" More splashing and then a bigger slosh
and by the time you open your eyes it's pretty clear that Karkat has gotten out
instead, standing next to the recuperacoon naked except for globs of sopor and
glowering at you like he's never seen genetic material before.
Your actual voice is a little bit sleep-rusty, which is good because it means
you haven't been vocalizing everything. Small mercies. "...You didn't seem to
mind my geneslurry last night." And you're awake enough to backtalk. Not that
you need to be all that awake to backtalk.
"You weren't getting it in my sopor last night, smartass! Between that and the
miniature Troll Tesla coil act, yeah, I kind of mind. The absolute last thing I
need is you reenacting the experiment in In Which An Eccentric Scienterrorist
Creates An Eponymous Monster, Etc, on my recuperacoon in the middle of the day.
'It's alive!'" He forms his hand into a claw and shakes it around in an attempt
to illustrate the film reference that mostly just winds up getting more sopor
all over the place. "At least this was better than waking up to you screaming
your cranial shell off again, my ear didn't work right for a week.
Congratulations, your daymares have an upside, now you get to clean it up –
wait a minute." He squints at you, one hand going to his hip where his sickles
currently aren't. "There's – things that cause vivid dreams. I swear on
whatever the fuck we're supposed to be swearing on now that it isn't the
Empire, if you're getting attacked by some asshole with chucklevoodoos or
something and not asking the rest of us for help I'm going to cull you first
before going after the fucker –"
You're awake enough to backtalk, but not to go a mile a minute like that. Being
treated to one of his breathtaking surfactant-box rants first thing is surreal
and leaves you feeling like you're unpicking thickly knit language to get the
meanings out, and so you're silent for a moment, then burst out laughing.
Karkat turns bright red and growls at you. "...oh, fuck you. Yeah, this is so
serious, one slip up and we're all gonna die, but the minute I call you on
shoring up your shit it's fucking funny –"
"...nah, man, I just know exactly what happened just now, and you don't, that's
all -" You're still not completely coherent. "Remember last night when I
mentioned my flushed quadrant and you pulled this face?" You do an exaggerated
impression of what he looked like.
He pulls a much less pronounced version of the same face. "Possibly unlike your
mystery matesprit – who, remember, I didn't push you about last night because
I'm not an incorrigible meddler like you, even though I'm in your quads and the
info is probably my business – I'm not a fucking psychic. So at the risk of
repeating myself, what the fuck?"
"It is your business," you say, at the risk of sounding like a busted air
blower. "You're just not going to believe me - I'd have put it out there before
now if I thought - but then again what with you going all science fiction
double feature on me, maybe you will -"
"Look, I'm choosing to believe that you're not having some kind of sick pitch
prank at my expense right now, because the Sollux I know may have his horns
firmly lodged in his wastechute but hasn't quite contorted to that level of
pointless bullshit yet." Karkat takes a wary step forward, rests his hand on
the edge of the recuperacoon like he halfway expects it to bite him. "The
decision to stick around in Captor Bizarro World may have been truly bone-
panned but here I am, I decided, and I'm not going to fuck off into the sunrise
because you're unbelievably weird, so you might as well spit it out."
"Okay." You lever yourself out of the recuperacoon, because you're going to
need to avail yourself of some grandiosity, and pacing helps. The fact that
you're leaving wet sopor footprints behind you probably doesn't, but you can
ignore that. You take a deep breath and look Karkat in the eyes. "First I'm
going to ask how much you know about the Condesce's flagship," you say, "rumors
included."
Karkat mumbles something to the effect that it's highly improper for a
schoolfeeding examiner to drip sopor all over his sleeping block, squints at
you for a moment like he still expects you to start laughing at him, then
shrugs and replies. He sounds like a mash-up of his usual self and the
obnoxious, simpering voice that narrates history schoolfeeds that would be
hilarious pretty much anytime else. "The Battleship Condescension is the
vanguard for the expansion of the Empire, obviously. It's the fastest, most
powerful, and most technologically advanced thing ever created by any species,
so pretty much all Her Imperious Condescension has to do is cruise the flagship
through a star system and most of the time the inhabitants accept the Empire in
a big fucking hurry. The Subjugglators come afterward, but their ships are
slower... fanatics on the threshecutioner-wannabe forums like to go on about
how the terrifying grandeur of the Condesce's presence or whatever allows
trolls around her to fight at twice their strength and even that She can bring
back the dead to keep her ship running like that, but that's not even a listed
ability, and some other hemoanonymous troll posted a theory that it was thirty
powerful telekinetics in a chain array; I don't know much about this stuff but
she seemed to know her math."
You give a weird strangled laugh that sounds a little too much like a sob, and
try to cover it up by clearing your throat. Of course he doesn't know that
particular almost-open secret, he's been reading the wrong rumors on the wrong
forums because until just this last perigee he was on the wrong side.
"...I can see why you think that, KK," you say, and you're grinning darkly and
nearly whispering, smugly dismissing him just enough to make him lean closer
and listen. "It's probably safer than the 'pan-busting reality. But I'm going
to tell you about that reality anyway, because I hate your schoolfeed-
regurgitating squawk blister so much you deserve to know." And maybe it's a
little safer for you to talk about all this in your smug mastermind voice,
because you're pretty sure you're going to cry in front of your kismesis
eventually but not tonight, damn it. "...So. When I told you to look into where
helmsmen came from, how deep did you dig?"
"None of the shit on the dark net made sense. It was all either calculators
that were supposed to show what kind of ship you'd be assigned to or threads
that started off with 'Ascension is shit for psionics,' 'no, Ascension is shit
for everybody,' and wound up full of thousands of deleted posts and 'what
happened?'s, but then there was some asshole trolling wrigglers who posted in
yellow or under with a shitty manip of what looked like a bunch of dangling
intestines and I uh... may have uninstalled Troll Onion Router for a few
perigees after that. And then the game happened and I thought..." He makes a
vague gesture toward the outside, everything that the meteors destroyed.
You're silent for a long moment, pacing and slopping sopor on the floor, trying
to figure out where to begin. "...It's hard to get the story straight," you say
finally. "But two things really helped me figure it out: the patent record and
the history of the colonies. You know how the central expansion radius of the
Empire suddenly got - more specifically, the rate of expansion went up by a
factor of ten, about a thousand sweeps ago?"
"Well, something else happened right around then - this one you have to be able
to crack private files for, but the technology started changing. All of a
sudden no one was building crude mechanical helm interfaces anymore; instead
they were building support machinery for fully interfaced helmsmen. When I say
fully interfaced just... picture something along the lines of that 'shitty
manip', okay, or imagine a horrorterror angling to get into a quadrant with
your nervous system; biowire is some fucking serious business."
Karkat has gone very still, his face paling to sickly angel-white. "I think I
put it together, that it was something like that," he says, suddenly hoarse,
"And then, you know... didn't. Because there was you, and Aradia –"
"I know, KK," you say, your voice a cold burn, "oh, I know, as much as it
chafes I can't even blame you because I spent over a sweep deliberately
avoiding obvious conclusions as much as possible. Until the daymares. And even
after they started, for a while."
"...OK," KK wipes cold sweat and flaky sopor off his forehead, leaning heavily
on the recuperacoon. "...Fuck, OK. You're being a cryptic fuck again about all
this, you know that right, the daymares and the phantom matesprit and the
starship stuff – wait, fuck." He stares at you like you've just told him there
are four moons, then shakes his head. "...no, that doesn't make any goddamn
sense. Tell me what the daymares have to do with this before I catch any more
of your crazy."
You can't stay sardonic, talking about this; you're staring at your feet, your
fingers fidgeting at your sides. "There were helmsmen, before, but not - not
Helmsmen. That started when she enslaved him. He was the first, still the
strongest - He has my sign, KK, my same mutations. He'd been crying out into
nothingness for so long with no one hearing him that when I heard he didn't
even recognize it at first -"
"How long could...?" KK objects, automatically, and you want to laugh because
you know how that feels, grasping for some quibbling thing to dispute because
it couldn't be real – "...the Empress' powers. It's true, about extending life.
Fuuuck." He groans out his most drawn-out expletive of the night, stumbles over
and paps you groggily on the shoulder, hard enough that it's almost a slap
except that it definitely isn't. "Of all the rumors I could've picked to not
give a shit about, Ancestors –" Now he's the one laughing hollowly.
And you want to start talking about his Ancestor, about the connections
reaching through the past, but he could get more of that story almost anywhere,
if he looked, despite the censors, and this one, only you can tell. The door in
the back of your head is blocked tight when you say, almost whisper-quiet as if
that could help against overhearing, "So that's the other answer to why us. Not
just because of you. Because of him - and because of me. Because I have a
backdoor exploit on the Battleship fucking Condescension that no one else has
ever had, or ever will." You feel horribly callous talking about your matesprit
that way, but you need to get used to this, to what you're going to have to do,
even if you don't think you'll ever be comfortable with the prospect.
"...And you were pailing him in my recuperacoon." Karkat grimaces at you and
shakes his head. You're pretty sure you'll be waking up to frantic Trollian
messages from him when this actually sinks in. "I believe you. You're smart as
fuck, but you aren't even close to creative enough to come up with shit this
weird just to mess with me. But if you pull that stunt in my hive again then so
help me –" He cuts himself off and bops at your shoulder again. "Are you OK? I
mean, obviously not, but... Who else knows?"
"FF does," you tell him, "I... I'm not ever sure what AA knows, anymore. And so
long as we stick together and keep to procedure, I'm exactly as OK as I have to
be. Security: it's not just for lusus plushies."
"That isn't an answer," Karkat grumbles, but doesn't push you on it. "If I'm
going to do this – and I am – then I'll need to know more about your plan than
'so, we have the Helmsman, that's a thing.' No, that doesn't sound right. Does
the myth in my quadrant corners have a name? How the hell is he in any shape to
be anyone's matesprit? How many others are out there that – you know what, no,
it's the middle of the day. If you tell me anything more now then it's going to
leak out of my hearducts along with the rest of my shoddy excuse for a
thinkpan."
"...as long as it doesn't leak out your squawk blister, and - KK, the things
I've seen, anyone would fall in pity, and it wasn't easy, and it isn't - and
I'm babbling, but you knew you needed to flush your fucking recuperacoon before
I got genetic material all over it, so that part serves you right." You feel
like you're in the setup for a scandalous pitch papping porno right now, all it
needs is some shitty elevator music, and your quadrants are already complicated
enough without going there, thank you very much. "Is the mechanism broken, do I
need to tech support this?"
"Fuck tech support, I need a full day's sleep and for none of this to be
happening, but those are off the list of options, probably forever, so. I'll
start the recuperacoon draining, you stop standing around looking stupidly
pity-struck and do the gross part." And your kismesis stomps off in the
direction of the supply closet, flinging half-dried sopor all over his floor.
Chapter End Notes
     Yes, the Captorcest porn part of this sequence of events exists, and
     will be posted in a separate file - it wasn't plot-relevant, just fun
     to write.
***** you lie helplessly still as your face falls apart *****
Chapter Summary
     Astris looks at you aghast, like he's hit you, like he expects to see
     a bruise, and he starts up and steps back and wraps his arms around
     himself, his hands still resolving into creases and clawbeds and the
     precise delineation of joints. He flicks his eyes to the the floor
     and says, trancelike, "I couldn't – make a place for you to turn away
     in time, you had to see me –" He drags his claws against his arms
     through the jumpsuit, and you see it all unspooling in his head, what
     he saw and felt, knowing that you also saw. "I couldn't, I – I'm
     sorry –"
     It's a phantom ache in your breastbone, the lightless weighty knot of
     exhaustion and centuries and self-disgust, and you don't even know
     how to begin to unpick it, or whether it's even possible. And you
     know, too, that he needs to hold onto that right now. You can't bear
     it, your matesprit's desperate urge to dig himself out of reality
     like a splinter out of skin, and it hurts, and you're shedding silent
     tears into his shoulder, letting the emotions loose but not the full
     reason why, the sudden fragility of your hope, the fragility of
     everything.
Chapter Notes
     Content notes for this chapter: body horror, identity blurring,
     starship headspace, quadrant blurring, abuse, sensory deprivation,
     suicidality, copious tangled flowery angst.
See the end of the chapter for more notes
It isn't the first time. It isn't even the first time you've done this on
purpose. Right now, today, you're gathering data, careful, observant; sweeps
ago now you first started receiving transmissions he didn't know he was sending
- but maybe his reluctance, the way he hesitates before letting you listen in,
has to do with that, too; that guilt like he's afraid what you see will break
you any more than you're already broken.
"You don't need me to tell you to be careful." Astris' fangs poke at his lip in
a wry, fond smile, his hands rest heavy on your shoulders but the light around
his eyes has already gone unfocused with peering into elsewhere, and your mind
catches the distant and thunderous edges of it, a looming awareness of the
place beyond the barriers that he has thinned but not yet drawn back.
(It sometimes feels not quite real to know that he is the Battleship
Condescension. Other times, charged with mania and fire and the knowledge of
your own competence and the doom that clings to it like dark threads in the
periphery of your vision, you think about what they would make you if you did
not stop them, and you sure as fuck wouldn't be a livestock transport.)
You're moved, suddenly, to reach out a hand and stroke his hair, a wordless
reminder that for all you've asked over and over for the chance to ride along
in his head and see what he sees in the other side of himself, you still value
beyond measure the part that's here.
And there's a soft sigh, like your touch eases the work of shifting those
barriers, and then -
You carry a city, a world within yourself, and you have been so focused, in
glimpses before, on flight, on immense bellowing machines and calculations and
vast stretching anemone-fingered hands of light, that you hardly knew –
You reunite spreading, filling the center of yourself, with edges and carved-
out pieces of you that have remained waking here. Over the inescapable bass
note of linear climbing percentages that mean being pulled out and worn thin,
the harvest of light from the body, power coiling in synthetic nodes around the
engine core, pumped and purified and stored – lesser numbers swarm in: clusters
of infinitesimal fluctuations, microns and nanoseconds, needling alerts and
tiny flinching adjustments, climate and life and comfort, the work of enclosing
creatures through the void.
You are all of this; you are, also, the part of you that is separate, small,
that knows it is something else, and from that part you contain yourself
carefully. You listen...
You listen.
All the voices, every word spoken in every chamber and corridor, digitize and
parse into fractal sets of information - they're part of your work. They're
also strangely welcome. You simply accept this, now, because you are curled
into the center of all this and spun down to a careful passive thread, but
something in you reaches toward language like dry roots seeking water: the
functional, the banal, the secretive all rolled into something you savor as it
goes in, savor and replay and analyze and wring for data. For evidence of
treason, or evidence that the strife practice room needs a climate control
change. It's all the same; you think you might have agonized over it once but
can't afford that, because it fills a need in you vital as oxygen.
Lights wax. You check the atomic clock against the stars, cast off signals
careening into the dark that will synchronize others' time with yours through
the cosmos, flick moments of attention at the subroutines that wash out the
filtered dual-moon simulacrum of night with the first ruddy glare of day. You
are also aware, tiny and muted and without contradiction, that it was day some
hours ago; that a miniscule, almost particulate biorhythm closer in to yourself
than the sprawling circuitry of lights and warming air registers the even-
rolling wavelengths of midmorning sleep. Like a fragmented piece of you
dreaming, from the outside, nothing out of bounds; a dormant cell cluster
resting for the jump.
You drop a fraction of mind into matching trance, just for a moment; send an
inquiring ping to that place that is almost-but-not self, and it answers back,
call and response, steady and patient and curious, listening. Safe. A consuming
sense of relief spreads into you from parts of your mind that you can't see
from here; you could, you're aware, lift those veils right now, if you turned
toward that self and began to decrypt...
And you won't. You've left a warning whisper of trust there for yourself,
hardly legible in the dregs of some old memory but utterly to be obeyed. You've
put up safeguards, and redundant safeguards; you are an expert in your own
neural circuitry and you have programmed yourself well. So the deflection is
gentle but inexorable: the refueling process tugs at your attention, there are
nodes in need of optimizing, an output point near the base of the spine
transmitting power below peak efficiency, and you call up schematics and
maintenance schedules and redirect and tune –
- and sensors wink out.
A section you were barely monitoring goes dark all at once: the digital feeds
from the helmsblock.
You cannot ignore a possible malfunction, even though you know it is not a
malfunction but a gambit. Your directives still hold, automatic as breath: you
have to restore, have to direct your attention, have to open senses there, to
see and feel beyond the narrow bandwidth of status indicators and warning
lights -
There are two options, zero and one, to follow strict protocol or to cut
straight to the point; but you feel – you feel heavy with unreasoning,
unnameable caution, like engines spinning slowly in reverse – that even if this
is beyond your ability to mitigate –
You check code; find, as expected, gibberish where the name of the terminal
that sent the shutoff order should have been; order a trace anyway, run
commands, cycle power. Cameras and microphones flick on in dully satisfying
&status=restored messages. You run the manual checks, inspect each image, and
the movements of the concave chest under yellow match your awareness of your
breathing; the feeds are live. You focus on that breath, layered over the
ticking of percentages; on absolute refusal to let the inhales creep even
incrementally faster. You wait.
And as you automatically formulate the command to withdraw your focus from that
terrible claustrophobic place, but hold it back knowing - she's drawing near.
The thread of consciousness that does not belong here - to break from it you
would have to expand it, would have to wake into - she would see - no.
No, and she walks closer - unmistakably tall to all your multifold eyes,
bootless, these are her sleeping hours, schedules unfolding in your databanks,
but she is awake anyway and the last time she did this she just stared at your
body silently, baleful and approving, and then walked away without a word
passed between -
This time she wanders over to the console bank, barely looking at all. She's
humming in perfect pitch, and when the tune goes to words, the language goes
in, through the microphones, into storage and analysis - singing, softly, a
song you recognize, dimly, though you haven't heard it in sweeps - "How lovely
the rain, how lovely the night, 'ay-di-ai, di-ai-di-oh - how lovely the gleam
of blood in moonlight -" and the chorus of nonsense syllables again, the
vocabulary database turns up blanks and pulls you into reaching for something
in your thinkpan, analog, faded. She reclines against the wall, on the edge of
where it goes to squishy organic biotech, and wriggles her toes in the edge of
the saltwater pool, twirls a coil of prodigious hair around a finger - "How
lovely the song and the power of speech -" and slides a finger along a
touchscreen, such a quick flick back and forth that it could be an accident -
And thousands of voices go deafeningly mute, wink out simple as an indicator
light. It's the entertainment block, and for a nonsense moment it reads like
that other way you know multitudes descending into sudden silence – but the
voices and their absence both flowed in mundane pulses of voltage through
wires, not the eerie current of Doom's whispers; and the absence is not an
attack, or even a malfunction, but a shutoff. You perform the procedures in
their sequence anyway. You aren't interested in courting feedback, and more
than that, you have no choice. The source of the order verifies to her
passwords and biometrics, pings to the helmsblock, originates at a level of
command that renders your recovery measures laughable. Just a clean bitten-out
gap in perception where moments ago you drank in the din of language, like the
fuzzy-vacant spots in vision before a migraine, before your head used to – long
ago – (how do you remember, wait –)
"How lovely the stars further out than we reach," she sings, and slides another
control; you're attending to her movements unwillingly close-focused now,
anticipatory.
And the taking before was only a fragment of vision but now you – you dull, you
collapse, your senses wither around the edges and snap off, brittle – the
cosmos closes to you, stars flare and distort and snuff out – and you are what
you would be in a crisis of survival, you are the hull and the close bubble of
direct sense around it, the fuzz of shielding psionics enclosing a lump of
barren space, gazing in all directions into the oily-kaleidoscopic dark of
blindness. Jarred out of space, and when you reach for galaxies, for knowing
place by light and aching distance, then – your receptor arrays are still
intact on hull integrity scans, still orienting themselves mutely to the
constellations; scaffolding and instrumentation still gyroscopic-swinging,
centered in lenticular shallow focusing discs as immense as moons, clinging to
their beacons in the distant deep as the ship coasts and curves. But they are
numb unseeing pockmarks on your surface only now, and you shrink inward from
the nauseating blank because there is no other way –
And you know only vaguely, because the awareness is neither prudent nor
comfortable, that dumping masses of data feeds from remote and unimportant
parts of the ship to stuff your sensory processing space, queueing up millions
of parallel tasks and staggering your awareness through in waves, is the
equivalent of a cut-winged featherbeast hopping circles in a too-small cage.
(But you should fill your consciousness, keep your thinkpan moving, a buried
thread that draws toward caution –) You will not be in the helmsblock any more
than you are compelled to be, but still you see, circling around to the cameras
that cluster thick in the place, the squelch and drip of fluid from the wires,
the frigid saltwater cycling unrippled through their gnarled-together old
roots, the motionless body, goggles dark over closed eyes.
She sings the nonsense chorus again, then laughs, more sound that you have to
process tediously consciously instead of shunting it away into the database,
because everything she says is priority - sings, on into the next verse: did
she skip one? You aren't sure; don't remember; it doesn't matter now; no one in
the galaxy has sung this song in hundreds of sweeps. "Ours is the sea, and ours
is the sky -" That sharp-clawed hand reaches for another control, inputs a
complicated sequence this time, and you recognize it through your cameras
moments before -
WARNING: CATASTROPHIC SENSOR FAILURE –
Every stream of code, every line of sight, every voice all ripped away, every
direction you could stretch not just walled off but impossible to reach in,
gone.
Your cameras are off. You can no longer see the body dangling in limp sunken
passivity from its squirming riot of chains, hollow-cheeked and sparking weakly
with feeble shudders as it gives up light; the dribbles of ochre where a twitch
broke the seal with a wire along the side, the flight suit grimy-stiff with
salt fumes and old sweat. But you can feel it. You feel every aching second of
prying your eyes open; the stinging of coronas as they struggle into seeing,
ionized air in the goggles sandpaper-harsh after long darkness.
Spiked through with agony you barely recognize the next verse, shrill and harsh
and echoing in your ears, with the audio intakes gone and you must still be
recording data but you can't perceive it going in. "And mine are the stars, and
none to defy..."
Pain doesn't – can't behave the same without the endless pathways of your
network to extend yourself through – doesn't ball up and push aside, when you
are the wrecked shoulders twisted up and back and disintegrating into formless
balls of cartilage – when you are the skin gaping around pumping, sucking
purple coils where they merge into you – when you are this body, when you are a
hundred million infinitesimal splices into axons, each a microscopic soldering
brand – and you hang unmoving, an arc of interrupted spine and bent neck,
staring down into the pool that drowns reflected flickering in purple,
calculating how far your heartbeat has deviated from the line on the reference
charts marked yellowblooded average, the limping whoosh and thump, the shredded
rasp of breathing.
And something unaccustomed wakes in you: a riot of emotions, pity and anger
like an inferno and the desire to cry. Wakes, and curls itself small and
silent, leaving only the spike in your heart rate and the knowledge of a door
that must stay closed. The knowledge of a door, comforting and upsetting at
once. That and only that, so long as -
- You can't, can't think like this, your thinkpan is a solar core pulsing and
melting and fusing, a nucleus of pain – bounded in, engulfed in the infinite
scrutiny of your own attention cataloging every aging, aching, brittle cell,
every thread of slick cold foreign life coiled up a raw icy clawing in marrow –
you can't think, trapped in this wretched skin-wrapped sac of ripped out and
replaced parts, gnawed and worried in the jaws of the millennia – Here where
time weighs physical as pain, pulls like a swallowed fragment of the void of
space, a blackness in the pit of your shriveled stomach, a dark pooled in the
cup of your skull – here where time sucks at you like being absorbed from
within –
And though you fight for every thousandth of a percent your cognitives are
dropping, processing speed ticking down in plateaus and nauseating jumps –
"Ay di ai, di ai di oh," she sings again, idle, melodic, and then the same
notes in a close-lipped hum, her eyes barely even shifting from the screen as
she inputs commands one after another and sensors flicker back online under her
touch - internals first, then externals, the blessed return of light and
orientation and sound. Performance numbers fluctuate wildly, rise and drop with
your bloodpusher trying to equilibrate, and you see her for a moment through
cameras and quivering eyes at once as she straightens, plashes out of the water
and toward the portal.
You expect that she'll turn around at any moment, retrace her steps, but she
does not; she leaves and you follow her life signs down the corridor until they
reach parts of the ship that are hers and away from here.
And you – you flow out, awareness moving as light at its speed, as current, a
reservoir through open levees; you inhabit every instrument, millions of reboot
procedures in parallel, checks and re-checks and nothing has changed. The
dryware backups kept you precisely on course; no reprogramming, no sensor
upgrades, all as it was.
And you would never think to be relieved; she works in loops and deflections,
and all is pain in time, but for now you task the remaining checks to an
isolated corner of your thinkpan, to monitor in their sequence and keep watch;
and you follow the deep call down into dream. You flicker with changing shape,
uncurling memory, you stretch out hands to be pulled in –
And then breaking apart.
Reforming, redoubling from composite consciousness. The sudden return to the
dreamspace is like falling, even if there is no physical distance to fall.
You land sprawled legs-out disoriented and it takes you a moment to realize
which one of you is you, that you're Sollux Captor and your damped-down stifled
thoughts are uncrumpling to fill the oddly empty blankness where knowledge had
streamed in profligate, bandwidth-dense, until -
You had meant to wake and start typing, start parsing out stray information as
quickly as possible before the details fade, but you can't leave him alone with
this.
In the moment when you look at him, when he is still flickering in kneeling
over you, you see the disorientation of reopening into memory, dizzy and taxing
and horrified and relieved. Astris looks at you aghast, like he's hit you, like
he expects to see a bruise, and he starts up and steps back and wraps his arms
around himself, his hands still resolving into creases and clawbeds and the
precise delineation of joints. He flicks his eyes to the the floor and says,
trancelike, "I couldn't – make a place for you to turn away in time, you had to
see me –" He drags his claws against his arms through the jumpsuit, and you see
it all unspooling in his head, what he saw and felt, knowing that you also saw.
"I couldn't, I – I'm sorry –"
You get to your feet stumbling and reach for him, throw arms around him as
tightly as he'll let you as soon as you're standing. You know he saw your face,
shaken and wide-eyed, and you can't tell him it's all right. It's not all
right, but not for the reasons he thinks. You felt his revulsion as if it was
your own and you're still trying to untangle your own emotions from a turmoil
of rage and pity and protective instinct into something comprehensible. "Don't
- I already know, I already saw, long before now. Oh, Astris, I'm sorry, please
don't -" The sentence breaks off with too many possible endings: Don't leave.
Don't forget I know you're so much more than that. Don't think that I'll turn
away from you.
But he isn't trying to go; his mind stays tangled with yours, and he's bracing
against your firestorm of emotion and leaning into it at the same time,
carefully cupping hands around your shoulder and the back of your neck.
"Not like that," he says hoarsely, "not since – not for a long time, except in
glimpses. I know you knew, you've seen every shame and danger and I – I trust
you to stay, but she rubbed your face in that, you had to feel it, and I let it
happen to you, just don't –" He shakes in your hold, fingers clutching at your
shirt and hair, his mind a beam of concern turned on you, shame and anger a
smoky-obscured old glow by comparison, filtered dull through immensities of
distance and time – "Don't hide it from me if it affected you."
You're so angry, and you know perfectly well there's no balm for it between
here and the end of all this, wherever the end is, and you know you're
deliberately misunderstanding him but you can't not - "Of course it affected me
- she has no right," you say out loud, "no right, to do that to you, to hurt
you, to take away what you have - and I would rend and burn and destroy, I
would pulverize her and whoever else got in the blast radius, for making you
feel like that - whether or not I'm watching -"
You're vibrating with rage so incandescent it scares you, and you let him see
the impotent fury and the fear, because it's a clean burn, but then there's a
sick and awful dread that's harder to face, and when you look at it you
realize, and you bury it under everything else as soon as you realize, because
he can't see what you intend, can't deal with thinking the thought, and you
know that now more than ever.
It's a phantom ache in your breastbone, the lightless weighty knot of
exhaustion and centuries and self-disgust, and you don't even know how to begin
to unpick it, or whether it's even possible. And you know, too, that he needs
to hold onto that right now. You can't bear it, your matesprit's desperate urge
to dig himself out of reality like a splinter out of skin, and it hurts, and
you're shedding silent tears into his shoulder, letting the emotions loose but
not the full reason why, the sudden fragility of your hope, the fragility of
everything.
"I know," he's whispering, "I know, I do, shhh, I know –" But he clings to you
quivering harder as he says it, his hand on your shoulder goes crushing-tight
and a high reedy whining purr threads under his words, raw and distressed –
that swathe of torn-away mind where he should know what it means to be
protected, and when you look into that place where you join then all you see is
confused bleeding ache and the reciprocal urge to comfort. "It wasn't – what
she did, it wasn't nothing, but it was close, I didn't –" He cuts off, bites
his lip, and you can imagine ways that could have ended, lose anything, have to
hurt anyone – trying to soothe something in you that he can't fully see, until
finally he just murmurs, soft, a little defeated, pressing close shoulders to
shins – "I just – I love you, my secret light, my – my eyes and hands, my own,
you don't know –"
"I love you," you say back, and it comes out more desperate and pleading than
you meant it to, your voice faltering on the words, you need to show him and
you can't and he's trying to say something, grasping for words, and you look
up; pull back just barely enough to meet his eyes blurry and bright and
counterpoint to yours.
And at first he just stares at you, the sheen over his eyes thick and beading
but too blanched-desolate to even let tears fall, but he lets out the sound of
your name, mangled more than ever by the shared thickening of your speech,
impenetrable with meaning, then – "You – you know the legend of two trolls
who–" He has a certain tone of voice for the deep past, a certain coloration of
the mind, warm but clouded over – "Who lived in the shadow of death consumed by
a purpose that was fated to fail. They were matesprits at the beginning, but –
you've seen for yourself how the weight of Doom can twist and fault and hollow
us out, and all was always so lost for them, and – by the time I met them there
was no word in Alternian to describe what they were to each other.
"I... didn't want to understand when I knew them, and they always respected
that, never tried to explain, but now I know – I know the love at the end of
all things. That I have only you, my only good, that there will never be anyone
else – it should crush me to think of, there's so much that I can't even let
myself see and stay sane, but I can't hide this one thing, from myself, from
you, not anymore." And finally the tears break, and he touches your face like
he can't help it, traces fingers wondering around the corner of your eye and
under, trembling with pity, with –
"Only you, beloved, I want only you in pity and hate and ways the quadrants
can't imagine, I think it might be worse for me than it was for them, it's –
base and selfish and monstrous and too much to ever ask of anyone, and I'm
sorry, I'm sorry, I couldn't – you're too much, fire and pull and light and
creation, I think I saw it in prophecy when you – when you gave me my spine –
but even if I hadn't doubted I still wouldn't have understood what this would
come to be – that I would take every cell you could rebuild in me, that I would
claw for every scrap of mind, I would immerse myself in agony and dive for
every fragment of personhood, I have, I will, to meet the challenge your
existence is to me – You, beautiful to me in ways pity only begins to explain,
everything layered over pity, what you are, what you have, and I covet and –
and hate –" The muddle of association in his mind comes clear only because
moments ago you felt it from trapped inside – his wrists, the eerie twinging of
regrowing nerves, and the flickering of concepts, useless and dangerous and
cherished – and realization that grew in the heat of insensate anger, and
Astris is panting now, claws and gleaming fangs and lines of light streaming
out to either side of him webwork from his eyes, shifting forking crackling
display, and he's gone too far, flayed himself open to you in the places where
your joined ordeal in his body wounded him – shuddering, his whole body,
strobing with light, repeating I'm sorry, I love you, I'm sorry, hollow and
desperate, he despairs of it being enough but needs it to be, speaking over
rumbling like a barely dammed in snarl –
And you're caught in the whirlwind, hanging onto the shape of yourself by the
tips of your horns - his emotions are so roiling and so large you can't see the
edges of them, can't attempt to measure the difference, but where moments ago
you thought all was lost - there's a tiny, mad hope that maybe, just maybe,
this immensity could contend with the blackened depths of that self-destructive
urge.
"I don't know how to be that for you but I'll try, don't tell me not to, you're
right that it's too much but - it's not disproportionate when everything's too
much," your voice is trembling and you're holding him like he or you might
fall, and you mean his life as a starship, you mean your overstrung brain and
the game and the insane plan you're masterminding now - "I don't know how, I
don't know if I can, but you deserve - you deserve everything wonderful that's
been barred to you for so long, and you only have me, and I'll try to be -"
He reaches up with both hands and touches your horn-tips, careful and
deliberate and strange, the front then the back, not a touch to give sensation
but as if to anchor himself in the mutation, in who and what you are, and rolls
each between two fingerpads, taking up sips of energy from you, as he cages his
shivering in.
And you know perfectly well you would throw yourself over for him but you have
to keep your head, your life isn't only your own and the work of keeping
yourself from crashing and burning is suddenly obligation to him and to your
friends and to the future of the world, and like a looming cliffside off the
edge of a too-tight turn, you recognize some small voice of prophecy or
despairing last scrap of common sense, and manage to stammer out, "But I - my
other quadrants -"
Astris sees you wrestling with your own mind, close and hyperfocused on you as
he is, and the light from his eyes steadies and braids and unifies and wraps a
circle around the both of you. "I don't know," he says roughly, "I – I'm as
lost, it's going to be – two blind trolls leading each other, we'll fall
together, we'll lift each other – But for this: if you give up your quadrants
for me, who can't even be a true matesprit for you, who will never fill your
pail or protect you, who can only teach you to guard yourself and look on and
hope – I swear to you again that I will still leave you, with your clawmarks in
my thinkpan if I have to." And you sag with relief. You thought he would tell
you again not to forsake the others for him, but if he hadn't, you're not sure
what you would have done. "Keep your quadrants," he says, "have what you can,
please, I still want, more than anything, at the core of this, I still want
desperately for you to be free and happy, and now that might be possible – I
want to wrap up galaxies and press them into your hands, I want to give you –
what it is to me now, to have you in my arms – to be here and reach out for you
and pull the universe to myself, in all its immensity and structures, dear one,
in all its ferocity and generation, everything I see in you – that you are
infinitely valuable – and what matters is not that you shoosh me or strife me
but that you are, and I adore you and strive toward you and need you and am
here for you only, anything, always, until my last moment, anything –" His
hands are sliding down and skittering over your back, sparks swirling around
and through both of you, wavelengths shifting, specks of febrile energy that
wobble between red and blue.
Your mind is racing through convolutions and possibilities and what the hell
you're going to explain of something you don't even understand and can't even
imagine deserving. It helps that you can see it in his mind, the rush of
feelings and thoughts too enormous to describe, beyond anything rational or the
common kind of quadrant-flipping; that it's simply there in plain view. FF will
accept it, you know that solidly; does already, there's a hint of flushed in
your diamond and the other way around won't bother her, sometimes it's close
enough already to being like that - KK will probably flip the fuck out but
that's all right, what else is new - but you, you - you're crying so suddenly
you don't know when it happened, burying your face in his neck, fingers bunched
in his shirt half-limply, overwhelmed by what you've seen and felt, the
whiplash between his awful claustrophobic self-disgust in the helmsblock and
the intensity of his quadrant-blurring devotion, and - "I'm frightened," you
blurt out, "I need - I need you to be my matesprit - I don't want to lose that
-"
Before you finish speaking the light around you is intensifying, coming
together, and he lifts both of you up, curls you in his arms up against his
side and settles you on the couch huddled together; kisses your hair and
murmurs, again, "I'm sorry," speaking into your horns, your forehead, stroking
your arms and hands – "I'm sorry, I – I know it's a betrayal, I know I'm
betraying you now when you have never been anything but so steadfast for me, so
caring, everything my heart needed unknowing –" A more familiar self-loathing;
but still he never curls away, just uncatches your damp enervated hand from his
shirt and rubs it in his own, plays your fingers between his, rubs your palm.
"But – if you still want my – my damaged desire, my overgrown pity, then –
still so flushed for you underneath it all, I promise, my pity for you is still
the same awful flame that I followed unquestioning into terrible pain and
retribution when you first came to me – yours by right, yours because being
your matesprit makes me so happy, because I love hearing you say it, because
your body is such a small, soft, lovely locus of power beyond imagining –
because – because you asked me."
His touch soothes you into purring, even though you're still crying silently,
scorched through with too much emotion, still needing to comfort him in return
- you curl your fingers into his, one and the same, at nine-tenths scale, and
kiss him softly on the mouth. He half-startles under your lips as if he hadn't
expected, purring in sped-up amplified counterpoint to you, had thought you
might be too wound-up distressed by the revelation to even reach for him.
"Don't berate yourself," you say, "you told me. Everything we can tell each
other we need, right now. There's too much that we can't - and I can't imagine
I would ever - even when you were gone and the world had ended, I moved
forward, I lived, but I didn't let go of what you are to me; in my heart, in my
head."
And he speckles small kisses around and under your eyes until his mouth shines
with tears; his power still shifts and pulses around the both of you like a
third living thing, and he might remember, for just a strange light-saturated
moment, more than he meant; you think you see pieces in his mind kept so
carefully apart sliding across each other, a moment of remembering why you had
to go up with him and see – "If you succeed, then even when you – when you give
me what you promised, when this is over –" He tries to hold back the surge of
gratitude at the thought, though you have been inside his mind, you've seen his
desperate yearning, and his voice is low, emotion-fractured. "Then our names
will be joined always in history, the Gemini, the Two; then our lives will be
told always in one breath together – as the story of my friends who loved each
other beyond the quadrants is whispered, never forgotten how I love you, never
lost –" and whisper-quiet, a suffusion into breath, as though in near-silence
he could more deeply hide speech from listeners excluded from this place: my
love, my legacy, my salvation, and he pulls you so close, hot breath on skin
and clutching hands and tight as if you could merge; dissolve in crying, yours
and his, or melt together into the sea of light around you –
When this is over.
You'll stand or fall together with him, however it ends, and you don't care how
history remembers you, don't even know how to tell your own story any longer.
It doesn't even matter what story is told. They could idolize or vilify you, so
long as you do what you must. And even as you hold tight to him, skin to skin,
bathed together in warmth and light, a part of your mind is walling off,
beginning to piece out what you saw and heard, cycling through data and hiding
its significance. Because you know, somewhere in the recesses of your thinkpan,
the shape of your design - and even the closest in your confidence can't
assemble the missing pieces together: only you.
Chapter End Notes
     We'd like to offer all our readers a hug right about now.
***** old red rose petals or tracks of mud *****
Chapter Summary
     And while you're in the business of dealing with the things you've
     been trying to avoid: it's as good a time as any to prepare yourself,
     track down a certain cerulean-blooded asshole and provoke her.
     This is not going to be pleasant. This is not going to be pleasant at
     all.
     (Happy belated 4/13!)
Chapter Notes
     We intend to update on a faster schedule again from here on out,
     seeing as we have about 3/4 of our future chapters written and we're
     mainly in the process of editing. (We're saying it here expressly to
     invite you to nag us about it! Don't nag fic writers who don't like
     to be nagged, but we like to be nagged. Really. Badger us for more at
     your earliest convenience.)
     Content notes for this chapter: Vriska, squabbling, calculated risks,
     mind shenanigans, mania, politics.
See the end of the chapter for more notes
You've been telling yourself Bicyclopsdad just has a volatile temperament, but
more and more, this sweep, you know he's getting restless.
"It's part of their life cycles," Tavros says, wistfully, when you're over at
his hive doing the usual countersurveillance measures. "They know when you're,
about to reach final maturity, I guess. I'm lucky to have the powers I do,
because I got to ask Tinkerbull if I could fool him about my scent, and he
seemed to think it would be okay, so I did that... otherwise he'd have gone
away in the last sweep..."
By the way he says it, you're pretty sure this grace period cannot be extended
to, say, the lusii of his friends.
The roof is no place for a creature like your animal guardian to live for the
long run, and the less time you have available to go up there and feed him and
strife with him, the more it weighs on your mind.
Finally, early one evening between one momentous coding bender and the next,
you bring up his breakfast and a jar of mind honey, stick around as he finishes
it off, and then unlock the anklet that keeps him grounded; but the damn fool
doesn't fly away.
"Go on," you say, but Bicyclopsdad just looks at you with both heads and blinks
expectantly, not even trying to strife.
"Okay, okay, fine. Let's go," and you take off into the air. This, he
understands, and goes after you, scorching the brick with his push-off and
paddling through the air like an ungainly bumblebee.
You know where some of the entrances to the brooding caverns are, including the
one you've always thought you came out of. It's a surprisingly long distance,
in practice (even as a wriggler, you guess, you did things because you were too
determined to know better) and there's a wooded area near your destination, a
place you'd seen before while traveling from one troll's hive to another's,
just far enough out of the way for a lot of wildlife to reside there.
That's where you set down, coming in through a canopy of trees that dim the
light of the moons. There's a sound in the distance that you think might be
antlerbeasts, and another sound that's probably a creek - you're an urban
dweller, you're never totally certain about these things.
Your lusus, on the other hand, looks more alert than you've seen him in ages,
eyes swiveling in opposite directions to take in the panoramic view.
(They can locate the brooding caverns at a distance of several miles, the
Trollpedia article had said. You looked up what you could find about survival
odds, because you're a big softie, and didn't find much, because most science
on lusii begins and ends with how they raise trolls, but what you did find told
you he'd at least have a chance out here.
And even if you weren't in a developmental stage outside his comfort zone -
Bicyclopsdad is innocent of your crimes, and you don't want him caught in the
backlash.)
A plump white flutterbeast starts up a raucous song on a branch high above your
head, and you have to pull Bicyclopsdad down by one big clumsy hand from
floating off to investigate so that you can hug him goodbye. "Thanks for
everything," you tell him. "Here's hoping the next wriggler is less of a
clusterfuck than me, okay?"
He pats your back, peers at you with a slow satisfied-looking blink like one of
NP's meowbeasts, hovers again when you let go of his hand – and drifts off,
following the flutterbeast from tree to tree and humming a tuneless electrical
sound to himself until he's out of sight. At least he seems to think he did a
good job.
 
~
 
And while you're in the business of dealing with the things you've been trying
to avoid: it's as good a time as any to prepare yourself, track down a certain
cerulean-blooded asshole and provoke her.
This is not going to be pleasant. This is not going to be pleasant at all.
You've gone long enough without an actual hard test of this principle that it's
honestly becoming an embarrassment to you as a hacker, for something that's
going to be crucial to the final success of this project.
That's how you think of it, most times, the project, superstitiously, as if
grander words might tilt the planet off its axis, generate a failure condition
- or never mind the planet, they'll tilt your head and that's bad enough.
Intellectually you know this is the safest possible controlled condition for
running up against highblood mind control powers. VK has grudgingly been
proving herself a reliable ally for most of a sweep now (while insisting at the
top of her lungs that she's doing nothing of the sort, of course, but that's
what you'd expect from her, if she seemed more contrite on the surface you
wouldn't believe it for an instant - and it galls you how well you can predict
someone you would be happier never to see again -)
But in your gut you've been dreading this moment for as long as you've been
putting it off, maybe longer. It doesn't help that the comedown from a manic
jag is not particularly more pleasant when you've initiated it yourself than it
is when it happens naturally - although being able to make this happen on
purpose has maybe done something for your ability to tell when a mood shift is
happening. You hate the lot of it, and you hate Vriska Serket, and you're
walking into Kanaya's hive (blessedly still un-surveiled, you check every time)
like you're walking a plank.
Other than Karkat, who looks up and makes his best help-I'm-trapped-in-a-
meeting face at you, the small group huddled together around Eridan's tablet at
the center of Kanaya's living block makes a production of not noticing you're
there. You shrug and head for the back of the room. You're ostensibly around to
add another layer of encryption to the network here, and you really are doing
that; you keep expecting Kanaya's hive to outlive its usefulness as a hub for
the project's inner circle but as long as you're still using this place it's
your first priority for security upgrades. It's also yet another soft test: if
Vriska reads your plan off the top of your thinkpan before the meeting ends
then you've failed before even starting and should probably get the hell out.
You plug your husktop into Kanaya's router, start typing – and come up with
half a dozen new elaborations on your security scheme in the first ten minutes,
on top of everything you thought of on the way over here. Forcing yourself to
type your ideas into a separate document instead of incorporating experimental
code into a critical network device on the fly like a complete foolhardy moron
takes an absurd level of willpower.
Worse, they're talking loud enough that it's hard to stay disengaged from the
conversation. You're starting to think that sharing AA's notes on past failed
uprisings might have been a mistake. Everyone agrees that pailing season is a
foolproof diversion to any attempted regime change; most everyone agrees on
spreading rumors that the drones are culling indiscriminately, and creating
some kind of evidence. But then they put VK in charge of figuring out the
details. Even Feferi, who's out raising build grist, thinks Vriska needs
something to do and that it might as well involve a complicated deception.
You're extremely dubious, but you're only allowed to straight-up veto things
when your doom sense is tingling.
"Wait, somebody remind me, how many hours have we been at this, again?" Karkat
says, interrupting Vriska's monologuing. "And how much closer are we to a plan
for Operation Fuck Off and Die that makes any sense at all with our limited
resources? I still say we cull a few bastards and get done with it – at least
then they're casualties of conquest and not walking liabilities. And I would be
out of this meeting – I can't believe I'm saying this, but I have a regiment
I'd rather be training." You've seen the trolls KK is working with and
'regiment' is kind of optimistic, but he's managed to get a surprising number
to train with him, in any case.
"He has a point," Eridan pipes up, "If the idea is to seed rumors that some
trolls who filled both pails are gettin culled anyway on Ascension, then the
simplest plan is to go ahead an cull em. But Fef said –"
"Feferi made herself perfectly clear that we are to refrain from wanton and
indiscriminate culling." Kanaya pauses while crossing the room to adjust the
armful of toxic-colored, bristly plant that appears to be trying to squirm out
of her grasp. "I registered my trepidation regarding the extent of application
of this principle at the time, but is it not your role to bring these things up
directly with the Heiress?" She gives the plant a stern look and steps over
mess of cable you've made around her router on her way out to the perimeter of
defensive vegetation around her hive.
KK scowls. "She's been up to her hearfronds with recruiting the newly pupated
for their build credits, neither of us has exactly had time for a traditional
Imperial dialectic – fuck, before the Discordictator's office was abolished
those arguments used to take perigees, who can even talk that much –"
"I can't imagine," KN says dryly, so you don't have to.
"I still don't like this," you call out from the corner. "You're talking about
enlisting a couple dozen of the biggest dripping bulgewads on Alternia to
completely screw over their quads, not to mention that once they're up there
they'll be security liabilities the size of the Pink Moon. There's still a line
between breaking shit because it's necessary and doing it just because we can."
"You've already defanged my plan enough!"
"Yeah, since sending our enemies off to marinate in their own acrimony was so
obviously something that wouldn't come back to -"
Vriska snaps back, sharp, "Besides, it wasn't my idea, not really. It was
Megido's, and you told us. She's still on board with it. Or doesn't she still
talk to you, too? - I'm sorry," fake sorry, "did I go too far?" Her tone is all
syrup and snark and everything is wrong and you're literally seeing red, but
you push on, because this is what you need to do even if you choke on bile
thinking about it.
KK has both hands over his face, and ED mutters, "I can't even conceive a bein
that fuckin insensitive, Vris, could you can it," but she's already mad and
keenly pointed at you, and that's what you wanted.
"Wow, VK," you talk over Eridan because who the fuck cares, "Congratulations,
your implementation of AA's ideas is so poorly thought out and likely to
backfire spectacularly that you've resorted to the classic defense of dead
moirail jokes. I'm so impressed I might puke."
"As iiiiiiiif I need to impress you, nerd king," she huffs. "You've already
made it clear that your sniffnodes are buried deep in my business and if I fuck
up for real, I wake up dead. Which means either I'm not fucking up, or you're
not as competent as you think you are." It burns that she's actually telling
the truth; you can't stand working with her but she also hasn't slipped up in
any of the ways that would justify refusing to tolerate her any further.
It's also not what you want her thinking about right now. "Face it, VK, you're
just not skilled enough to come after me anymore," you say, almost growling.
You're dimly aware of the others in the block looking at you as if you've grown
a second head, but what do you care?
Terezi keeps turning her head with unseeing accuracy between you and Vriska,
her expression drawing up into a sharp scowl. "You smell like belligerence,"
she says over your growling, "And a whole lake of Five Night Energy, and...
burnt grubloaf. What –"
Vriska trammels over her, sneering, laughing an ugly mocking laugh. "Oh my god,
Sollux, leave the manipul-eight-tion to trolls who know what they're doing,"
she says. "You couldn't be more transparent if you were a ghost! I am a lot of
things, but I am not so clueless that I'm going to step out of line just
because of your whiny goading."
"Not going to – oh, that's funny." If there's one thing Vriska Serket hates
it's being laughed at, but you're too shaky-taut with snarling anger to bring
yourself to spit out more than a single sneering hah. "Still more squeamish
about saving face than ruining lives and endangering the mission – anything
else before I make absolutely sure your dumbfuck plan dies the quiet death it
deserves and everyone sees that your fangs have lost their edge?"
"What the hell is that even supposed to mean," she says - "Oh, that's right!
You're so completely convinced that I'm going to lose control of my temper and
push you that you're not even noticing what's in front of you! Which is me, not
rising to the bait. It's not like I haven't been staying in practice," she
says, and her one natural eye glimmers, and with a chill you believe her.
"Small stuff. Subtle stuff. It's this whole new world! You know, making sure
strange trolls don't stumble across our working locations... if I keep it
simple, turns out I can handle more than one at a time, isn't that grand? And
targets over my hemocaste, too. Funny thing, power. Turns out it's easier to
get better at it when you're not constantly flaunting it all the time! Not that
you'd know anything about that. Turns out I have exactly negative eight fucks
to give about proving myself to you when I have bigger and better things to do.
Threaten me all you like," and she says it so it comes out sort of rhyming with
eight, and part of the back of your mind finds it ridiculously ironic how much
her goddamn number quirk grates on you of all people. "Your friends have just
seen you try to set me up and faaaaaaaail."
"...OK, yeah, that idea was shit." You put your husktop down and rest your chin
in your hands. You're still so pissed off that not punching a neat smoking hole
through the floor with a bolt of psionics or your fist or both is an effort,
but at least you have enough pride left to rein it in until you're somewhere
without a whole meeting's worth of eyes on you. "If you're looking to watch me
mope around about why it was shit then you're out of luck for the night, but it
was definitely shit. I was trying to – well, I was trying to be a vindictive
asshole and that part worked out great, but –"
Vriska gives a brief snort of a laugh. "If you're using 'worked out great' to
mean 'pointed out your badly crafted trap to me from miles away', sure. So are
we done here or did you have some other brilliant wrigglerish scheme to try and
pull me into?" She yawns theatrically, covering her mouth with her robot hand.
"Yeah, about that." You roll your tense, aching shoulders and keep focusing on
not breaking things. "Setting you up was secondary. No, is – you're still
getting owned, but there's no science without testing." Aware of your hands
fidgeting, you tug off your glasses and tuck them away, stifling nervous
hysterics. Fuck the comedown, you're already a mess. You turn back to Vriska,
try to stare down her good eye. "Try to make me do something. Make me do a
stupid dance for all I care, just get it over with."
"Fuck no!" she says, in that way she has which sounds like shouting even when
it's not. "You've basically said I'm gonna be dead if I do that. Let me guess,
you're in one of those moods where you believe everyone else is stupid." And
you want to laugh, because she is being stupid; she could put the pieces
together from what she has. She knows she can only control you some of the
time, and it's not like the phases of the moons factor into it.
"If I meant to kill you, you would know," you snap, beyond caring that it comes
off as blustering confirmation of VK's scoffing. "There's no such thing as a
fair fight between us, and if I've done this right then there never will be, so
the least I could do is give fair warning. Look, if I raise a hand against you
right now then these assholes lying around gaping at us can cull me where I
sit. Now can you fucking get on with the 'why are you hitting yourself' routine
already?"
"That's some nice blustering you have there, but not very much information. Why
should I?"
"Because I'm asking you to test a mission-critical piece of equipment, which
just happens to be my thinkpan, and I can tell you for free that if you do the
job and don't try to pull any 'clever' stunts then it won't hurt your chances
of getting the rest of us to lay off watching your every move. More than we
already watch each other and everyone else, I mean." You grit your fangs into
an obnoxious grin and click your claws against the closed lid of your husktop,
deliberately grating. You're negotiating now but it still feels like
provocation, sneering lingering anger. "Not all of us have the luxury of test
subjects who aren't ourselves, you know."
"You all heard that, right?" She turns around and looks from Terezi to Kanaya
to Eridan to Karkat, preening for attention - Eridan grumbles, "Naww, Vris, you
could yell louder, course we heard that -" then back to you. "You promise you
won't come after me for this," she says. "Promise." It's phrased confidently,
but it's a question.
"Shit, VK, as amused as I am that you think I'm so vicious and bloodthirsty, I
am not in fact going to cull you for doing what I just asked you to do. It's
not like I'm you or something." You roll your eyes.
"I never said you were like me," Vriska crows, vaguely singsong. "But
fiiiiiiiine. If you're so sure about your creepy brain diffusion waves or
whatever, I'll have fun proving you wrong! It isn't like this ever took much
effort."
She - no, you're not focused on her, you're focused on you, you're large, you
contain multitudes - you're moving under a weight, like flickers of a starship
moving through atmosphere like there's another troll dangling over your
shoulders, but you're moving, you're tapping the fingers of your left hand on
your right palm like you're impatiently waiting for her to start and twitching
your mouth and staring off into the distance, your vision clouds and darkens a
little but you're not losing any ground. You tune the connection in your head,
crank the output up a little, and then you're gaining ground, and your vision
clears, and the weight comes off, and you're staring at Vriska just laughing
and laughing and laughing -
"Bahhhhhhhh!" Vriska swats at you, or maybe at the hazy bluish glow clearing
from around her head. "Cheap conversing-block tricks. I expected better of you.
Again!" She spits out the lowblood word for "parlor" like it has a foul taste
and somehow manages to rhyme the middle part of "again" with "eight," which
only makes you laugh harder. She clutches both hands to her temples like the
stereotypical telepath in every shitty movie KK has ever made you watch, grits
her teeth into an ugly sneering grin and blue flares up from her forehead
again, sharper and brighter.
At first you think it's not affecting you at all but then your hand doesn't
respond as quickly as it's supposed to, just a tiny slowdown, a murky haze
seeping into your nerves even though your thoughts are untouched. You hiss, an
animal noise, and rearrange power flows in your brain. Everything is
incandescent. The edges of your eyeballs hurt.
You hold the line.
Not only that but you do it easily. You don't need to be working this hard. You
don't have anything to be afraid of. She is a gnat, she is nothing, she can't
hurt you or hurt others through you again, and your vision is so full of her
scowling, put-out, unrealistically bored face that if your optic nerves
breathed they would be choking on it. You're laughing again, softly, advancing
toward her a step, only half aware that the others have gone silent: it doesn't
seem important.
"What the fuck are you laughing at?" she hisses back, then turns halfway to the
group when you don't respond, keeping her good eye pointedly fixed on you. "Do
you all see this? He's snapped again, the gr-eight genius Sollux Captor has
lost his mind, I can't control what isn't there! But I have other ways of
defending myself, if that's really what you're after –" Vriska huffs out a put-
upon sigh and reaches into her jacket pocket with a rattle of dice.
"So that is all you've got," you say quietly, sounding smug even to yourself.
"And I just said I wasn't going to cull your ass - if you stayed in parameters
- so how about staying in fucking parameters?" You're up in her business, close
enough that you spray spittle on her face when you talk, and you aren't
remotely sorry. "Are you that desperate for a reminder that we need you and
can't just throw your lifeless body to the Mother Grub without some backup
plans? Because I lose nothing by saying that, you know, it's not a game of face
for me. You're a goddamn asset, you're quadranted to someone I give a shit
about, but I can't stand you and I'm not going to make nice about it, you
loathsome third-rate cheater -"
"I'm the best cheat your paltry half-baked plotting could get, and I despise
repeating myself almost as much as I despise your freakish face so last chance,
do you want to make something of it –"
Something red and very fast whirrs in front of your face and smacks several
times at the floor, leaving gashes in the garish carpet that are guaranteed to
be a huge headache to explain to Kanaya later. "You are both despicable, self-
obsessed wastes of time to this most dastardly and dishonorable assembly, and
also out of order!" Terezi raises the point of her cane to about shin level and
glares at each of you in turn with blind, menacing accuracy.
You're mid-yell when the cane flies down, and end up standing there with your
mouth hanging open like an idiot; you've been known to be romantically
oblivious at times, but you know an ashen scowl when you see one. "Shit, I
didn't mean it like that," you blurt out, and you're about to insult her for
thinking you did but it's Terezi and you don't want to stoop to that - and the
realization is dawning on you that you kind of did mean it like that, although
why would you even - oh, right. Juiced-up thinkpan. Wellp.
Well, those vine-borne fruiting berries are definitely sour.
"Ugh, Pyrope, don't look at meeeeeeee! I think a little sparring between allies
makes us all more aware of our abilities. In fact, I'm sure Sollux agrees that
we could have averted some unpleasantness if he'd thought to have this chat
with me sooner." Vriska grins nastily at you but modulates her voice into a
fake-sweet singsong that makes your head pound harder. "And even if in his
fragile mental state he had less noble reasons for making unprovoked threats
when I was doing my best to help, I can hardly see how it's your business."
So much for trying to keep your mouth shut. "Fragile is what you call a
thinkpan you can't get into? Yeah, that's rich -"
One quick wrist-flick and two thwacking sounds later, you're both clutching at
the shins that you failed to move out of cane range. "This council has examined
the hoofbeast excrement offered in evidence by both parties and determined it
to be putridly inappropriate for a crucial strategic conference. The
complainants are sentenced to stop blathering pointlessly until the meeting is
over and also to back off. Three paces. Now."
Vriska glares daggers with her good eye, then rolls it at the ceiling and
complies.
You are going to remember to be grateful later. At the moment you're too busy
working your jaw like an idiot. You still feel like you need to explain
yourself. "TZ, I - did something, that was why all this, it worked -"
"Unless your breakthrough hinges on the volume of your shouting match with
Marquise Sulky Notmyfault over here, I suggest that you save it for the
information security working group." You know Terezi well enough to be certain
that she'll do whatever it takes to be at that meeting; whatever this is, it
can't be mistaken for Terezi being uninterested.
"Hey –" Vriska breaks in, but you're faster. It occurs to you that being able
to out-talk Vriska isn't necessarily a good thing, but you forge on.
"No, I - I had to tell you, I need to -" These words coming out of your mouth,
they are not doing much for the picture of your competence. "Ok, just - keep
track of her for a while, please -" What you need to do is uncross the crossed
wires in your head, and that'll leave you vulnerable, and if Vriska is going to
try anything boneheaded this would be a really awful time for it. What you said
earlier was true, too; you don't relish the thought of having to find a
replacement any more than you want VK pissing around in your head ever again.
"I'll keep track of her, the moons will keep being sour apple green and plant
fiber candy pink, and you will keep being a huge nerd." Terezi nods at you,
abruptly turns around, her cane does another athletic figure around its handle
and Karkat lets out an extremely undignified yelp. "Now less gawking, more
outrageous scheming! I have not been sufficiently scandalized by you miscreants
yet tonight."
You're not sure if that's sarcasm. TZ always did take a certain delight in
being scandalized.
You don't want to switch it off; why would you - but you have to, this isn't
good for you, you're going to need some functionality left later as opposed to
all of it for just the next twenty-four hours. So you steal off into the
ablution block (filled with cheery flowers, ornate molding and a very elaborate
trap, which you suppose is as good a use of wriggler build grist as any) where
the door locks and no one will interrupt you, for as long as it takes to reach
your awareness into the physical space of your thinkpan, thin the flow of
energy artificially connecting areas that weren't meant to be so directly
aligned, and finally shut it down.
You nearly fall out of the sky at least twice on the the way back to your hive,
collapse into sopor fully clothed, record your observations with your phone
perched perilously on the edge of the recuperacoon – and wake up what seems
like only minutes later, both tired enough to sleep for another week and still
so jittery that you juggle your phone above the sopor for a minute before you
can get it to stop buzzing at you.
-- gallowsCalibrator [GC] began trolling twinArmageddons --
GC: H3Y YOU
-- twinArmageddons is an idle troll! [reason: idle] --
GC: M1ST3R 4PPL3B3RRY W1TH TH3 3XTR3M3LY UN1NFORM4T1V3 D3F4ULT 1DL3 M3SS4G3
GC: ...
GC: N3V3R M1ND, YOUR TROLLT4G T4ST3S L1K3 SOPOR1F1CS. BL3H >:[
GC: WH3N YOU W4K3 UP 1 W1LL B3 W41T1NG W1TH GR34T 1NT3R3ST FOR YOUR 3XPL4N4T1ON
OF WH4T TR4NSP1R3D L4ST N1GHT
GC: 4SSUM1NG TH4T YOU H4V3 COMPL3T3D WH4T3V3R R3P41RS W3R3 N3C3SS4RY TO YOUR
W31RD TH1NKP4N 4ND 4R3 C4P4BL3 OF CONV3RS4T1ON 4T 4 R34SON4BL3 VOLUM3 4G41N
TA: 2ay2 the one of u2 typiing iin all cap2.
TA: ii gue22 that an2wer2 the que2tiion you diidn't quiite a2k, iin that my
head feel2 liike iit'2 full of rock2 and everythiing'2 two loud.
GC: 4ND YOU D1DN'T 4NSW3R TH3 QU3ST1ON 1 4SK3D! 1 4M UN1MPR3SS3D BY YOUR 4SC3NT
TO D1ZZY1NG N3W H31GHTS OF OBTUS3N3SS
GC: 1 COULD 4LSO COMM3NT 4T GR34T L3NGTH ON TH3 S3V3R3 D3F1C13NC13S 1N YOUR
SURV1V4L SK1LLS
GC: BUT YOU WOULD JUST T4K3 TH4T 4S 4N 3XCUS3 TO CONT1NU3 TO CRYPT1C4LLY T3LL
M3 4BSOLUT3LY NOTH1NG 4BOUT WHY YOU D3C1D3D TO S3T 4 WORLD FOOLH4RD1N3SS R3CORD
1N TH3 M1DDL3 OF MY M33T1NG 4ND 4LSO WHY YOUR T3XT SM3LLS L1K3 TH3 WORST
H4NGOV3R IN 4LL OF P4R4DOX SP4C3
-- twinArmageddons has set encryption layer 2.2! configuring... --
-- encryption set! automated message: [encryptiion ii2 2tiill not an excu2e two
2ay 2tupiid 2hiit. 2eriiou2ly.] --
TA: diid you thiink vk wa2 ju2t haviing an off niight or lo2iing her touch, iif
2o ii wiill gladly iinform you that 2he ii2 2tiill iin fully dy2functiional
condiitiion.
TA: a2 near a2 ii can tell, anyway.
TA: ii fiigured out a patch for an exploiit on my thiinkpan, two be faiir iit
requiired 2ome help.
TA: and ii had rea2on two beliieve iit would work, but no proof untiil now.
GC: 1 D1DN'T TH1NK 4NYTH1NG
GC: S1NC3 4LL TH1S ST4RT3D 1 H4V3 B33N 4TT3MPT1NG TO D3V3LOP 4 R3V1S3D JUD1C14L
4PPRO4CH
GC: 1NVOLV1NG 4 GR34T3R 3MPH4S1S ON TH3 F4CTS OF TH3 C4S3 4ND L3SS W1LD
SP3CUL4T1ON
GC: BUT TH4T 1S S1GN1F1C4NTLY OFF TOP1C
GC: SO YOUR F1X TO VR1SK4S BR41N TH1NG 1S DO1NG TH3 TH1NG WH3R3 YOU COD3 FOR 4
W33K W1THOUT SL33P1NG 4ND 4NT4GON1Z3 YOUR 3NT1R3 CHUMPROLL?
TA: when you put iit that way, iit 2ound2 2o iidiiotiic.
TA: but ye2 iin fact, certaiin 2tate2 of con2ciiou2ne22 can temporariily make
my braiin le22 vulnerable two brute-force iintru2iion2.
TA: and ii wouldn't even be talkiing about iit iin an encrypted trolliian chat,
except ii'm pretty 2ure iit only work2 wiith my peculiiar braiin 2tructure.
GC: OK UH
GC: B3L13V3 M3 1 UND3RST4ND TH4T TH1S 1S B3TT3R TH4N TH3 4LT3RN4T1V3
GC: BUT TH3 TH1NG WH3R3 YOU R1S3 TO THE3 B41T 3V3RY T1M3 SOM3ON3 H4SSL3S YOU
L1K3 SOM3 K1ND OF 4NGRY 4ND FORG3TFUL N3RDF1SH 1S D4NG3ROUS TO TH3 1NT3GR1TY OF
TH3 T34M 4ND POSS1BLY YOUR H1D3 1F YOU'R3 NOT C4R3FUL
GC: 4LSO 1T'S R34LLY 4NNOY1NG >:[
TA: ii'm 2orry.
TA: ii wiill endeavor two 2tay iin contact wiith the handle, but ii really
can't promii2e anythiing.
TA: maybe the handle 2hould get a trollbook page.
TA: no that 2ounded dumb.
GC: TH4T PL4N DO3S NOT STR1K3 M3 4S M33T1NG YOUR USU4L ST4ND4RDS OF
PR3P4R4T1ON, 4PPL3B3RRY
GC: DO 1 H4V3 TO R3M1ND YOU TH4T L4ST N1GHT 1 B41L3D YOUR PR4CT1C4LLY TWO
D1M3NS1ON4L 4SS OUT OF SOM3 S3R1OUS 3MB4R4SSM3NT 4T TH3 V3RY L34ST?
TA: well you don't have two remiind me now, becau2e you ju2t diid.
TA: 2orry, ii diidn't mean... that 2ounded more 2narky iin text than iit diid
iin my head.
TA: ii'm actually really grateful for that.
TA: ii don't want you two feel liike you have two, um.
TA: but you kiind of diid, and ii would much rather have that ver2iion of the
iinciident iin my per2onal tiimeliine than the ver2iion where you diidn't.
GC: S4M3
GC: 1 M34N OBV1OUSLY S1NC3 1 D3C1D3D TO DO 1T 4ND 3V3RYTH1NG
GC: BLUH, NOW 1 SOUND DUMB TOO
GC: SO UH
GC: 4R3 YOU S4Y1NG TH4T NOT-TH1NKP4N-P4TCH3D YOU 1S OK W1TH FUTUR3-M3
CONT1NU1NG TO T3LL 4SSHOL3-YOU TO CUT TH3 SH1T
GC: UGH 1 SOUND L1K3 K4RK4T, R3M1ND M3 TO N3V3R S4Y 4NYTH1NG L1K3 TH4T 3V3R
4G41N
TA: iit'2 a deal, ii wiill gladly encourage you not two talk liike kk iif you
keep me from tangliing wiith vk.
TA: or really anyone el2e that'2 iinadvii2able for me two tangle wiith.
TA: and you can remiind future me ii 2aiid 2o, two.
GC: 1 W1LL CR4CK DOWN ON TH1S OBNOX1OUS B3LL1G3R3NC3 TO TH3 FULL 3XT3NT OF TH3
L4W
GC: NO STUP1D1TY 1N TH3 V1C1N1TY OF 4 C3RT41N T3RR1BL3 SP1D3RY 1ND1V1DU4L W1LL
3SC4P3 MY SN1FFNOD3S
GC: c3
TA: c3
Chapter End Notes
     A while back we sorted out the_definition_of_auspisticism_in_Wires
     and_Stars, which diverges from canon: it includes the canonical
     "keeping two people away from each other who aren't good for each
     other" role, but an auspistice is specifically quadranted to one
     auspisticee, rather than two, and helps them make good choices with
     regards to blackrom, whether that's eschewing a bad romance or
     pursuing a good one. This continues to be the definition we're using.
***** and fingers grab at nothing *****
Chapter Summary
     Sollux experiments with bathtub biohacking, Karkat has a falling-out
     with the handle, Feferi wins hearts and minds, Aradia is
     knowledgeable, Eridan is not, everyone is at least a little devious,
     the Condesce is terrible, and the Helmsman is... malfunctioning.
      
     You knew, you have always known: that seizing back what they have
     taken from you is its own punishment.
Chapter Notes
     Note: in case the summary and title didn't herald it well enough,
     there is some pretty serious body horror this chapter.
See the end of the chapter for more notes
==> Sollux: Be prepared.
-- carcinoGeneticist [CG] began trolling twinArmageddons [TA] --
CG: aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa.
CG: AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA.
He never forgets his quirk unless he's pretty shaken up. You're instantly on
alert, bloodpusher pounding.
TA: the fuck ii2 happeniing, kk?
CG: AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA.
CG: YOU TELL ME WHAT THE FUCK IS HAPPENING.
CG: WHY IS THERE A SHEET OF TROLL SKIN IN A GLASS INCUBATOR HERE WITH YOUR SIGN
ON IT.
Oh. That. KN said she had a good place for it, but you guess she never said
she'd keep it hidden. Plus now that you know, it's kind of fun watching KK
freak out -
TA: iif you were half the hacker you keep 2ayiing you want two be, you would
have 2een the an2wer2 you 2eek iin my iinternet hii2tory already.
CG: AIEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE.
CG: DID IT MOVE? I THINK IT MOVED.
CG: I'M GOING TO BE DEVOURED BY SOME POOR SOD'S DISEMBODIED HIDE AND IT'S ALL
YOUR FAULT.
TA: calm your exce22iively overwrought rumble 2phere2.
TA: iif my cloned 2kiin ha2 learned two ambulate ii'll eat my maiinframe, bee2
and all.
TA: becau2e that'2 liiterally iimpo22iible, ii mean not even ed could fuck up
ablutiion trap biiohackiing that badly.
CG: CAN YOU TRY CLONING YOURSELF SOMETHING USEFUL LIKE A CONNECTION WITH
REALITY NEXT TIME?
CG: AS MUCH AS I LOATHE TO ADMIT IT, WE ACTUALLY NEED YOU INTACT FOR THE NEXT
STAGE OF THE PLAN, NOT MISSING BIG PATCHES OF SOLLUX THAT ARE HANGING OUT IN
KANAYA'S HIVE AND TERRIFYING INNOCENT PASSERSBY.
CG: ...ARE YOU ABSOLUTELY FUCKING SURE YOUR FREAKY PET CANNED BODY PARTS DON'T
MOVE?
TA: ii would have thought you'd be thriilled, there'2 more of me two hate.
TA: 2eriiou2ly though, you may replace your lo2t 2hiit at your neare2t
conveniience, thii2 ii2 ju2t a head 2tart on a 2ciience project that wiill
theoretiically become nece22ary later.
TA: even ii'm goiing two get con2ultant2 on board before growiing anythiing
compliicated.
CG: I WOULD SAY I DON'T WANT TO KNOW WHAT THE FUCK YOU'RE UP TO THAT'S
"THEORETICALLY" GOING TO GET EVEN WEIRDER THAN THIS SHIT BUT I THINK I'VE
ALREADY GUESSED.
CG: REALITY ISN'T IN THE HABIT OF JUST ROLLING OVER AND GIVING UP BECAUSE YOU
WANT IT TO HARD ENOUGH AND ARE REALLY, REALLY PREPARED.
CG: NONE OF US ARE GOING TO HAVE TIME TO PICK UP THE PIECES FOR YOU WHEN THIS
IS ALL OVER.
CG: LET ALONE PICK UP THE PIECES OF YOU, HAHAAUUUUUUUUUUGH TELL YOUR BIZARRE
ABERRATIONS OF SCIENCE TO STOP DRIFTING AT ME LIKE THAT.
TA: that'2 all riiight, feel free to enjoy the briilliiant fruiit2 of my
obviiou2 iin2aniity whiile ii iineviitably 2elf-de2truct.
TA: ii can hate my2elf enough for both of u2, very low maiintenance.
You bang out the words in a sudden vicious temper, use the macro that queues a
"congratulatiion2, a22hole, you are 2tiill my kii2me2ii2" message to send
automatically with the next Trollian sync - you're still mad and not in a sexy
way, but you're not up for dealing with Karkat freaking out just now, either -
and slam your husktop shut hard enough that it's fortunate you just reinforced
the case.
~~~
Trolls weren't meant to hear the sounds FF's lusus makes, even at her quietest
– you remember, from the time that didn't happen, something of the crushing
unbearable roar of that voice, though the jagged unreal shapes of its waveforms
slide from your memory like your mind can't contain the shape of it, leaving
only echoes of pain and the taste of blood.
Fortunately, heavy machinery isn't trolls, and can be remotely operated.
It takes some doing – and making a few acquaintances – but ultimately it's not
too hard to route a steakbeast supply train to a port on the remote sea coast
near Gamzee's hive, where an ascending and descending construction apparatus
scoops up the meandering herbivores and dumps them into the water.
It's a sight to behold.
Gl'b seems content with her new food source - at least, Feferi says so, and
she's the expert. No one else can really get close enough to know.
~~~
VK's plan makes you feel dirty just thinking about it, but you still have to
implement it and ultimately you do. You've lost count of how many abandoned
accounts you've owned, jacking their histories to create semi-credible sources
to seed the rumors. (Rumors that even a troll with their quadrants and pails
and testing papers in order might not survive, that some of the transport
berths from academies to remote colonies were going to be gassed instead of
opened into the light of an alien sun, that it could happen to a blueblood, to
a seadweller, that you wouldn't know until they just disappeared completely -
and the thing is, it's not untrue, exactly, you're just making it seem to
happen more frequently than it already does, and to people more popular than
your ilk -)
And every offplanet shithead you're disappearing into an informational void did
an actual thing to get on your shit list - or was trying to escape from someone
who did, and for the most part they're still alive (you can't keep adult trolls
from getting themselves culled by normal means) but it's a headache to track
them all and keep it plausibly deniable. You wind up setting a lot of bots
running.
Her Imperious Condescension would fight dirtier than this, if she knew what she
was fighting. Already does, without knowing. You can't afford to be squeamish
about propaganda.
It's not hard to seed the information where it needs to be, then, because once
they're beginning to doubt the system, once they're frantic and scared for
their future, the way you were, the way you are, they start looking for it.
It's not hard to help them find out that at least one Heiress presently exists.
That she's going to actually seek out the challenge instead of evading it. That
making sure she wins will change the world.
They come in ones and twos, delegates from FLARP sanctioning bodies and Future
Threshecutioners of Alternia and particularly large and influential clades, and
from seemingly every weird cult that's ever poked its sun-addled head out from
under a rock. Nepeta arranges an array of remote, defensible, and suitably
grand-looking wilderness meeting places that you draw from at random, and you
background check each applicant more exactingly than the last. A liaison from a
shadowy youth militia rumored to be among the most fanatically insistent on its
members' strict adherence to Imperial doctrine comes forward, and you arrange a
meeting that is designed to be more of an ambush than a reception – until she
silently drops a necklace bearing Karkat's sign into Feferi's hand. The cult of
the Signless is small and fractured from centuries of hiding in plain sight,
but still you shiver thinking of shared fragments of memory of the distant
past.
And still they keep coming, swearing oaths, hushed and awed or loudly,
profanely amazed before Feferi.
You make sure they know two things before they go on to join a project (and it
was AA who told you, in the bored and dreamlike words of the departed, how to
manage loyalty) -
One, now that they've sworn, their voices will be heard; they can talk back,
make suggestions, without fear of punishment, as long as they're not just being
total assholes for the hell of it. They are, and will be treated, as a part of
this now, adults and adolescents alike, even three-sweep juveniles merrily
signing on to share their build credits.
Two, they're part of this now, and you see all (and someone you trust does when
you don't) and if they try to sell you out their treachery will become obvious
and be dealt with mercilessly. So if they came here and swore for bad reasons,
fessing up is their last chance to survive. Offplanet assignment, secure,
informational quarantine. They don't even have to tell you why they're unsure
they can remain loyal. You just want them where they can't fuck shit up.
Of course, in order to set that up as a possibility, you've had to make a bunch
of offplanet contacts. Or at least background-check a bunch of offplanet
contacts and make someone else talk to them.
You built bots to scrape the seedy corners of the net for adults potentially
sympathetic to your cause, guiltily basing their architecture on Astris'
censorship program, and the hits started pouring in immediately – almost all of
them complete junk. Of course, the counterrevolutionary measures on the
Battleship Condescension are designed specifically to generate false positives
to make examples of. You kept refining your algorithms, but at first any
records that seemed to point to an adult with the training and competence to
actually do anything about their revolutionary sensibilities just led you to
trolls already culled – sometimes you knew without even having to pore through
old Legislacerators' files because the trollhandle was familiar from Aradia's
forwarded messages from the rebellious dead; in at least one case it was recent
enough that you recognized the name from your own doomed voices.
But once you found one real hit, then your bots had something to go on, and
since then the leads have steadily trickled in. VK even lays out some
breadcrumbs in the arcane mess of social networks and microblogging sites that
highbloods and FLARP enthusiasts seem to frequent more than forums – you try
not to read what she's actually saying any more than is necessary for security,
but she brings in some promising adults that your searches missed. You
scrutinize their histories until you're seeing Trollian conversations scroll by
when you close your eyes, then manufacture reassignment documents for a select
number of them, some to Alternia and some elsewhere. The Signless cultists
function as eyes and ears anywhere in this process that your bots can't reach.
The spaceport you've chosen has been, for a long time, a secondary point of
access for the province, located between Aradia's hive and the ocean. Long ago
she tipped you off to the ruins of what was the old capital city there, before
that was moved by a few kilometers in the process of eradicating a rebellion,
then deprecated in relevance by adult activities shifting offplanet. It's on
enough important routes that it never really became uninhabited, but for a long
time it hasn't really been a place, just a transit hub, surrounded by suburban
hivestems; the spaceport is operated by a skeleton crew, so you can promote
officers out of it and others into it at a slow trickle and still have the
whole place silently owned by sympathizers in a sweep and a half, although you
won't have time to meet them all face to face until the final night.
Meanwhile, with all the grist the young recruits are bringing in, you have some
building to do – well, for once you don't, personally; you just scrape the dark
web for archived snippets of ancient texts about the Heiress' challenge and
hand off a cache of fragmentary and mostly corrupted data to Terezi for legal
vetting. The standards for constructing the arena are exacting and very old and
require a monumental amount of build grist, and you stay out of the bickering
about millennia-old Imperial tradition in a futile effort to preserve the
remnants of your sanity, but somewhere near the spaceport the venue for the
final battle takes shape.
 
CURRENT gallowsCalibrator [CGC] RIGHT NOW responded to memo ii wiill go back
and ban every 2iingle one of you at every poiint iin your re2pectiive
faiil2auce tiimeliine2 2o help me.
 GC: QU3ST1ON FOR TH3 DOUBL3 LOB3D L3GUM3 G4LL3RY
GC: WH4T ON 4LT3RN14 1S 4 CUB1T? >:/
CA: howw many times do i havve to tell you
GC: 4NYON3 1N TH3 DOUBL3 LOB3D L3GUM3 G4LL3RY 3XC3PT MY 3ST33M3D COMP4TR1OT ON
TH3 CONSTRUCT1ON COMM1TT33 PL34S3
CA: excuse you im the expert on delicate matters a long standin protocol for a
reason
CA: seadwwellers have long memories you knoww
GC: OK BUT YOUR3 7 SW33PS OLD
CA: if you sniffed a calendar or somethin evvery once in a wwhile then you
mighta remembered my wwrigglin day last perigee
CA: and i knoww wwhat a cubit is you meddlin stickler now can wwe get to
allocatin the build grist already
AA: they say its the distance between a trolls elb0w and f0refinger
AA: and that it was cust0mary in the 0ld days t0 use their enemies actual
appendages f0r the measurement
AA: but im sure y0u can find another s0luti0n
CG: I NEVER THOUGHT I WOULD SAY THIS BUT WHERE THE FUCK IS SOLLUX WHEN YOU NEED
HIM?
CG: NO BUILD DETAILS IN THE MEMO, YOU BUNCH OF OVERSIZED BLATHERING
SQUAWKBLISTERS.
CA: sorry kar
GC: 1 TOLD YOU 1T W4SNT H4LF 4 F4THOM
~~~
 
==> Helmsman: the body remembers.
Sometimes respite is flight, precision and derivations and the shape of the
universe bending around you. Other times it is eavesdropping, rummaging through
your databanks for scraps of language and narrative to hang onto, following
highbloods following their soap operas.
Other times - and this is new, this is the change in the rhythm of your
unchangeable nights and days - it exists only in the distance, in the form of a
name you cannot, must not think, and it's enough that you know that much,
enough that you know your consciousness is divided. Which it always has been.
You sleep in halves, but you do sleep; a mandatory cycle initiated by ship
systems when you aren't running at maximum - and sometimes you have the
consciousness and spare resources to reach out into true-dream, and other times
only wane into the dreams you know to recognize as falsehoods -
But you don't fail to sleep. That's not an option. You barely even remember
insomnia, except in the sense of remembering that it is a thing which used to
happen to you, decades of experience worn to a thin scrap of fact.
&partition=0005872$status=000:nominal... &partition=0005873$status=001:
rebuilding... &pa. interrupt. report level=004&neural cluster=rh328$status=022:
unexpected input. resuming scan... &partition=0005874…
It's - when did that happen? Nerves that belong to your hand keep trying to
clench it, over and over again, a reflex path reconstructed where there was
nothing for so long, and of course the command to move does not, will not
succeed, but you can feel - it's like the muscle stimulation routine is being
applied to the ruin of your hand, for some reason utterly beyond you, and every
time it twitches that sets off a wave of signals, pain at every junction point
where the wires enter, normally blunted by stillness, and that makes the cycle
repeat. It's also enough to surpass the central blocking and wake you -
Your wakefulness triggers a status query and a stream of low-level error codes,
but at least neither the pain itself nor the inexplicable stimulus at the root
of it maps exactly to any of the status conditions that would set off a larger
alarm. But you can't just stuff this sharp pulling pain into a dim corner of
unused long-term memory either, not rooted as close to critical navigation
outputs as it is, and you're streaming hundreds of possible hotfixes through
crosscheck long before you're fully awake. For now, patching yourself before
this gets out of hand (ehehe) is your best chance of avoiding technicians or
worse.
Outside, your hull is solid, course steady, nothing near in the dark but
diffuse hydrogen wisps and clouds of interstellar dust. No effect on sensors or
communications – something changes, and your focus crowds back in,
concentration centered on that scrap of atrophied, malfunctioning gray flesh.
Ten seconds since the last twinge, eleven, twelve.
The malfunction has stopped on its own. You don't quite recognize the momentary
icy clench in the pit of your stomach as loss.
~~~
But it returns. (You knew it would, by some wisp of precognition or by thought
processes racing ahead of your conscious awareness.) It does not seem to follow
a recognizable pattern or cycle, only wakes you from half-dozing chemical sleep
or blazes sudden and unanticipated down your ulnar nerve in phantoms of sensor
feedback like a weapons backfire. It happens in either hand, and that seems at
random as well. The percentage of your cognitive resources consumed in stopping
the tremor is variable but small. If it were only that -
If it were only that. One night you get a jolt from the muscle that runs from
hip to knee - that one is a major enough muscle group that at first you think
it is the electrical stimulation routine, but it doesn't continue on, only the
one insistent clenching, and this time you can locate the source - one of the
places where a wire bores in, like the nerves in whatever is left of skin and
fascia have taken notice of the intrusion they've been inured to for
uncountable sweeps.
You knew, you have always known: that seizing back what they have taken from
you is its own punishment.
There was never a reason to endure that. No reason except for the lie of hope,
one more claw-hold for her that you viciously reject. Now, there is, and the
awareness of what it is remains just out of your grasp, and you are familiar
enough with the shape and contour of barricades you set to conceal something
from yourself, to take it on faith that you have.
The spread would be slow except that it only takes perigees, a sweep at most,
and you have whole centuries of immaculately stored memory that you haven't had
occasion to call upon for centuries more. So it is fast, like the whole ship
catching ablaze and burning to molten collapse might be, and painful. You
awaken to embers under your skin, clots of buried pain at wire-bores that
neither cauterize nor heal, once searing into your hipbone, once in the sole of
your foot, and you have to record temperature readings and open the eyes of the
cameras and look vainly for swelling, for signs of infection that you know you
won't find, though you still don't know why.
You wake to rings of sharp taunting flame-tongues encircling your eyes that go
from spearing to rasping to bone-deep determined itching that makes you want to
claw the damn goggles off first before dying. You almost miss a jump timing
that night when half your face seizes, one corner of your mouth drawing back
into a rictus in mid-leap, and in a red blur of pain you input nonsense for a
minor valve adjustment that you have to correct manually, pulling back on
power. No matter how much information you move and process and subdivide your
thinkpan feels heavy, like there's always a backlog of calculations waiting to
push in; you're running milliseconds slow and the delay drags at you like a
countercurrent of radiation on your prow, like claws holding you back.
That the techs would notice, that she would notice, is a conclusion already
drawn. It doesn't take the voice of prophecy to tell. It is a known quantity.
Yet you are afraid. You cannot say of what; only that you know how to remove
yourself impassively from fear that only lives in the flesh (surge of stress
hormones, bloodpusher drumming hard behind the sternal casing, all of this only
reactive -) and this is not that; you are afraid. Afraid of losing - losing
something connected to this -
But why -
She knows, too, she must, that when the task item performance concherence comes
up it will fill you with a building dread; if she did not, you would not
receive warning.
...And you are glitching, worse than you sometimes think you are; the system
tells you Her Condescension didn't deactivate the camera feed on her approach
the way she sometimes does, but whole seconds are dropped out from your memory
of it as she steps into the helmsblock, barefoot and with her hair tumbling
down around her ankles, strangely abhorrently radiant as she draws nearer.
Her lips purse, a mockery of pale affection. "You poor wasted fin, you're
floundering," she says. She reaches out and cups your face in her hand, and you
could almost take her for apologetic except that when you flinch at the sting
of her saltwater touch against old wounds that feel new, it only stretches the
eerie hollow smile across her face. "... So sensitive, tonight," she murmurs,
and she must have already known it, and something about the way she appreciates
it - "I wonder why."
That is not usually your purview, you output to the wires, leaving the gaunt
body in the helmsblock unmoving except for the reflexive flinching that you no
longer have reason to will down.
You are still running your hourly full-system life support check, still keeping
a steady heading toward a dim blue-star waypoint, still taking in
asterrornomical data on a brightening nebula thousands of light-sweeps to port
and to nadir, wading past the clamor of muscle and nerve to do those things
because you must and because those parts of you are as far from the Empress'
black-lipped smirk as you ever get (at least within the memory that you can
see) – and you'll need that detachment to steel yourself for the next part, to
make it tolerable and to make the bait attractive, both; you must go right up
to the line, she must think she has seen everything there is to see, in order
to be convinced that the part she needs to ignore is the part you must be
trying to throw up as a distraction to protect yourself -
And she pounces, as always, at any suggestion that you might reject her
authority. Not angry, not on the surface; nearly purring, enthralled by the
game. "But it is my bassness," she says. "You are, and must remain, the best
ship in the fleet." And you can already see the direction she's turning, just a
little nudge needed to trigger the game where she becomes invested in your
failure by pretending to become invested in your success, wallows in
disappointment while setting you unpredictable barriers (and, some part of you
hopes, forgets that it wasn't her idea to begin with -)
Am I, still? There is no inflection in speaking this way; no way beyond short
defeated-flat phrases to bluff run-dry exhaustion and creeping weakness and
sickening slips of control if those things did not already show through in
sallow skin and broken readouts. But she has spent lifetimes stalking your
vulnerabilities, she is looking for pain always, and she will see what she
seeks as in a mirror. Your gamma telescopes track too slowly, lose the light of
their target nebula, refocus. A muscle in your shoulder that was detached from
its insertion point when the wires first went in throbs and pulls at nothing. I
continue to function at the highest performance level available to me within
the parameters of my operating environment, which is true but only because
you're forced, and the words sound in your head like a muddle of cringing-meek
and mocking that you flinch from internally before speaking.
"Whale," the Empress says, in a low murmur, looming too close, always too
close. "We'll just have to change those parameters, then," and her voice is all
hidden sharpnesses, cheerful tones thinly concealing the zeal you know too well
- that her viciousness locks on like a targeting system and once it's set, it
holds its course.
She confers with techs as though you aren't capable of listening. (The ones who
are uncomfortable with this - you've inferred from their behavior that even
where most helmsmen are treated as things and not trolls, discussing
maintenance in front of them is at least considered indelicate - tend to get
reassigned, sometimes out an airlock; by now it is long habit to remain utterly
impassive during these affairs, so as not to give the Empress or her top
subjugglators an excuse to punish a perceived moment of empathy.)
"Your Condescension," the lead tech says rather more loudly than needed in the
confines of the helmsblock, addressing his report decisively in the direction
of the Empress' knees with the forced cadence of a memorized speech. Your
programming automatically calls up his record: cerulean and boring, no
subversive interests, not many interests at all really outside of obscure
starship components. You dismiss the information; you hardly have the input
capacity any longer to be listening both in this conversation and everywhere
else your presence is required. "My team has reached the conclusion that the
probable consequences of increasing our current operation-disruptive stimuli
mitigation measures outweigh any possible performance benefits. The substances
in use carry a near certainty of cognitive impairment and a not insignificant
likelihood of fatality to the pilot at dosages above the current level." You
think the tech managed that all in one breath; his face is white as a blank
readout screen. "As such, I – uh, the team recommends against Your Highness'
recommended course of action. However, it is possible that experimental
palliatives may emerge in coming sweeps –"
A nerve in your neck takes the opportunity to notice it exists and prickle
phantoms of scalding heat up through your skull. You remember, blurrily and
very long ago, working through migraines as though nothing was happening, like
what you're doing now on such a miniscule scale that your systems would hardly
register those symptoms now if they appeared. You prohibit the muscles of your
face from moving like holding a broken aileron steady.
The Condesce ignores the rest of the tech's sentence. "I don't care aboat
that," she says pointedly. "Tell me what we can do now," and her voice is
whining and petulant but careful, you're just cognizant enough to recognize
that she isn't anywhere near an actual tantrum, only looking for a particular
response and putting on a show to get it.
"If we postpone arrival at the next target by a perigee," the tech addresses
the Condesce's ankles, adding hurriedly, "Possibly less if the adjustment can
be precisely calculated – it would be possible to draw down the current
treatments until the pilot's dependence on them is somewhat reduced, without
posing a safety risk to the flagship. Administration of analgesics at present
levels could then be resumed to greater effect when needed. Some medics believe
that this course of action has been overdue for sweeps, but the delay to the
glorious mission of the Battleship Condescension did not seem feasible, or –"
"Yes, yes, I get the tidea," the Condesce says, and her lips press to a bored
line. "No postponement. We'll go faster for a whale, then all have a little
vacraytion," and you know just from tone and context that she means cutting
your painkiller drips down to the very minimum, and you can't bring yourself to
be afraid of that, preoccupied only with now, with the unsuspicious tech
despairing of your ill keeping.
Because you are in no condition to jump the journey is a sprint skirting the
lower boundary of light speed, power wrenched from you as soon as you can form
it, thrown into velocity as sensors blink nonsense readings interrupted by
screaming bursts of input from your body twisting in the helmsblock. You keep
almost expecting to be forced to slow, that your psionic production will
malfunction like the rest of you. But this agony is not a weakening of your
body, just the opposite, and you keep making enough, more than enough light, as
your own fruitlessly healing fingers gnaw at you and your consciousness
flinches away into acceleration and direction.
Even when she is not in the helmsblock, she keeps a viewport open. You feel her
watching through the wires, shark-toothed delight, a scavenger's curiosity
hovering around a foundered animal. Centuries ago this was your every night
without ceasing, but the waiting and being watched never became more bearable
with time, and there was never anything to learn about stopping her, no matter
how you sifted through behaviors like astronomical data, seeking a pattern.
Jolts of off-course feedback jab at you as you slow, wobbling into the light
and tidal gravity of your destination star system. You settle into an orbit
that would drift out of the ecliptic if you stayed here for more than a sweep
or two but still barely satisfies the parameters you've been given, turn your
focus in and begin the slow process of rebooting one by one the systems that
your neural interference has crashed or glitched… when a thought comes to you,
slipped in between subroutines, unbidden, this is the beginning of the end.
You expect to find relief in that, but fear surfaces instead, sharp and
fleeting and entirely different from the ancient dread you know so well, and
there is nothing there to tell you why.
Chapter End Notes
     This seems an appropriate time and place to thank all of our betas,
     past, present and future! Let's see, so far that's... solluxisms,
     chlorinetrifluoride, YesVirginia, manyblinkinglights, trickshire,
     madamformicidae - hopefully I haven't forgotten any names here (and
     let us know if you would prefer to be credited by different names or
     handles as various of you have changed them from time to time.) Your
     watchful eyes have kept us from making a good few bloopers and your
     assistance is much appreciated!
***** just because you've forgotten, doesn't mean you're forgiven *****
Chapter Summary
     "What do your voices say, when you give yourself in pity to her blood
     and bone? Those doomed by her caprice, do they even stoop to speak to
     you in that pile of sea-wrack? Or can the Heiress' touch silence even
     those not yet dead?" Does my shade claw at your conscience yet,
     Sollux? Or am I still silent – silent again, since you –
     Your mind is still tangled up in his, not knowing if you even tried
     to hold that back, your thinkpan throwing words out barely hearing
     them itself – there are lines that you do not cross out loud and
     lines that you do not cross at all and that –
     And then there are lines that you don't see before you cross them.
Chapter Notes
     Chapter warnings: relationship arguments, jealousy, dissociation,
     brain problems, suicidality, people being badly triggered and taking
     it out on each other, body horror, neuroplasticity horror, that thing
     where the Condesce is her own warning tag.
     We wrote this and cried and then we edited it and cried and refused
     to post it until it felt resolved properly and edited it again and
     cried moar and crying is cool and having a dry shirt is overrated.
See the end of the chapter for more notes
Sollux is
(– feigned solicitous-unyielding interest, mad eyes, sharp-tined fins and hair
that drags flowing-sopping over wires – "You can't hide your waveforms from me.
Teel me what's wrong so I can kelp, shelly stubborn thing – On the other fin,
wecodalways run some tests instead, hold seal –")
tinkering with the inputs and outputs of a graph, presented as bees entering
and leaving a hive, it is obviously something else that you don't and can't
know – there are
(hands and arms bejeweled-dripping, proffering tortuouscare, razor-grin that
tilts into wrigglerish glee –)
complicated rules for how many bees can enter and leave in successive
iterations, algorithms that start with the initial "day" and evolve from there,
and he's chattering as he sets it up, talking about his moirail –
You should be better at this now, you have been better at this, ship and body
narrowed to a point and nearly out of view, but even sitting cross-legged with
Sollux in the replica of his hive, listening to his nightly life, you can't rid
yourself of the feeling of her fingers, like they'll hunt and find you even
here – and your memory is functioning like a vastly more simple system, one of
those ancient recording devices bearing one track that plays beginning to end,
film progressing in its spin no matter how you try to tug and nudge your
thinkpan parallel, to play anything else –
He leans back on his hands and yawns. "I always forget she actually needs me,"
he says, "I don't think I've ever seen her scared like that, she's just… not
the stereotype, you know? She's the highblood but I'm the one who's shithive
maggots – "
There's a sense of hidden alarm when he talks about the seadweller girl;
something you hid away from yourself because it would be too dangerous to
recall.
"– and, I mean, she's not Aradia. No one else is ever Aradia – but we take care
of each other, even if she's more aggressive about feelings jams than I'd be,
it's still… it's what I need, too –"
Usually when you're here you feel almost free of her icy splinters in you,
those parts of you carefully shoved back behind locked gates, but his speech
these days feels sprinkled with crumbs of truth you're forbidden from
following, granular knowledge-fragments that catch in the folds of your
thinkpan and itch, and you're deadpan-neutral to steady both of you, keeping to
open questions, generalities, letting him fill your head with the numbing buzz
of the quotidian –
"You're still so overstrung lately, it's hard to believe you've spent a minute
on a pile in the last sweep – but then, when is one of us not stretched a
little thin –" You elbow his ribs, halfhearted, distracted – memory short-
circuited, eyes of your mind averted from the wire-cross but sliding –
Maybe Sollux doesn't see how thinly you're stretched. But by now it's more
likely by far that he does see, and knows it's easier for you when he just
keeps talking – feeds you morsels of outside experience that you can lose
yourself in like moonlight.
Usually it's easier. Right now it doesn't make you feel any less like screaming
when he goes on, chuckling – "Well, it was a seaweed-pile, but – compromises,
right?" Then he goes quiet, head-tilted, pensive. "We're making progress," he
says, referring to objectives he can only hint at. "But there's a lot to be
scared of. And so much timing to micromanage. Her own plate is so full – we
barely have time together that isn't working, not unless one of us needs it
desperately."
A sick swoop of shame inside, like fingers squirming in your stomach – you've
learned a coexistence with the unfathomable weapon's guilt, but these petty
self-hatreds angle against your soft spots – you're angry, frightened, pale-
needy, not looking at his hands as if that will help you keep from imagining
them dappling at your face, he knows your feelings break through quadrants but
you shouldn't –
– you can't help, haven't contributed anything substantive to his calculations
since he arrived, but still he comes to you when he has – when he has –
– the seaweed-pile, seadwellers content with shallows and the ones who of
necessity seek out the deep, seek to drag it up with them, even up into the
dark, past the moons – the lapping and the stinging around your ankles, more
and more often you half-feel, twinges and traces – and the lock on the part of
your mind where his deepest and most dangerous secret lives just rusts away, as
if the salt-water has invaded even your thinkpan now; and in borrowed memory
you see a face.
And you know. And all the reasons that justified your capitulation before tear
clean through, a flimsy pity-spun film over fanged visceral horror.
"...because your moirail is hers. No – don't ask me to apologize for
remembering. Don't –" You wanted his hand on your cheek, that you see in your
mind's eye, see hallucinatory here in dream dripping seawater, you can't turn
to him without the stench of salt – knowing who – and you wanted him to touch
you – "Don't dare –"
You close your eyes and for a moment you need every cell in your thinkpan for
reining yourself in, power that wants to snatch up and push – you made a
promise about leaving, weak dwarfed words under the seethe of light that slams
in and boils beneath your skin, have to get out now, release this into the ship
or leave him broken in your wake –
"Astris – no -" And the look on his face will stay with you, shocked and lost
and furious and protective, and the part of you that will make sense of this
later, now submerged under seawater and anguish, will marvel over his instinct
to protect his friends, will be quietly glad that he's defending his life
outside of you –
Sollux catches at your wrist, incandescent with his own shielding out to the
tips of his fingers, touch that sears and shocks and focuses you so hard here
that the pinprick awareness of your distant body that you haven't been able to
shake fades into the black of space and you sheer off a thunderclap of power in
warning, light but also motion, shaking the dream-air around you, growling into
and through it "Do not touch me –"
His hand hovers there, still in contact even if not with your skin, light
crackling and snapping back and forth between his fingers and your wrist, to
the point where the buzz of it hurts – "If you're remembering, you must
remember why you locked it away – I am in danger, Astris. You're not thinking
clearly. If you let it slip, the consequences for all of us – Would you see me
go to a traitor's death – if I'm lucky –" You're numbly aware that he's
reaching for the buttons he can find to try to contain this, but right now it's
only waving daymares in your face –
Your knees go weak and tendon-loose as his power washes up into you,
threatening to fold, your eyelids droop, you've taught yourself through both
habit and intention to lean into the signature of his power, acknowledge its
touch as proof of a claim, give him time to get through to you – and he's had
time, oh, he's gotten through, you claw his hand away with a swipe of light and
stagger straight again, pain forgotten, and spit – "What do your voices say,
when you give yourself in pity to her blood and bone? Those doomed by her
caprice, do they even stoop to speak to you in that pile of sea-wrack? Or can
the Heiress' touch silence even those not yet dead?" Does my shade claw at your
conscience yet, Sollux? Or am I still silent – silent again, since you –
Your mind is still tangled up in his, not knowing if you even tried to hold
that back, your thinkpan throwing words out barely hearing them itself – there
are lines that you do not cross out loud and lines that you do not cross at all
and that –
And then there are lines that you don't see before you cross them.
His mouth works for a moment and he stammers out, "I'm not doing this for your
goddamned gratitude and I'm not doing it for my moirail – I'm doing this
because I'd hate myself too much to live if I didn't try –" And the this in his
sentence is a looming blank and Sollux has blocked himself into a corner and
the plaintive frustrated note in his voice almost makes you want to crumble, to
reach out with empathy, if you were only a little more here – but he's still
talking, and there's a tangle of fear and anger like a wall in him, shutting
you out, defensive, bitter, stung – "But I should have known, I should have
expected you'd – She's had you for a thousand sweeps, you know she's gotten
into your head, how can I possibly expect to compete, nothing we share is ever
going to make a difference to it, so go on, put your misery ahead of our opsec,
she'll be there when I'm gone –"
"If I could stand to touch you right now, I would claw you to atoms -" You
aren't screaming, you're speaking one syllable at a time, forcing your jaw
through it, there's so much layered onto your voice that you're grimly
surprised to hear it coming out words at all, focused on him, a lensed beam.
He's bared his throat to you; well, fuck him, you won't bite.
His (exquisitely ordinary – common as a beating heart, common as an unfurling
leaf, so perfectly pitiful –) his terror that in the end, he means nothing to
you – no. He doesn't get to wallow, what you can't force into your voice of
rage that sounds like raveled devotion like necessity like longings of the body
like sundering-enfolding light you will push out through your mind. You flash a
glimpse of her time-mad laughing despicable eyes at him just enough to leave an
afterimage before you snarl, fangs-bared glaring measuring slow-raking stare –
"Nothing she can do can ever surprise or disappoint me, Sollux. But you,
stooping to –" To the deepest, the only insult that can be offered to a slave –
"I am immeasurably disappointed."
You know it hits him like a blow, even before his face changes; you hear it in
his breath, the way it clicks almost imperceptibly on the inhale before he
speaks, his fists tighten at his sides and finally his near-blank expression
settles out into actual rage. "And you're making my point again," he says. "You
would conflate my moirail with her – bad enough, but I can at least understand
– but now you're looking for her in me."
Not her – but the one I see in you is hardly any better, you sneer at him in
your mind, so clotted up with bile and loathing that even amped-up pain and
fuchsia-and-black gleaming-fanged terror are dissolving in its acid drip, and
now your thinkpan knows just where to sink claws in his to open up old blister-
skinned soft places, it doesn't want to stop –
"No matter how deep you rip into me," he says, and his voice is ragged, tired,
"you won't find that. If you reach through me to my friends and quadrants and
open them to the worst – all you'll find is a bunch of young trolls who were
trying to help. Until you gave her the tools to destroy another descendant and
secure her rule for another century. Is that what you want?" His voice cracks,
shrill, unhinged. "Is that what you're going to do? – All because you can tell
me over and over again that I shouldn't deny myself quadrants for whatever
length of time I even have, but you can't respect my fucking judgment –"
You're both past the point where anger has its own inertia, where it barrels
forward like an asteroid, no engines, no stabilizers, just going until it runs
into something sufficient to stop it, and you hurt, and the ugliness of things
you've thought in your worst moments is still pouring out of your mouth – "Do
you want me silent and sealed off here? Is that what you want from me? Because
if respecting your judgment means you hide your betrayals behind my limitations
and then expect some meek complicit affirmation of your debasement from me then
you think even less of me than I think of myself. Tell me, have you ever really
seen me as a troll separate from your own mind or am I just another problem to
play at solving –" Something warm drips down your fingers, blood from your
claws biting into your palms, illusory, doesn't matter – power stings the welts
like a salt-rub, holds you crackling above the floor and glaring down at him.
Sollux can't be anything but icily hostile in response, you know it from the
inside, the way white-hot brittle rage hides itself under layers of dignity,
and it still doesn't make it any better to see him closing you out like this,
his posture drawn up stiffly and his power a tight shell around his skin. "I am
signed on for your fucked-up 'pan and everything that entails, you know that
just as you know I'm willing to debase myself before you, tear myself to shreds
for you, even when I shouldn't be," and for a moment you're sure he's twisting
your words on purpose; then you're not sure, but too angry-numb for it to
matter – "– but I won't break the trust of my friends – not for you, not for
any one of them, not for my moirail either, that is not a thing that is ever
fucking happening on my watch and if I have to tear myself in half I'll do it
gladly first. Remember my betrayal, if you want to call it that, if you want to
hurt yourself for no reason; remember what a contemptible jerk I am, that I'm
an all-around shithead who takes advantage of you –" And for a moment it
reaches you that this isn't performative, watching him dig into himself with
one half of his thinkpan and into you with the other, and you suddenly
disjointedly want to shout at him about bad tactics, but he's still going –
"Betray me, if you must, tell them my face and my name and what and where I am,
I'd like to see them try–" And then he breaks off. "No. Don't. If there were
anyone else who could do my job – but there isn't, and I'm stuck, and this goes
beyond your life and mine –"
"I wouldn't. I won't. I never will. They could hold up the one thing I want in
front of me and ask only for you in return and I would spit in their eyes – and
how you used to wince when I said that – now here you are asking me to say it,
well. I could be called back into my prison now and in the nanosecond it would
take me to laugh in your face and disappear I would go right back to living
without half my thinkpan in order to guard your image. And you think you've
reduced yourself for me – heh – no matter how you've protested, you still say
it as if it was such a point of pride for you –" And yes, somewhere beneath
this is the pitch desire to knock him low before anyone else gets the chance,
but this is more than that, this is – you would reach through space and cull
that giggling miniature of her yourself, horribly misplaced vessel of your
secret – of all the trolls on Alternia he could have chosen – and he leaves and
you have no one –
"And your band of hopeless causes –" Your words come out slow, heavy with
exhaustion. "If you really think I would lay waste to my one chance at an end
to my torment out of simple anger at you, then you overestimate the extent of
your significance to me. I would betray your friends without a thought, every
one of them, I would watch all Alternia go dark, I have done worse, just to
abate my pain for a while – but as long as they are the instrument of your
promise – or. Or. Are you tempted to go back on your pledge, then? Not quite
crazy enough to cull your matesprit and take the whole world down with him
after all? So easy, a slip of the tongue or of the mind, and suddenly I know –
a vicious, unpredictable, half-crazed tool of Empire, savage enough to reveal
everything, and it's all over – try to tell me you haven't thought about it –"
"What you're telling me is that you've thought of it yourself," Sollux says,
low and rough, no longer shouting. "I know what it's like to be obsessed with
failure to the point where you start to steer towards it – and you sound like
me when I'm like that, and it scares the crap out of me." He doesn't really
answer your question, and his eyes are downcast and maddeningly unreadable. "If
you think I don't still have petty self-destructive fantasies, you haven't been
paying any goddamn attention, even to what I can say – which I guess shows
who's turning away from -" You draw yourself up to speak, but abruptly,
somewhere where you cannot see the workings of it, he meets whatever force is
strong enough to stop the movement of his asteroid, and shakes his head. "No.
I'm not going to keep standing here and – no. I'm not going to keep standing
here. I'm just going to hurt you more if I do."
And there have been times when the contact breaks in waking, times when he's
interrupted, and this is not like any of those; this is – you feel the
deliberation of his focus as Sollux closes it down, narrows the connection to a
point, as the dreamspace shrinks to become a distant apparition.
~~~
==>Sollux: try to pick up the pieces.
It always feels like a shock, but you've learned it so many times before – that
the world doesn't stop, just because everything is horribly wrong.
You're still training hackers to manage untraceable build grist transfers,
still moderating memos and running Trollian security updates, assigning bots to
follow troop movements and message them to your compatriots, keeping moving
because you have to. TZ hovers over you when she comes by the hive to pick up a
secure signal relay and complains that you smell of spite and dead things, then
when you answer just "Yeah," insists on making you eat something, no matter how
scandalously quadrant-crossing that might seem.
You don't want to eat something and you're not even sure what was in that
nutrition basin, except that it tasted like sawdust and you put it down your
throat so Feferi wouldn't have to waste her time chasing after you too. You
don't want to anything. You don't know if you can make this better, you don't
know if there is a better when you can't just give up your stubbornness, when
there's someone to protect on either side of you, and you wonder if you have
the strength to carry this, without –
You would, though, you would still, even if he hated you to the end or worse
disdained you, if you still had the slightest access, even if he sabotaged you
at every turn. In between being a complete fucking asshole, you were right:
there's too much riding on this now. And even if there weren't – you could burn
yourself to cinders ending his torment and be a meritorious footnote to
history, an instrument of this thing that's always been larger than you, and it
would be worth it, even if he never –
And you're making yourself the hero in your head here when you were just a
total asshole, and you're going to fry your keyboard if you keep getting tears
in it, and you have a stack of shit to get through before you can see FF.
~~~
You stop recording time in nights and days sometimes. This, theoretically,
should defend you from queries about how many nights you've been up; but Feferi
manages to get you to string together a loose-tongued account of sixty-two
hours, and why; and accepts it, somehow – the senseless muddle of anger, the
knowledge of how Astris thinks of her – nonchalant as the ocean swallowing a
flaming wreck. How do you not take things personally, you want to ask her, but
you don't think you could understand her answer right now, even if you could
get the question out.
Even the chatter of voices seems to come through a thick wall of mist, and your
thinkpan is blessedly disconnected from the concept of tomorrow.
"Trolls do need sleep," she murmurs to you. "Efin I have to sleep."
"But you can keep swimming while you sleep." You're not sure if you're trying
to say you're jealous or trying to say it doesn't count. The point seemed
important when you opened your mouth, then got lost by the end of the sentence.
"You do that too, Sole-lux," she says, a gentle whisper. "But you don't have
to, if you don't want to."
Even that reminder hurts a little less, with her here. "Mmh," you say, and curl
deeper into the pile of data solids. You were going to try to read their labels
–
Someone thinking more clearly than you might take that for a sign you aren't
thinking clearly.
Feferi is singing some quiet, strange, slow song, each note of it a long drawn-
out breath, and the sick-scared frustration of not knowing if you will dream or
not dream, if you will emerge into anger or emptiness, fades into a distant
trepidation; and you hear, in your head, a conversation with Aradia from long
ago: But you must think I'm so stupid,, you'd said, after she talked you out of
some manic bullshit, and layered through Feferi's singing, you hear Aradia's
voice, like they're both here with you at once; saying, Everyone is stupid –
Part of being smart is surrounding yourself with people who are going to stop
you when you're being stupid –
~~~
You drift for a while before lucidity arises –
You know what the possibility of the dreamspace feels like, in sleep and
waking, the way it feels when Astris has enough mind free and isn't blocking
you out, when you can hook into his power and pull the place together – but not
for over a sweep, since the very beginning, has he resorted to constructing the
space himself, cavernous-dark and featureless without your shaping influence –
it pushes at the back of your mind like water behind a levy, blackness and the
half-heard sympathetic sound of footfalls, drifting bits of consciousness as
the space pulls close – you could fall into it like falling asleep, but if he
has felt you orbiting its edges then here in the void between dreams there is
no sign –
- and you let yourself be drawn in, quiet, furtive, hovering at the edges. Its
solidity changes in response to you, but not fully, objects shaping themselves
in outline, in silhouette; like your hive, but a darkened colorless replica,
the space you stumble through with the shades drawn and the lights off, the
same block but at once unfamiliar. You're there and not there, which resolves
to being in a doorway in the dark, not quite sure you belong inside –
Astris paces past you once, eyes turned to the the floor but too dim to really
illuminate it, before he notices that anything has changed, turning underwater-
slow to look at you on the threshold of your own hive, just look, eyes shadowed
even in their glow and mouth pressed into a fanged weary line, mind closed. Age
doesn't usually spill into his dream-presence like this, and you can't be sure
even now if the wavering creases around the corners of his face are projected
or imagined, a pinprick leak of his sealed-away consciousness or a trick of
poor light – but when he speaks he sounds old, raspy-weakened, not a change
that just anyone would notice, but you know him. "So you're here." Flat to
almost uninflected, but then he steps back as if to make room for you to come
in without getting too close. "You questioned my allegiance in ways that would
have gotten anyone else culled before they could finish a sentence, and I seem
to have forbidden myself from remembering why. I don't know what I need that
you can give me."
And you do inch forward, just a little, casting details out around you as you
step in, your memory bringing fuzziness into form "Go ahead and remember, while
you're here. If you're quite sure you won't be called away." You clasp your
hands together to force them not to shake, raise them up to your face and rub
your forehead, eyes downcast, avoiding his. Even conciliated and sung-to you're
enervated; making yourself stand upright isn't supposed to be this difficult,
but you hardly deserve to relax; your mind is already trying to muster a snide
answer, something dismissive that will make you feel a little less shitty about
yourself for a while and more so later, and you won't let it. "So long as you
remember the whole thing. Feel free to tell me what a colossal walking waste
chute I am. I'll live. I can't promise I won't get angry if you insult my
moirail again. I don't think I've ever met a troll who wouldn't get angry about
that." – And you realize you're justifying, and shut yourself down. "I was
completely fucking horrible to you, though. I'm not going to try to pretend
that didn't happen." You don't apologize, not quite yet; you have the feeling
he wouldn't hear you and it wouldn't mean what it needed to. Better to save
your breath.
In your periphery you watch his face twist as it all comes into focus – he
steps back again, his eyes clouding so dark the colors go almost
indistinguishable – not shocked anymore, just drained, low and flattened still,
"Oh, I – what are you doing to yourself –" he shakes his head again, you know
his movements even not looking at him, almost feel him trembling with nights'
stopped-up confusion of feeling and exhaustion and – something more, some other
distress, his voice ragged – "This is useless, isn't it? Nothing I could say or
do – or be for you or give you – would stop your thinkpan turning against you,
or you going to her for it. I could threaten to leave, but we both know about
how far that flies. Please just – tell me honestly if there's anything I can do
to stop you. Anything at all."
It isn't what you were expecting – and you want to break down, to reach for him
and close your eyes and tell him to forget all this – you wish you could,
yourself; wish that you could erase the way you ripped into him and the things
he said and shove it all somewhere it would never come back. That you could
make yourself simple as a wriggler, for a while, stop having to think and to
care so goddamn much it pulls you in a thousand directions, though it's true
what you said before, that you'd tear yourself in half for him if you thought
it would help.
But it wouldn't.
You look at your feet, focus on breathing. "Ask yourself," you say finally.
"Ask yourself what I am doing, really. Because there was a time when I was
interested in her for being dangerous. But I get my fill of that now. I'm over
that thing. This isn't about acting out. This isn't about playing games. I'm
more intelligent than you're giving me credit for, Astris, please -" and you
make a tiny miserable noise and catch yourself and let out a cautious breath
and look up at him, at last, guarded and tear-blurred and tense. "Please see
that – I said it in the worst way possible before, but there's a veil over your
eyes – and I know you can't see my moirail beyond that, but try to see me -"
"It has never been your intelligence that has worried me," and he is chewing on
his lip and raising his eyes to stare straight at you, taking your demand at
face value – blinks and digs in with his fangs and there's a catch to his voice
that is not just worry – "But I – at the core of it, there may be nothing
intelligent in finding betrayal here, but it still gnaws at me when I let
myself remember and needles at me when I can't – and even then I see, I do, I
see that something from outside is buoying you up, holding you back from
raising a hand against yourself – and I'm grateful, even while my skin is
crawling, and I can't –" Guilty and bitter and building up a cloud of sparks
around himself again, darting and stopping chaotic up against his skin, frozen
and tonguetied –
You say the thing you held back when you were angry, now that you're not, it
comes out differently – "I have that and you don't – and I have no right to rip
into you, no matter how egregiously you flip your shit, I was frightened, yes,
but that doesn't mean I hurt you any less, and I'm sorry, god, I'm so sorry -
" and you find yourself inching closer, leaning toward him dizzily until your
hand rests on his arm, you're not sure if to comfort him or to catch yourself
or verify that he's there and not shutting you out again.
Astris flinches a little but doesn't move away again, just stays rooted and
staring at your fingertips where they dimple into the flickery film around his
skin and working his jaw until you think he might slice his lip clean through.
"Please don't, I – I gave you the right to rip into me, and to whatever you
find, even if that turns out to be a rabid howlbeast more times than not –" and
he winces again against the bubbling up of nervous laughter – "I promised to
give you everything I could, and instead – you accused me of turning away from
what little we have when I was really trying too hard to cling to it. My –"
He takes a shaky-audible panicky breath and now he steps back, clutching his
arms over his chest, in slow teetering retreat as he speaks, rapidly, now, the
things held back and rehearsed in his head – "My greater awareness of my body,
there, spilling over from what we do here – you were right to be afraid. I
could hide more sensation but when it started to extend to more pain – and in
places that had been hardened to pain for centuries – she watches that, she...
takes an interest." He stops moving at the same time he stops talking, like
he's hit an invisible wall in his mind, cloaked horrors and grayed-over
details, you're still sealed out from his thinkpan but you read it in his eyes,
sickeningly familiar – "I don't fear her. She has no way of tracing you this
way, is too arrogant to guess, too caught up in – but I was afraid that you –
I've been fearful and petty and –" And he gasps and bows his head and tears are
running yellow streaks down his cheeks, locked tense like he wants to cover his
face and doesn't want to stop digging his claws into his arms, run out of
coherence in a jumble of half-finished thoughts –
You can't hide the horror in your face that Astris didn't want to see, hope
desperately his eyes are too downcast to catch it, know in a moment of breaking
clarity that you're going to open your mouth and upset him even if he doesn't
see, but you can't just pretend – can't back away, either, can't not move to
comfort, even knowing that every time you touch him it's – and so you throw
your arms around his shoulders and hold him, squeezing so tightly that you
won't shake with anger or terror or the relief of touching him again – "I'm
sorry," you blurt out again, but you can't be sorry enough, and at the same
time something in the very back of your mind lights up with selfish hope and
you keep it as carefully boxed-up out of reach as you've ever held his pain –
"I've done this to you, I wanted to give you something beautiful and all I've
done is – make you vulnerable -" Your voice cracks and you can't go on.
He draws inward within your embrace, not quite a flinch but still an all-over
tightening, caught between curling in and breaking away, "I knew, I knew you
would –" And then – like a spring released, power lapping then flooding over
your skin – his head is on your shoulder, your neck is warm and wet and breath-
fogged and he's choking down sobs up close to your ear between strange high
strangled-relieved whining, "I would give over the rest of the time I have left
to the worst, 'pan-crushing pain they could invent for me, just for your hands
on the spine you built for me here, just once – my refuge – don't dare try to
spare me, I'll have you in every treasured detail you can give me or I won't
have you at all, don't make me –"
"I know," you murmur, "I know," because you do, and you won't say it's okay
because it's not, won't tell him right now how much you want him, though you'll
say it again later in every word you've found to describe the way pity stirs in
you from the press of skin, how the light in his eyes and the thing you've
built together are magnificent and devastating and more of home than you ever
expected to have – won't say it right now because too much of him is caged and
if he ever needed to remake that one free choice and held back in guilt and
obligation it would gut you.
Astris frees his arms from between your chests and wraps them around you,
cautious-light and hesitant, and you're catching bits of his mind now, finally,
intent listening, leaning into warmth and pity, slurring, "I'm sorry, I'm
sorry, you've proved you're strong enough to handle the worst of my truths but
– I keep – I'm so –" And he stops and catches his breath and you hear the
moment of cobbled-together clarity, still muffled into your shoulder, still
stiff, but just unclouded enough – "This is just going to get worse. What
you've seen – you've seen her bored of me, and that's over. I'm going to get
worse, it's all going to get into my head and I'm going to take it out on you
just when you need – and I won't be able to stop it and I'm so sorry –"
Your plans are in motion, there's just so much waiting, so many tiny details to
line up and he needs you to accept this and you can, for him, automatically you
do, but it feels like prying your bloodpusher out of your chest. You're now
searingly conscious of the price paid, and every day that you have him now is
the worst of your craven selfishness and the depth at which you hide that is
worse still and you – you will make up for it one way or another, and once you
thought knowing that was hardest, but now the waiting is worse, and if you fail
you'll go madder than you've ever been.
What you manage to stammer is, "I'm a jerk," and you know as soon as you say it
that he's going to object and you say, "Wait – Don't tell me I'm not. I have
something to say, I -" and you reach out to his mind and open your side of the
conduit to take the edge off his pain for a while, to carry this for him, it's
the least you can do, and he shudders and growls, frustrated teary fighting
with himself, claws prickling through your shirt into the skin between your
shoulderblades.
And Astris opens his mind in cracks and increments, so that you catch the edges
of pooled tears and bitten-back words of gratitude even though all he says is a
lisp-thick muttered "Yes, all right –" And you siphon off and lock away what
you can, horribly conscious of how much worse it's gotten, of how it's happened
so slowly you've been able to let yourself ignore – you concentrate, and keep
talking.
"I'm an asshole sometimes, it's just the way I am, I'm going to fuck up and
tear into you for stupid reasons and be sorry for it later every time but
that's not enough and it doesn't make it better – and still, you're allowed to
trust me, just please recognize that, that I'm going to try to be better for
you and sometimes fail – but I – I will see this through to the end, I swear I
won't let you always be -" like this,, but your voice breaks – "and you're
allowed to choose, but I can't see how I'm ever, ever worth what you're going
through -" But you are, you think, as your voice gives out again, and you don't
hide the thought; knowing he'll hear it as pity and love and your very real
respect and mistake it for nothing more.
"I'm not willing to go – however long I have left – without you, even if it's a
night, even if it's an hour. Even if this –" And he shrugs his shoulders in
your hold, meaning the pain, the fight, everything – "Is how it's always going
to be. Even... if that means a tyrian keeping you alive." And he pulls back
enough to look into your eyes, teary but deliberate – "I want you to have – any
measure of pity or comfort you can find in me – I'm going to fight to the last
moment to hold myself together for you, even if – but just – remember how
selfish I am, if that helps you, you've called me worse but that's the root of
it, that my love for you is a needy selfish powerless thing underneath it all,
remember what I would be without you and stay with me –"
And without breaking his gaze he opens up just the fleeting outlines of an
image, diagrams and calculations and the rush of energy he casts into the
cosmos, the ship's echo-mapping pulses and the power he lets off into
nothingness when the fuel cells are full and still there is too much – and
encoded into it all, wavelengths and frequencies altered and modulated from his
familiar psionic signature, the known buzz against your skin. Just barely
shifted, invisible to anyone just looking at the light – he's reproduced the
tone of your power and twined it in with his, and the combined waveform hurtles
out in omnidirectional shells, has been for a sweep or more, spreads reaching
toward the edges of the universe, like a message, like the image of your held
hands – and in your sight he's crying, and in your mind he's saying my love for
you is selfish but it isn't small,and – and not everything is finite, not
everything is limited, not everything has to end –
And for a moment you see, vivid in your mind's eye – not second sight, not
prophecy, just imagination and projection – learning to read these signals and
their echoes, bouncing back and forth gradually fading, even if – even after –
you still can't name his death; still call it probable outcome in your head
firmly and clearly and no matter what you call it you never try to think of
yourself continuing afterward, never try to acknowledge the possibility –
Freeing him is worth destroying yourself; that part is easy certainty – and you
know intellectually and accept as fact that your friends and quadrantmates will
try to pull together what's left of you, if they can, because they need you,
and you know you'll let them. You see that projected future impassively, from
the outside, you see them in it but you've never – never read yourself into it
before, not your will and your personality somehow, even though you outlived
him and your whole world once in the timeline that never happened, it's
different now, you're tangled up in this so deeply you've overdrawn the account
of your own will to go on, and resigned yourself to numbly facing the
collection of that debt. Or had.
And now you're thinking of yourself learning to listen to the fading echoes of
the story of the two of you together, seeded throughout space, like files
fragmented across servers, abandoned – of going on because no one else could
ever hear or recognize that – and you break down, you can't help it, your eyes
blur over and you sag against his shoulder, tears streaming down your cheeks,
because you can see it, it's not prophecy but it's – realism, it's something
you could be or do, and it was so much simpler when you could just refuse to
look further down that track, and you know it's a gift he's giving you but the
spectre of feeling in the place of numbness hits you so hard you're gasping
between silent sobs and can't speak -
You know Astris watches as your mind builds that possibility; his anguish curls
in and around and tugs at your grieving imagined shadow-self and his voice goes
membrane-thin, my light, dear one, trying to bear you up but reeling, floating-
dragging you both to collapse onto the couch. Lifts your head and kisses tears
from your cheeks and chin and lips soft-frantic as he paints them with his own,
and his mind tells you that he can't apologize for this, that this is too
immense for apology, the measure of the gift, even if –
And he's crying in pity, he's crying for you, but also – you've waded through
the miasma of his continual terror, and in his clinging, in his endearments
degenerating into weak animal calling-out – you peer into the gnarled center of
his opposing daymare, the lump of swallowed ice, of you conscripted fast-
withering in wires and him left, silent bereaved needle-drip encaged eternity –
what used to be near-certainty for him, before – and his hand drags wet and
salt and mucus through your hair when he tries shakily to stroke and commingled
tears blotch a stain down the front of your shirt –
It's easier when there's something outside of yourself, when you're moved to
comfort, easier to be silent inside yourself for long enough to ease the
hiccups out of your breathing and get your voice back when Astris needs you to
speak, and you do, quiet thin measured words, as you reach up and stroke his
horns with firm thumbs – "Never, I'll never let them, even if everything else
goes to shit, even in the worst, most unpredictable failure – I have
killswitches, you know. More than one. I was careful. I'm sure of my work. If
you have to know I'll explain, but I don't want to load you down with more
things you'll need to forget –"
Astris shakes his head and inhales long and damp, still clutching at you like
you'll dissolve. "No, I – I think I've proved how I handle knowledge I can't
keep." Puffy-eyed blinking, his face mask-swollen and mottled yellow-gray – "I
can't even – I just want to be able to forget about... her. Your moirail." He
forms the word like a mouthful of thorns, but deliberately chosen, perhaps not
understanding but recognition at least. "I'll still – remember that I resolved
to trust even if you provoke – but you didn't, I was out of my mind, I am out
of my mind, I'm sorry –" Every movement he makes to comfort still goes to
clinging, his hands getting stuck clutching fistfuls of shirt and hair;
enervated quivering at the touches to his horns.
"It doesn't matter who made the hole, I dug it deeper, – we don't need to sit
here self-recriminating," you tell him quietly, leaning against each other;
you're almost calm, no, not calm but a simulacrum of it, your emotions wrung
and rolled out flat. "But – I don't want a free pass. Forget about her, yes.
Remember – remember that you criticized me when you should have trusted, but
also that I reacted badly out of proportion, that I said cruel things, we do
when we're afraid but that doesn't make it all right – remember that I'm sorry,
but remember that I'm sorry for something, please -" You're not even sure what
you're asking him for, or why, only that you need to be imperfect in his eyes:
enough, at least, that you won't devastate him by stumbling.
He wrestles enough control into his limbs to swipe his thumb under your eyes,
one then the other, brushing tears – claws angled back but still trembling
tapered-dangerous close to the surface – lets the gesture speak for itself for
a while, wobbly-smiling, risk and trust, psionics skating, sensing over your
skin as if he could encode what you need him to know of you from curve and
angle, or fears losing some essential of your image in locking away your
secrets.
Finally he says the words he's been holding behind his tongue – "If you think I
would ever forget anything about you, unless my knowing would destroy you –"
And responding to the unspoken, "...but I don't think you're perfect. I love
selfishly, not blindly."
Chapter End Notes
     Right, so, this chapter gave us trouble, and we spent a long time
     trying to iron it out, and not lose hold of our readers' belaying
     line, but still keep the immediate awfulness of what relationship
     arguments can feel like, especially when one or more people in them
     are having problems with thought distortions. We hope that we've
     succeeded in this.
     The Captors are in a very bad place here. Astris is dealing with
     being horribly isolated, abused, and in pain; Sollux is strained past
     the limits of his pretty amazing capacity for responsibility, on
     several fronts; and Alternia, planet of unfair, doesn't have anything
     resembling mental health care, beyond the existence of pale
     quadrants. They are both messed-up brilliant babies who care for each
     other a lot, toughing things out that people shouldn't have to tough
     out; and it shows.
     Earth does have mental health care and therapy, even though it's
     inconsistently available, and if things ever feel remotely this
     desperate to you in any relationship in your real life, for any
     reason inside or outside the relationship, we highly recommend
     seeking counseling, with or without your partner. (Amberite says: it
     saved my marriage! Twice!)
     Non-relationship situations, likewise. Relationships, brains and
     lives can all have dysfunctions. Having someone to talk to, to help
     you build a toolkit to overcome these dysfunctions, is invaluable;
     and many areas have low-cost services available.
     These poor alien assholes are just going to have to muddle through.
***** quivering wings beneath my breastbone *****
Chapter Summary
     twinArmageddons [TA] opened memo on board thii2 one'2 a2 fuckiing
     2ecure a2 iit'2 goiing two get or ii'll eat my 2hort2 with urgency
     level EXTREME and title "new plan: we're doiing thii2 now."
     carcinoGeneticist [CG] responded to memo.
     CG: IN THE MIDDLE OF THE DAY? WHAT IS THIS, DID SOMETHING HAPPEN WITH
     YOUR SPOOKY UNDEAD HELMSMAN MATESPRIT?
     TA: ye2.
Chapter Notes
     It wouldn't be Homestuck without abrupt weird timeskips, would it?
See the end of the chapter for more notes
==> Things: Never stop from keep happening constantly.
Everything happens so much. Perigees pass and it just keeps happening.
Consider: twelve trolls finally working in concert, squabbling and quadranting
each other and doing it right this time. Preparations on Alternia, changes made
slowly and carefully, not a single one suspicious in and of itself. Trolls
changing residences, one by one. A city built into a new capital, one block at
a time, as wrigglers bring their build grist to join the effort.
Consider the Heiress, readying herself to fight and win. Oh, she will cheat -
but her opponent has been cheating for millenia. It is only fair, all things
considered.
("I hope it won't fuck up the feeling of triumph any."
"If I find I'm eeling deflated from watching my friends kelp defeat Her
Condescension - which I can't imagfin I would unless you get yourselves krilled
- I'll just have to make it up sometime in the next few hundred sweeps, won't
I? If I lose, I lose more than my ego. And if I win, I win much more than a
moment on a podium - for all of us. For Karkat's line, for my own, for every
troll like you or Aradia, for every world getting mined for resources and half
abandoned.")
Consider: a brilliant boy with a mutant thinkpan, at his full height now,
counting down to a startlingly ambitious moment.
Consider star charts written on his wall, diagrams sketched, calculations
rehearsed feverishly.
He barely sleeps anymore.
~~~
Consider: the Helmsman, and what could break.
Understand now that something has broken, although you have not seen how it
happened, yet.
~~~
Datta: what have we given?
My friend, blood shaking my heart
The awful daring of a moment’s surrender
Which an age of prudence can never retract
By this, and this only, we have existed
          --T.S. Eliot
~~~
==> Future Sollux: assemble your forces.
.
twinArmageddons [TA] opened memo on board thii2 one'2 a2 fuckiing 2ecure a2
iit'2 goiing two get or ii'll eat my 2hort2 with urgency level EXTREME and
title "new plan: we're doiing thii2 now."
grimAuxiliatrix [GA] responded to memo.
GA: What Like Right Now In The Middle Of The Afternoon
GA: Who Is Even Awake Other Than Me And Trolls Who Drink Too Many Energy Drinks
arsenicCatnip [AC] responded to memo.
AC: :33 < *pounces entire memo* I am!
GA: Im Pretty Sure Your Favorite Leaf Water Counts As An Energy Drink
TA: ii've al2o 2et 2ome alarm2 on everyone'2 per2onal electroniic deviice2.
TA: iit wa2n't the way ii planned eiither, but ciircum2tance2 have forced my
hand.
carcinoGeneticist [CG] responded to memo.
CG: IN THE MIDDLE OF THE DAY? WHAT IS THIS, DID SOMETHING HAPPEN WITH YOUR
SPOOKY UNDEAD HELMSMAN MATESPRIT?
TA: ye2.
TA: but al2o you knew we diidn't have that much more tiime before eiither one
of our dii2appeared loo2e end2 re2urfaced, or 2omeone notiiced the new palace
2priingiing up around a previiou2ly miinor 2paceport.
TA: whiich ii2 why we had already moved two fiinal alert pha2e a couple of
periigee2 ago, even though we were expectiing two be able two u2e a better
galactiic aliignment.
TA: 2o get wiith the program, 2lacker2.
CG: YOU KNOW I HAVE SOPOR DRIPPING DOWN THE CREVASSE BETWEEN MY ASS CHEEKS,
RIGHT?
adiosToreador [AT] responded to memo.
AT: wELL, nOW WE ALL kNOW THAT, }:/
GA: It Did Not Sound Like There Was Time To Waste On Public Displays Of
Kismesic Affection
caligulasAquarium [CA] responded to memo.
CA: hey at least someone in this memo is sharin some knowwledge
CA: since ivve been tasked wwith makin sure our flarp teams get in line id like
a head count
CA: of course im constrained by the format and ill havve to say evverything in
stupid secret agent talk right
TA: actually, you won't.
TA: ii 2et up thii2 memo without tiime2tream 2ynchroniizatiion for a rea2on.
arachnidsGrip [AG] responded to memo.
AG: What, so our future selves won't show up and 8e smug at us????????
gallowsCalibrator [GC] responded to memo.
GC: NO, DUMB4SS, B3C4US3 TH3 T1M3 SH3N4N1G4NS F34TUR3 1SN'T S3CUR3!
AC: :33 < *ac is purrplexed* pawllux, didnt mew say that mew would have to
rewrite the entire feature to make it secure?
TA: ii kiinda diid, we ju2t had two 2acriifiice the temporal 2hiit.
AT: tHEN i CAN REVEAL, tHAT GAMZEE IS WITH ME, aND FELT CALLED TO GO JUGGLE
TORCHES, tO PSYCH HIMSELF UP FOR BEING A BADASS,
AT: aT LEAST I PRESUME, tHAT IS THE DESIRED EFFECT, i DON'T UNDERSTAND HIS
RELIGION ALL THAT WELL,
AT: bUT HE SAYS, hE IS, "uP AND GETTING MY MIRTHFUL MADNESS ON," fOR THE,
"mOTHERFUCKIN EPIC THROWDOWN OF A LIFETIME,"
centaursTesticle [CT] responded to memo.
CT: D --> What, in your new hivestem
AT: iT DOES, hAVE SOME GENERAL USE RECREATION AREAS,
CG: WHERE'S FEFERI? SHE'S THE MOST IMPORTANT PART OF THIS SHIT.
TA: that'2 exactly where 2he ii2.
TA: ii 2ent her a me22age before 2tartiing the memo, a2kiing her two
iiniitiiate 2ome ta2k2.
CT: D --> I have STRONG reservations about the early launch of this stratagem
CT: D --> While my surgical team seems ready enough, you said there were
temporospatial reasons we were waiting to harness this e%ploit
TA: ii have 2ome re2ervatiion2 about iit two, but iit really can't waiit any
longer for a multiitude of rea2on2.
It really can't. You'd hardened yourself and factored Astris in as a liability
every way you knew how; you'd brought in as many perspectives from outside
yourself as you could without completely cratering information security; but
this isn't a maddeningly sterile collection of elisions and euphemisms locked
behind encryption anymore. This is the spectre in Astris' eyes that burned into
you, hours ago, as you dragged yourself awake and away from him, now branded
forever into your brain – for the sake of all your audacious plans, for his
sake, it's time.
(No matter what it does to me. Your own voice echoes through the mounting haze
of red behind your eyes, the gathering charged-restless twitch in your hands,
as you do to yourself what you and Astris learned and tested together, charge
into this sleepless, overclocked high open-eyed and deliberate until you're
beyond the reach of any power that might touch your mind –)
Your lip still tastes of blood and you keep poking at it with your tongue.
 TA: ed run the program ii 2ent you, np and kk 2end me22age2 two your weiird
acolyte2 ii mean iintelliigence and deployment expert2.
TA: ii've got provii2iional head count number2 from the 2paceport but 2omeone
need2 two veriify them on the ground.
CG: CAN I AT LEAST WASH OFF THE SOPOR FIRST?
TA: no one care2 about your a22 crack kk.
TA: be an adult make your own decii2iion2.
TA: for all ii care take 2elfiie2 of the damage and 2end them two the
reclu2iive protector2 of your bloodliine for theiir 2acred 2pank bank.
CG: I'M GOING TO REMEMBER YOU SAYING THAT AT SOME CRITICAL JUNCTURE IN THE
FORTHCOMING SHITSHOW AND REGURGITATE MY CIRCULAR GRUBPASTRIES ALL OVER SOME
POOR IMPERIAL PEON.
TA: good, we need all the iintiimiidatiion techniique2 we can briing two the
table.
GC: 4S MR 4PPL3B3RRY'S 4SH3N COUNS3L, BOTH OF YOU QU1T 1T!
GC: WH3TH3R OR NOT W3 4LL SURV1V3 TH1S 1 4M P3RSON4LLY B1T1NG BOTH OF YOU!
GC: SOLLUX, DR4G YOUR MUT4NT BR41N B4CK ON TOP1C
GC: K4RK4T, DON'T K33P 3NCOUR4G1NG H1M!
TA: tz ii'm fiine.
cuttlefishCuller [CC] responded to memo.
CC: )(e isn't fin, but t)(at's w)(y I'm wearing t)(is )(eadset!
CC: Teem carptains can sc)(ool be)(ind me until I'm ensconc)(ed in t)(e arena.
CC: T)(at includes you, Sole-lux! You )(ave your work two do, and it's
irreplaiceable. Now t)(at I'm )(ere, you needn't go swimming around after all
of us. I'll be t)(e bass. 38D
CG: THREE OF MY SPACEPORT CONTACTS CONFIRM THEY'RE ON SHIFT, WAITING TO HEAR
FROM TWO MORE. CESS TERMINAL IS CLEAR, BEDT PARTIALLY INFILTRATED.
CG: AYEM MAY REQUIRE SOME SITUATION MANAGEMENT, BY WHICH I MEAN OUR GUYS MAY
NEED TO AGGRESS THE BIOLOGICAL WASTE OUT OF SOME OTHER GUYS.
AG: You know I could just t8ke on the whole 8unch, right????????
AG: Like, this isn't rocket surgery, it's coordin8ing large groups of trolls!
And I happen to 8e in possession of the easiest way to coordin8 them, which is
my 8rain!!!!!!!!
GA: Need I Remind You Once Again That We Are Trying To Establish New "Social
Morays" At This Time
AG: Naw, I'm just compl8ining, I know I'm supposed to lie in w8 ::::)
AG: I even know there's a str8egic purpose to it! I'm just frustr8ed!
CA: anywway wwe might not evven need ayem terminal if wwe handle this right wwe
just gotta divvert the trolls there from joinin us
CA: much as i like a good clusterfuck of vviolence wwe gotta savve our limited
numbers for the big evvent
CA: by wwhich i mean there are still fivve thousand trolls on the b*ttleship
c*ndescension an they arent goin dowwn quietly
AG: Did someone say 8attleship Condescension?
AG: Sollux didn't deprive us of our future selves' snide o8serv8ions so you
could go on talking a8out the flagship like it's Troll Lord Voldemort!
CA: wwhos the strategist here because last i checked its me and if i wwanna
givve things an extra layer of protection thats my business
CT: D --> Some superstitions have a solid basis in fact.
CT: D --> Even if that basis has long ago been e%punged from the record by
interested parties.
apocalypseArisen [AA] responded to memo.
AA: this is n0t the first time the ship has been st0rmed by a seri0us c0ntender
AA: the previ0us incident was the event which 0ccasi0ned the ban 0f adults fr0m
alternia
AA: but the summ0ner lacked the special intelligence which we p0ssess
AG: Heh, Tavros, you told me your ancestor was sm8rt!!!!!!!!
GA: You Dumbass She Means Military Intelligence
AG: It was a joke.
AT: aLSO, mAYBE LET'S LISTEN, wHEN ARADIA SPEAKS UP IT'S USUALLY IMPORTANT,
And now you're getting a blurry flash of memory that isn't yours, that tickles
in the back of your mind - a coordinated chaos of trolls and lusii, and the
beat of huge orange-limned wings and the flash of a lance that seems to be
everywhere at once, a stampede that melts the ship's outer defenses as if
they're made of sopor –
 
 AA: they say y0u already have access t0 m0re inf0rmati0n than any subsequent
rebelli0n in the f0rm 0f a certain diary
AA: but the gh0sts keep mem0ry that even y0ur s0urce may be pr0hibited fr0m
transmitting
AA: the summ0ner and the marquise rallied the pe0ple, claimed the planet, and
calmed the speaker 0f the vast glub
AA: the beasts he c0mmanded swarmed the earth, teemed in the seas, bl0tted 0ut
the m00ns like the depths 0f the c0ld dark seas0n
AA: but the ship itself swall0wed them wh0le al0ng with all its 0wn crew
A hundred-camera-eye view of light so precise that it plucks out particles of
atmosphere everywhere in your manifold vision at once and pushes them aside
like a glimmering curtain, expanding, blossoming outward, and weapons fall to
the catwalks and causeways of the ship and trolls choke and bleed and freeze
into contorted death-masks in the dark of vacuum, and somewhere a cackle of
that horrible laughter that booms and breaks and bubbles with incipient madness
–
 AA: and the summ0ner turned his lance 0n his matesprit t0 keep her p0wers fr0m
falling int0 the hands 0f the enemy
AG: ...Wait, she…
AG: It w8sn't a 8etr8yal
AG: ????????
AG: They didn't end 8s enemies????????
GA: Were You Planning On Betraying Anyone
AG: No!!!!!!!!
AG: I just… alw8ys thought she st8yed 8ad.
AG: Why didn't you tell me sooner, Ar8dia? You know wh8, never mind, it's not
like I've given you any reason to have my 8ack.
AA: 0h
AA: did y0u wish additi0nal visitati0ns fr0m the ancient dead?
AG: Uhhhhhhhh
TA: 2he'2 been de2cendiing iintwo hii2tory gradually, ii don't thiink 2he knew
iit before now.
GC: TH1NGS 4R3 G3TT1NG 33R1LY C1V1L 1N H3R3
GC: SHOULD 1 B3 WORR13D?
You're still getting flashes of things that aren't there, millions of drones
wherever the gaze of your external sensors reaches (and a sense that there have
never been so many before, that no one outside the brooding caverns knows where
they sprung up from –) building thousands of ships – sweeps of this, and then
roaring and rising in star-shaking unison and on every manifold screen in your
network sneering fuchsia lips promise triumph and distant worlds around
gleaming fangs – and far below your repaired hull the scarred ground of
Alternia still dotted with drones, now building hives for the young – and it's
all enough to preoccupy you at a level of yourself that thinks on too large a
scale for digging at Vriska to matter.
 TA: nah tz, all my fuck2 are ju2t genuiinely otherwii2e occupiied.
AA: i 0nly relate st0ries t0ld t0 me
AA: and even the st0ries themselves are n0t stable the way y0u might think 0f
hist0ry
AA: the hard anch0r p0ints in the f0g 0f what is p0ssible have changed
AA: and wh0 the st0ry is ab0ut matters
GC: H3Y 1M TH3 S33R H3R3
AA: i think y0u kn0w wh0 i mean
TA: can you clariify?
AA: n0
AT: wELL, aNYWAY, i HAVE TO SAY, i AM A BIT RELIEVED,
AT: sPEAKING, aS THE DESCENDENT OF THE AFORESAID, hISTORICAL FIGURE,
AG: Ugh!!!!!!!! Stop 8eing so soft!!!!!!!!
AG: I'd 8etter not 8e stuck with a kismesis who wouldn't kill me if the
occ8sion called for it!!!!!!!!
AT: sOMETIMES, tHE FACT THAT YOU ONLY POSSESS, sECONDARY KNOWLEDGE, oF THE
ALTERNATE REALITY WE LIVED THROUGH, iS VERY AWKWARD, ]:|
AG: And sometimes the fact that you talk in circles a8out it is downright
infuri8ing!!!!!!!!
AT: aNYWAY, cALM DOWN, vRISKA, i STILL H8 YOU,
AT: aND WISH TO CONTINUE, dOING SO FOR MANY SWEEPS UNINTERRUPTED, <3<
AC: :33 < as much fun as it is to s33 mew being furrocious at each other, is
there anything else I n33d to know befur I clawntact my crack team and proc33d
to the spacepurrt?
CC: Tavros, run final c)(ecks on t)(e direct link system, please.
AT: tHERE, dID THAT WORK, oN YOUR END,
CC: Quite w)(ale, t)(ank you! )(as Gamzee returned from )(is preparations?
AT: nOT YET, bUT, tHERE IS A LOUD CHORUS OF, hONKING NOISES, oCCURRING IN THE
COURTYARD,
AT: aND ACTUALLY, kIND OF SHAKING THE HIVESTEM,
AT: i THINK HE IS BRINGING, sOME FRIENDS, wITH US, tO THE RENDEZVOUS,
CC: Good! I was )(oping )(e could muster t)(eir splinter sect in time.
AA: they say 0ne is never truly ready f0r the miracul0us
AA: but 0ne is 0bligated t0 prepare n0netheless
AC: :33 < mr ampurra are mew sure the furcenaries are going to show up?
AC: :33 < befur they arrive we can take the spacepurrt but we wont be able to
hold it by ourselves once the empurress arrives.
AC: :33 < I mean if they dont care who is in charge of the empurr whats
stopping them from just being cluckbeasts?
CA: mostly they care about money because they come from sectors of the galaxy
wwhere imperial control is stretched pretty fuckin thin
CA: they also care about bein in the good graces of wwhoevvers gonna wwin for
obvvious reasons
CA: so wwe leaked the scheduled routes so they knoww shes not supposed to pay a
vvisit to alternia right noww
CA: ergo wwhen she showws up its proof wwere actual wwizards
CA: theyre wwaitin on nearby planets wwith sol wwatchin ovver their
communications and bein paid only wwhen they arrivve at all three terminals and
provvide backup
CA: personally i havve no idea howw hes doin all this at once but i guess bein
mental givves you a competitivve edge
You actually managed to delegate that to an inner-circle hacker from the
Signless cult, but you don't mind taking the credit.
 GC: M34NWH1L3 H3R3 1 4M W1TH 4 BLOCK OF TYR14N LUSUS 1NK SUSP3ND3D 1N S34 1C3
TH4W1NG 4LL OV3R MY 4W3SOM3 PL4NN1NG D1AGR4MS
GC: 1T SM3LLS L1K3
GC: YOU KNOW WH4T 1 DON'T W4NT TO D3SCR1B3 1T FOR ONC3
GC: 1S MY T34M GO TO ST4RT 4NO1NT1NG TH3 4R3N4?
CT: D--> Lest we become mired in f001ish squabbling and minor logisti%, someone
ought to remark on why we have undertaken this e%tremely historic
responsibility
CT: D--> Duty, honor, the opportunity to test our STRENGTH
CG: OH COME ON, YOU KNOW WHY MOST OF US ARE IN THIS.
CG: BECAUSE SHIT IS FUCKED AND THE MINISCULE POSSIBILITY OF MAKING THIS WORK IS
WORTH THE NEAR CERTAINTY OF THE KIND OF DEATH BY STUPID ADVENTURE THAT KEPT
EARNING US SHINY NEW SECOND CHANCES IN OUR DREAM BODIES IN THE GAME THAT NEVER
HAPPENED.
CG: EXCEPT THAT THIS TIME WE DON'T GET ANY DO OVERS IF WE'RE FORKED OR SHOT OR
VAPORIZED OR OH GOD OH FUCK WE'RE ALL GONNA DIE AREN'T WE
GC: YOU 4R3N'T TH3 S33R 31TH3R
CC: Maybe! 38)
CC: We cod )(ave all died in t)(e game. We cod )(ave died FLARPing.
CC: ...Apollockgies to Aradia. 38C
AA: n0ne are necessary
CC: T)(e drones cod alwaves still krill us, or at least some of us.
CC: Ot)(ers would )(ake it as far as Ascension, and die invading planets t)(e
Empire doesn't even N--E--ED! Alt)(oug)( at t)(is point, sooner or later t)
(ey'd notice somefin susfis)(ious aboat w)(at we've done wit)( t)(ese build
credits, so most would probubbly get culled before t)(at.
GA: I Think Sollux Is Rubbing Off On Her
CA: really kan wwhy wwould you say that
GA: Oh No Reason In Particular
CG: I HATE TO ADMIT IT BUT WE'RE ON HIS FAVORITE SUBJECT MATTER BECAUSE IT'S
LEGITIMATELY THE RIGHT THING TO FREAK OUT ABOUT RIGHT NOW.
CG: NOT THAT I'M FREAKING OUT OR ANYTHING.
CC: Anywaves!
CC: T)(e point is, we may die or we may live, we may triump)( or we may peris)
(, but t)(ere's one fin t)(at's s)(ore, and t)(at's T)(IS.
CC: Our lives and deat)(s will never be meaningless!
CC: T)(e game was supposed to give us a new universe. W)(at it gave us instead
was our own, and a c)(ance to make it betta. We still )(ave t)(at c)(ance.
CC: And it's a greater c)(ance t)(an any trolls )(ave )(ad in centuries, and I
codn't ask for a betta grouper to kelp me wit)( t)(is.
CC: We stand to c)(ange everyfin aboat Alternia. Not just for ours)(ellves, but
for our entire species.
CC: No matter w)(at )(appens next, we won't die giving up.
terminallyCapricious [TC]responded to memo.
TC: my best bros what is motherfuckin banging
TC: IT'S TIME TO RUMBLE. :o)
The din in your head is building, though your cognition is clear, floating far
above it. There are voices you think would recognize if you heard them now, and
others you wouldn't; and one that you are very sure you would.
And you hold on to what you know: the voice you still don't hear amidst the
onrush of deaths approaching.
Chapter End Notes
     The hyperlink which appears in this memo is meta-narrative, and not
     actually visible to Sollux.
     The next chapter (which happens chronologically before this one)
     should be up within a matter of days.
***** set my body free *****
Chapter Summary
     You kiss him hard and bloody, the base torn-clawed underside of
     feeling everything for him - you care for him until it burns you out
     whole, the image of him wasting himself for this, for you, sears at
     you, and oh, there’s pitch in this -
     And even molten as you are what he's asking slices straight through
     you, kicks your feet out from under you. You have made this choice
     already. You have sworn this vow, chosen him over and over, made this
     commitment and you cannot untrust.
     And he is right. Even without your trust, this is in his hands,
     possibly hands beyond his. To believe that you can change this -
     You remembered, once, not being confined.
Chapter Notes
     Contents include: smut, agony, quadrant vacillation, brinksmanship,
     audacity, the Helmsman's massive monolithic deathwish...
     We first wrote this, out of order, in 2013, before we had even
     finalized a name for Astris; and the characters did things we didn't
     expect; and so much of the narrative before, and after, came to hinge
     on it.
     We've been punching ourselves in the heart with this chapter
     regularly ever since, and now, so can you!
See the end of the chapter for more notes
==> Present Sollux: try.
This is getting harder for him, not just sex,everything, and you know it's your
fault.
When you started to feed him your own sensory impressions - almost three sweeps
ago now, amazed and thunderstruck and lit up all over with pity - you didn't
know it would, didn't know it could do this, that the ability to feel would
somehow carry through the bond between you and affect him tangibly. Oh, he
could do tangible things to you, even to your hive, because of the way the
space was anchored, because it was mostly his power building it, more than
yours -
It's a cruel irony that the same power running through him would have
consequences for his nervous system, would wake up nerve endings in him that
had long since dulled out and gone dead, would paradoxically make it harder for
him to be here without also dragging his awareness to his suffering body there.
And he tries not to show you but you see it when you touch him now - even with
his dream-spun body sprawled over cushions on the workbench to minimize the
strain, even with most of the pain locked away in your head, so that you only
feel the diffuse pressure of it, making your limbs heavy as if moving through
sopor, making the backs of your eyes burst with tiny lights that are not red
and blue.
You see it in the way he flinches when you curl your hand around his hipbone -
a sweep ago he would have rumbled softly in his throat and arched into your
touch and now he grimaces and holds still but you know that if you ask he'll
say keep going - in the way his teeth clamp around the hiss of breath when you
press a kiss to his shoulder blade, the way he tries to press back into you and
tries to shy away at the same time and just lands suspended and trembling,
claws embedded in the surface of your workbench. A sweep ago there would have
been yellow beading down his thighs by now but the tips of your bulge brush dry
skin and he’s breathing in long gulping draughts of air trying to relax, his
body so caught up in its own tumult that it responds to your touch as just
another jab of regrown nerves.
It was already getting worse for him then, last sweep, but you were getting
stronger faster than that - and he waited so long to tell you, because he knew
you would want to protect him -
Even the gentle stroke of your hand down his side hurts him because the more he
feels the more it amplifies everything but you breathe in, take on the burn of
that too, and for a moment you can barely keep hold of it and you feel bruised,
all over, underneath your skin. But it eases for him, you feel that in the way
he shifts back against you, and this is working again. And if you’re getting
little flashes of it still - it’s almost too much to push down and in and stoke
the arousal that twists in your gut, almost but not quite, and you’re holding
him up again, even as your head feels light and your vision tunnels, you pull
it in and you adjust and steady yourself against the table and say his name,
soothing, steadying.
He makes a high whining outlet noise when you adjust, still pain-saturated but
at least there’s voice to it, down from overwhelmed enough that the little
keening sound helps, that hearing his name pulls him in toward you, an
automatic movement but still one that rubs the darkening outer folds of his
nook closer against your curling bulges and he breaks the keening to sigh at
the contact, arch his back even though it forces his hips harder against the
table. “I -” He’s hardly managing to speak, but - “I need this,” fast and quiet
and lisping heavily, as much reminding himself as pleading with you, “Almost -”
Trembling, sweating, you wrap both hands around his hips now guiding and feel
him growing slicker against your bulge, surface against surface, your own body
answering you slow and distant, so that you have to think about it deliberately
to push forward and give him what he’s asking for, the lower bulge slowly and
carefully extending into him, halfway now and you sway a little on your legs,
dizzy with sensation and strain, pulse pounding in your ears.
You know it hurts, even just this, after all this time his most hidden tells
are obvious now, the muscles knotting up in his neck when he forces his
shoulders to unhunch, it isn't going to not hurt in the state he's in, but at
the same time he almost sobs in relief, the part of this that is pleasure
rippling through him until his stomach muscles shudder against the cushions;
the part that is pain distracting him from the rest of it enough to let his
voice through, words more formed but still shaky and slurred, “Keep going -
want you -”
- all the way inside now, feeling the tip curl and the way he squeezes around
you, your other tendril twining aimless and needy in the space between your
bodies, and you press your hips near-flat against his buttocks and interlace
your fingers with his and it's too much, too dizzying, your feet wobble and you
catch yourself with your other hand -
He lets out a sharp coughing noise that you just know was going to be the
beginning of a scream and the whole sweep of his back sheens over with sweat,
the walls of his nook forcing down on your bulge and his claws screeching
divots into black paint, and you realize in a pain-streaked moment as gouts of
what he is feeling crash into you that your hand on his spine covers the lowest
jack point -
You’re frantically pulling it all in, you can’t even keep locking it down but
it doesn’t matter, you just need to make it better and you don’t stop when
everything blurs, don’t stop when you can no longer feel your body, when
gravity and direction give out and there’s nothing in your senses but your
thinkpan and a sea of pain -
==>Astris: Catch him.
Sollux doesn’t make a sound as he overloads, just slumps onto your back
toneless and sharp all over and crushing-heavy for all his bones and pulled-
concave skin -
You’re so far this side of even being able to scream that catching him is
hardly even a whispered hammered-flat thought, the sites of all your jacks
jarred beyond bearing. You couldn’t feel him without letting in all this with
it, and now just the act of pushing yourself up as he slides to the ground
bends and creaks and burns at you, and each stretch of your joints to follow
him snaps and sears like all your muscles ossified while you lay there, but you
reach him.
You can’t feel his pulse over the booming resonance in all your own nerves, can
hardly see him breathing as your vision blurs over with it - it’s shallow, but
it’s palpable through your own shaking if you lay a hand on his diaphragm, and
any other time you would be struck voiceless until you could stuff this pain
under, yank yourself into the mash of meditation and brute force it’s come to
take, but it’s him and you find it in yourself to reach from mouthing his name
to croaking it, take him up under the shoulders and drag him into your arms.
He’s coming back in fits and starts, almost at once, eyes still shut but the
way his head rolls on his shoulders has a kind of partial volition to it and
his lips loose a single muzzy syllable, just lost and confused -
You hold your breath, suspended pity-struck terror, scrabble at his scalp with
one hand half looking for bruises and half shakily trying to soothe at his
hair, you can't feel yourself breathing but somehow you're still rasping,
“Sollux, Sollux, I’m so sorry, oh god, I’m so sorry -”
- and his eyes blink open with your thumb on his forehead - in the halfway
thrown-together slapdash desensitization you’ve managed, you see it before you
feel it, even as you know his brows are rising under your hand and he vocalizes
again, not yet speaking but now questioning-distressed and then he says your
name, and his face crumples hard into the despairing look you know too well,
the one that says I’ve failed -
"No," you respond to what he hasn’t said, shake your head and it rings and
smacks like there's something loose in there. “No, don’t, I - didn’t control -”
and you press your forehead to his, upside-down as he slumps in your arms,
whisper tiny and wretched, “...I wanted you too much. I - I won’t - I’m sorry.”
He’s already trying to pull himself up, no room for stillness in him, no
patience, scrambling and squirming, because neither of you can ever just sit
still or give up or stop.
Every aching gush of pain you shut off from your mind also thins the slow,
comforting drip of the sensations of being here: blurs the smooth of his hair
between your fingers, dulls his warmth, until even the weight of him against
your chest is nothing, unreal. But you do this for him, breathe deep and will
psionic blocks into the major nerves. Wall yourself off from the bodies, dream
and ship, that are the site and canvass of pain and there will be nothing for
Sollux to access or bear.
He doesn't need to know that you repeat his name like a mantra in your mind as
you do this for him, reminded why, that you are swallowing this suffering back
down like scattered glass so that he will not kneel in it. That some days you
catch yourself chanting your own name, instead, the one he gave you; that it
works, reminds you in moments of great pain of who you are -
- the name he’s saying now, forlorn, oh, Astris, as he turns in your arms,
wrestles loose a lanky arm to balance himself against the ground, so he can
stare you in the eye, still blinking half-groggy but the lines of his face are
tensing into anger and loss and indignation. For a moment you think he’s going
to start ranting out loud, lashing out at himself or at fate or at her cruelty,
but instead all the hot emotion narrows to a point, and he says, tautly quiet,
contained, almost as if to himself - “Well. It’s useful to know what my maximum
tolerance is.”
You reach for him with numb but steady fingers, draw them over his cheekbone
and down to trail away at the jaw, some nonsense instinct to ensure that he is
still solid through your protective layers, still here however dim.
And then he’s reaching for you and you can see in the way he holds himself that
he knows you can’t feel it meaningfully, that his hand is there not to stroke
or soothe but to keep your face turned towards him as he speaks, so you can see
the look in his eyes as he says, rueful, “We can sit here all day playing the
competitive sport of whose fault it was until KK grows jealous of my straying
pitch affections. Which one of us it was with the worse disregard for caution
in the face of desire. Because, god how I want you -”
The words break off because he can’t maintain the calm in his voice, and his
eyes - his eyes - and all the sharp angles of his face turned toward you are
frantic longing edging into despair; he looks at you like he’s trying to
memorize you, like he’s somehow trying to download more of you into his head
than he already has, haunted and naked and fire-bright with grief and wanting -
Even cloaked from this as you are, this one thing can reach you, bright and
engraved-immediate: these fierce strange vibrant places in himself that he
turns on you, his piercing, shimmering gaze - and even knocked back onto your
heels like this you want that, all of it, in a way that aches to be drowned out
and consumed but at the same time longs to build and stoke and reciprocate -
But none of that is for this moment; now you wrap one hand around the back of
his neck, stroke the other dreamlike-careful over brow and temple and lean in
to kiss him slow and soft and hesitant around his lower lip, half-open and
letting him guide this because you know that eerie space of coming back from
being gone, know what its dangers are.
For a moment he sways into your hands, kisses back hard and frantic like he’s
drowning and seeking air, and just barely it finds you through the haze of
barriers, pinprick-sudden and out of focus, caught in a vacuum between the
smooth curve of the front of his fangs almost cold against your tongue and the
cracking forced-in spasm from your own spine, and you must have frozen up, gone
too quiet trying not to let this through because he pushes himself away from
you and is staring again, both desolate and determined, holding you half at
arm’s length and he says, “There must be some way we can do this,” hot with
determination and at the same time like he’s scared there isn’t -
You’re back in this almost before it all has time to reach you, hands still all
over his face with the nagging compulsion that if you don’t keep them there
you’ll numb him out entirely, fuzz over his angles but still you’re speaking
over him, “Yes, yes,” you would do this with him even if you couldn’t feel it
at all, know that time might be tomorrow or in perigees but for now you trust
him to get through to you.
And now the center of his forehead furrows; you know that look, the way it
calms him to be working on a technical problem, because it’s the same in both
of you. “We could try the recuperacoon,” he says. “Buoyancy -” Dream-sopor
doesn’t soothe, any more than stray sparks lead to combustion; chemistry
doesn’t operate here, the simulacra you’ve made are congruent, but not to a
molecule’s size. But the broader laws of physics are replicated.
You haven’t touched sopor in centuries, and just the thought of it cooling and
coating your skin makes your bones ache for the relaxation of it, even knowing
that it won’t sink in. “All right,” you say, distracted for a moment by his
look of problem-solving focus, such a strangely everyday beloved thing against
the specter of dammed-up pain - reach over and press a light trusting kiss to
his jawline before remembering, asking, “Can you get up yet?”
“Yes, yes, I’m fine,” he says, half-reassuring, half-irritable, and he pulls to
his feet, then stops, now standing stooped over you, concerned - “Tell me
honestly whether getting up and moving now will make this more difficult to you
later.”
“No, it’s all... bearable for now,” you manage, actually thinking about it,
envisioning the route from here to the respiteblock and what you’ll have to
numb and how much to get there. You shift a knee up and hiss, consider just
admitting defeat and levitating yourself there but Sollux is already
interjecting -
“In what version of the Alternian language was that an answer to my question?”
- sardonic and prickly and he’s already reaching under your knees with one arm,
getting ready to lift you and you realize this could be worse than the walk,
bracing for an arm around your back, but instead he’s carefully floating you up
on a cloud of psionics, letting his other hand tangle in your hair and horns,
scrupulously careful and standing up now with your dream-body cradled between
his arms -
You almost protest, just for form’s sake, that you were about to do this
yourself, but you know that he’s carrying you because he wants to, and it’s
been a long time since denying him anything was easy. You lean your head into
his hand, rub against it for the faint brush of sensation against your scalp,
but mourn the all-over shifting warmth of his power that you would feel if only
you were a little closer in, a little less removed...
The adjustment is delicate, letting go of some of the choke points you’ve made
around nerves sheathed in your spinal column, the slow-breathing welcoming in
of the wash of energy under your back and knees without opening the floodgates
entirely. You brace for new pain and it’s there, a creeping ache from the
joints inward, but it doesn’t draw your attention enough to matter, and you
know you’ve done this right when you regain that stealthy edge of awareness of
your own skin under his eyes, where your limbs are and the expression on your
own face and what you must look like to him, and you flush at the determined
tenderness in his expression, at the way you can actually feel the give of his
skin under your fingers, now, when you reach to get an arm around his
shoulders, pull yourself in to be held closer.
He’s looking at you with a kind of satisfied joy, watching you unfold back into
yourself from blank, and - you can’t get much further than this without having
to shuffle off some of your pain onto him again. No matter how many times
Sollux has done this for you - no matter how many times you’ve heard out his
grave reassurances and given in, accepting the guilt of it as the price of
something immeasurably wonderful - it gives you pause now because of what just
happened; he’s suddenly fragile in your eyes even as he carries you forward,
and anticipates - “I’ll be more careful this time, I know my limits now,”
speaking with a familiar deep bitter offense against the fact that he has
limits - “Let go, let me help, please.”
"You're going to get me there, and put me down," you tell him, maybe a little
too gruff trying to hold all the implications surrounding this in your mind at
once, for him, for you, reason it out through the pain. You used to pride
yourself on cognition, before, interpretation, parallel processing, but pain
like this, whether held back or let through, tends to draw everything down in
your head to simple and binary, trust him or not, and you do, you do. "And then
you are going to be careful, and yes, I'll let you." His carrying you is a show
of strength as much as anything, that he can do this still, can still afford
the toll in pain to have you, wretched narrowed thing that you are, and you're
twisted all the way through with close-knotted pity, still as sandpaper-
immediate as that first time with the taste of his voice in your mouth, that he
would pay such a price for you, the fragmented wreck in his arms, this stricken
diminished thing you barely recognize as yourself.
The psionic cloud beneath you lets Sollux wrap his arm all the way around your
head, firm, careful, pressing it to him, curling his long fingers into your
hair. In the closeness of his chest and shoulder you can hear and just barely
feel the way his heartbeat flutters, sped with arousal or anxiety or both, the
way his breath shudders near the edge of crying, but all he says is "Sounds
like a plan," voice firm, and quietly strangely grateful.
You're at the doorway to his respiteblock, too narrow for so many gangly limbs
to press through sideways, and he looks at it and keeps holding you up, still
as stone, then he takes a much deeper breath which doesn't shake and half the
wall unmakes itself, from solid to a mesh of red and blue to nothing.
You and he have done this before for small things, but that was part of the
hive, built here sweeps ago in overlay, and the overlay is suddenly removed
leaving raw dream, an amorphous shadow that he carries you through. Then he’s
climbing the side of the recuperacoon and before he lets go of you he holds you
out for a long moment and just looks at you again and then his eyes drop, no
longer meeting yours, and he almost whispers like he’s not sure if he wants you
to hear. “It won’t be much longer, now.”
The words hit you physically, wash through you like a shiver, and you remember
that you have a bloodpusher in this dream body when your chest sears over like
it’s getting smeared onto your ribs from the inside, blinding vertiginous
corporeal reaching into the future he’s offering you, so relieved that he isn’t
quite looking at you because you’ve only ever felt this expression from within
it but still you know that it is exponents worse than the harshest mania you’ve
seen in him -
The ecstatic thread-thin clinging certainty that he has found a way, that he
will help you die, because anything else he could mean by that is unthinkable.
You can’t speak, won’t, because any words from your mouth right now would come
out worship and you don’t - you’re still here enough, sinking out of his hold
and into the cool of the slime, seeing him muted in the dim close light of his
respiteblock, eyes downcast - you won’t conflate him with some personification
of the end of this, won’t collapse reverent at his feet -
You reach trembling out for him and you know you love him because it cuts
through your sick tumbling joy enough to steady you as you stretch toward him
over the edge: the answering pang to what he must feel, the dull thin
sympathetic grief, the need to hold him close and soothe it from him, just for
now, just as long as you can chase the pain back enough to lift your arms and
wrap him in them.
The sopor, real or not, buoys you up and that does help, some, and Sollux lets
himself be pulled in next to you, a close fit in the tall narrow blue half of
the recuperacoon (the first time you saw it, when the two of you built this
simulacrum of his respiteblock, you remember being amused by the cleverness;
now it’s quaint and strange and it’s as if light doesn’t know how to move
through the place where half the wall is gone.) And now the two of you are
pressed skin to skin again in the soft floating place under the surface. His
chest still cycles through those strange, full, heavy breaths but he just hooks
his arms under yours and up around your shoulders, careful, soothing, and
murmurs in your ear, “It’s okay, let me in,” voice balanced on that thin edge
of calm he’s been holding to this whole time.
Knocked off your axis as you are, you almost reconsider - he’s giving you this,
the end, and still he wants - but you remember your intention, remember trust,
hold the feeling in your mind of pain dissolving under his touch and let it
stream in to replace the weird shameful exultation - it’s easier than you
thought it would be, you’ve been without the soft coaxing brush of him inside
your mind and drawing from your nerves since he fainted, and through the haze
of guilt in the perigees of building pain this has come to be something you
long for, as much as hands on skin -
“Now,” you whisper, pulling your bodies flush, hooking one leg around his; and
somehow more contact helps this to work, feeds your ability to believe that he
could lift pain whole from this dream body.
He’s pressing his forehead to yours and breathing hard against your face,
panting as he concentrates, and you can tune in the feeling of his warm breath
as the agony fades, feel the hard shudder of his all-over flinch - normally he
tries not to react, not to show you - and if there’s more than strain in the
harshness of his breathing, if there’s an erotic quality as well, maybe it’s
the learned anticipation of the way you (used to) unfold from yourself, the way
this frees you to respond to him - did - does, just barely, in the lightness of
the sopor with the slick tendrils of his bulge pressing against your thighs.
You open your mouth and almost have to gauge what you’re feeling by the sound
that comes out, spun disoriented as you are from spikes and ebbs of pain and
touch - a breathy cut-off puff of it, the start of his name, a little surprised
wanting noise as the slipping of his bulge over your skin comes into focus, as
bits of backdrop click into place, the sense of warm distant stroking hands
against the places where your nerves are regrowing, far away, a touch that
hushes them into momentary quiet instead of sensitizing: the hallucinatory
artifacts of him taking your pain in.
And you can’t quash an odd gratitude when he flinches under the brunt of your
pain - grateful that he’s carrying it but more that he’s letting you see, this
once, what it feels like, and you reach up a sopor-streaked hand to brush down
the back of his head, staining his hair wet, blinking down tears that you never
felt building, eyes fixed on his face and watching, respect and wonder and
memorizing attention to what he is showing you but also resurgent desire tinged
with new urgency. Your other hand is on his hip, trying to get leverage in the
weightless fluid space, pushing your sheath up against his hips and the
tendrils of his bulge, your own just reemerging, the tips always painful-
sensitive like this but in the frictionless slime it doesn’t matter.
His first bulge slides into you as quick as a drawn-in breath, and he's
pressing kisses to your mouth, to your face, hungrily, as if letting you see
him react took down some layer of guardedness that held him back, stripped away
caution leaving the desperate yearning to pull you in closer, his lips
vibrating with a near-silent purr. You make a wanting noise - it's almost as if
the sopor was working because felt even through the few diaphanous barriers you
have left this isn’t nearly enough, sweet and close but dim. Your bulges
tremble and pulse and drift against the sopor, and you’ve managed the balance
of this with him so many times before but not nearly as loaded-down with your
pain as he is now. So you slip your hand down from his hip first, careful, rub
soft circles along the outer folds of his nook, unsure whether too much
stimulation could tip him out of consciousness again, your bulges aching now
with it, barely held back.
He’s already answering your fingers with high whining whimpers and in the tight
press of your bodies together his other bulge twines around your wrist,
automatic, frantic, seeking more, and you hear him voice your name, just barely
distinct, and “Yes,” his face warm and flushed against yours and thrumming with
his purring -
There’s a futile trembling in all the muscles of your back, trying to push your
hips further together when you’re already pulled flush against each other, as
both twined tips of your bulge slip into him at once, as you let go and curl
and twist up, trust in his affirmation and his body that knows yours, now, to
keep him here; and you’re keening over his purring, aglow with interconnection
and the give and press of his nook around you.
And for a rare unreal moment pain recedes into counterpoint, into a
complementary-colored background that brings his every subtle movement, every
thrumming inhale as he purrs, the whole nameless awful-cherished weight of what
you feel for him, into saturated brilliance, sharp and pure and utterly
unexpected and you shudder all over against him, horn-tips to the soles of your
feet, somehow coil your bulge impossibly deeper, near-blind yourself with
reflected light from his face when your own eyes flare.
He thrashes against you and holds you tighter, every sharp line of him haloed
in wispy brightness, his bulge straining forward like he’s trying to crawl up
into you entirely, the second tendril pushing in pressed tight against the
first. Everything is pressed tight and crowded and interlocked, and the angles
and the hard thrusting and desperate clinging inside seem like they should be
painful in their own right but it's a tiny faint thing under the volume of
sensation - you know intellectually you're still hurting right now, that Sollux
hasn't siphoned off all of it at all, but the relief itself is somehow
momentous enough to drown out what remains, the relief and the knowing that he,
that finally - and the touch and the shivering and the sweetness -
And oh god you almost want to come now just for the patient coaxing unrelenting
touch of him working you back up again, want this to be one of those endless
days like at the beginning, when he would skimp on sleep for far too long and
then crash and stay with you for dream cycle after dream cycle, both of you too
stubborn to be the first to leave, to pull your overtaxed pinprick-sensitive
bodies apart – but you know that you will be too buried in resurgent suffering
for that. So you hold yourself in this, enthralled in that cut-open peeled-
apart immediacy that sometimes used to creep over you at the end of those long
days with him, but now – you can't even look at him without being enveloped in
it, now, and you're open-mouthed reined-in whining, arms pinned under his,
bulge swollen to barely able to move inside him, rippling and twisting slow -
And he's breathing into your ear, "I love you, I love you" as his hips tilt and
his hands stroke your shoulders and he pierces up into you like a promise, like
a light through the core of you, like clarity and language and the memory of
moonlight and that stark-simple trusting core of you can’t help but transmute
all this into a vow, layered over with echoes of won’t be much longer, now, the
slowed shaky drag of his hands, and you will feel this through every cell of
you if he asks you to, thankful beyond bearing, sopor doing nothing now to keep
you from overheating, tongued into burning, whispering the words that always
hurt and catch in your throat, the awful truth you’ve promised him, “I - yours,
only, Sollux, I love you -”
Tangled between the known, the sharp angles and inversions of his body, and the
yawning pull of freedom, saturated through in the radiance of his pity, you let
go, gasps and spasms and the flooding pressed-in inside of him and the long-to-
unbearable clenches of your own body that slowly ease off and you emerge into
hearing yourself moaning his name as he shakes and pulses and his nook grips
you tighter, as his wetness washes out of you into the wetness of the sopor and
his squeezed-shut eyes paint tears along the side of your neck, learned timing
and the sound of his incoherent formless noise and for one blinding stretched-
out moment you’re just here.
Still blank flowed-through content you manage to unlatch your claws from his
sides, smear more sopor into his hair as you run palms and fingers through, lay
your cheek against the crown of his head and just feel for the drip of tears,
just float twined with him and still and will away time, motion, breaths that
measure seconds, and of all the innumerable times you’ve unreasoningly,
desperately wished eternity into this - you stroke arcs and double curves
around his horns and your whole, still softly trembling universe is Sollux,
your pain still barred away inside his mind, and this fragile silence. He still
encircles you, fingers pressed to your shoulder blades half-limp with
exhaustion, purring again, the sound meaning trust and the thirst for
consolation, and he still hasn’t let go, he’s giving you this moment of
perfection, light and afloat -
Eternity is a meaningless thing, but still this time stretches long, heartbeats
and inhales, cools sopor-splattered skin until you’re shivering and he’s hardly
warm even with purring and closeness, and finally you murmur into his hair,
“You’re exhausted.” And when when he answers with half-hoped-for silence,
“You’ve been exhausted, perigees now.”
Sollux looks up at you, calmly. “Yes, that’s true,” he says. The skin around
his eyes has been etched dark and cavernous into his face for so long you
barely notice unless you’re thinking of it, and the calm of his voice, the
sound of the place where knowledge goes to be sealed away, makes you realize
that he must have held back the words he spoke earlier, must have known them -
protected them - for days if not longer -
“Can I...” You barely have any reserves left yourself, but - but you won’t need
them - there’s a void in the air between you shaped like I’m fine, I’ll be
fine, and you shudder from cold and the stark honesty in his voice; kiss his
sopor-matted hair, and you can’t give him sleep, much less certainty, can’t
even offer to listen, sieve for secrets that you could become (and the one
thing you could give him, if you just said the word, called him off -) But you
can - “I have psionic reserves, not much, but let me - let me give you what I
have. Please.”
“No,” he says, sharply, and shakes his head - the motion jerks him away from
your shoulder and then he stands there blinking, bobbing in the recuperacoon,
looking at himself and at you, like he’s said too much with just the vehemence
in his voice --
You stare across the rippling blue sopor at him, this sudden return of fierce
closed-off protectiveness snapping that hovering vacuum of the expected and
unsaid shut between you, a hard swing back from the unmasked flinch as he took
your pain, the flat exposed exhaustion and -
Your mind struggles with this as if drugged, still soft-edged from orgasm,
walled off from distant agony, wrought and colored with the only future you can
bear to look into without going mad, and - and yet - and yet he held this in
front of you and then -
And with your claws against his throat before you think to move, with a growl
building acid-unfamiliar at the base of your sternum, with won’t be much
longer, now, branded and inverted across your sight, you hardly recognize your
own voice, low and torn-off, “Tell me - how many are you willing to sacrifice
so that I can go on suffering?”
He stiffens and flattens out against the wall of the recuperacoon - "Did you
actually think - for ONE - FUCKING - MOMENT," Sollux shouts - so loudly he has
to pause to fill his air sacs, the muscles of his neck corded tight like steel
girders, "that if I had a plan, I wouldn't have TWO of them?"
You forgot everything in a reddish haze when you lunged for him, so when he
loses hold of your pain it catches you off guard, slips from his mind and
crushes full force into you, ageless empty capillary-crushing nerve-snipping
marrow-drenching agony, and you have no reach to call on his name or your own.
Only ancient fight-or-flight clinging to consciousness forces it back and down,
a howlbeast gnawing bone to escape a trap. “Really,” you interrupt, the pain-
slammed slurring in your own voice evident even over the ringing in your ears,
“And you think that helps,” and you could keep talking, saying as little as he
is, the last fragment of your thinkpan that was rational before starting to
buckle under held-back pain -
His voice drops, tight with emotion and hoarse from shouting. "I'm prepared to
accept the likely outcome," Sollux says, grating out every word, even though
the wild, feverish light in his eyes is trying to say something else - "I
promised to free you. No matter what it takes and no matter what that means. I
will hold to that promise. I will hold to it if it kills me." And then he
quotes a military strategist, a book that was famed in your time, that must
have gone down to his with little alteration - "The wise general chooses a
gambit in which the most likely defeat is another kind of victory. Is that
enough? Have I told you enough? Or do I have to break down every rightly-held
secret to satisfy you? Do I have to remind you -"
He breaks off, suddenly, and his face goes blank with the look of holding back
actual secrets but torn in the wind of emotion you catch images, words: a
flicker of a face with irises clearing to bright red, the concept of lives
hanging in the balance both ways -
And when he lays out his own life in front of you, his life that you always
knew was bound up in this... That slashes clean and bright through your rage
and agony, transmutes them, and you're still baring your fangs but hungry, now,
as well as vicious, and against the wall of the recuperacoon you kiss him hard
and bloody, the base torn-clawed underside of feeling everything for him - you
care for him until it burns you out whole, the image of him wasting himself for
this, for you, sears at you, and oh, there’s pitch in this, and you know that
isn’t what he wants from you, but right now you’re so furious that if he wasn’t
the center of your universe you would tear him in two.
When you break from the kiss he’s holding you again, his hands shaking hard
against your back, and in this state you’re still anything but numb, but the
anger bears you up like a current that overpowers the pain and he’s saying
something, right in your face, forked tongue flicking spittle, continuing as if
you never stopped him - “Just promise me, promise me you will trust me.” The
gravity of his voice cuts into you like a knife. “You must, you have to. The
fate of every life on the line depends on it.” Including yours, he doesn’t say;
he doesn’t have to.
Even molten as you are what he's asking slices straight through you, kicks your
feet out from under you. You have made this choice already. You have sworn this
vow, chosen him over and over, made this commitment and you cannot untrust.
And he is right. Even without your trust, this is in his hands, possibly hands
beyond his. To believe that you can change this -
You remembered, once, not being confined.
You fill your lungs but the words don't come. They would be a scream until they
aren't. His arms are still around you. Your thumb is over a sliced place on his
lip, a mark your fangs left, the whole pad of it wet with yellow. "I won't turn
away from you now," is all you finally manage, desolate in drawn-down
exhaustion. Your gaze falls to his mouth and sticks there, the bite-swollen
fullness of it, the little rivulet of blood that follows along your thumb to
your wrist - just fascinated at the give of his lip under your hand, unsure
whether you’re trying to soothe or hurt in the touch or in the way you’re
giving in. Too drained now to bring your teeth back in and widen the tear; too
closed-off still for regret.
Sollux is shaking, now, all-over trembling, undone with adrenaline and
brinksmanship and his own wrung-out enervation, and he leans in, presses the
side of his face to the side of yours, clutching and nuzzling and entirely
blown open except for that wall which holds his secrets back. His voice drops
to a low fervent whisper. “I promised,” he says again, and a note in it sounds
wounded. He takes a deep breath, and there’s a sense of consideration from him,
of careful restraint -
"I will give you your freedom. When I'm being a realist, I'm aware that - it
won’t work out the way I -," Sollux says, and his voice wavers so much just
saying it that he has to let out a breath that shakes almost to sobbing, and he
breathes a few times just to speak again, and then when he speaks it's fast and
harsh and hard-edged, “but. I will do everything in my power to see to it that
you get the chance to tell me to my face to kill you.” He’s drawn back again,
meeting your eyes, his face pale and near-delirious with determination. “And if
you do, conscious and coherent and fully in possession of yourself, I will.” He
breathes out, near-mumbles: “No matter what it does to me.”
Your hand slides from his mouth to curl at the base of his throat, no claws or
pressure but still hyperaware of his airway as he speaks, as everything swirls
conflated together and it tears from you, a pupils-blown unraveled "Yes" that
you recoil from like a needle, but there is no isolating yourself from it, the
only way out is – "I – I used to imagine that there was a condition that could
make me break my promise not to shut you out," you press on, going from shaky-
soft to more coherent as you speak, "If I knew that I was going to die, I would
try to be here with you for a while, before, I would – spend my last hours –
but when it came time, I would close this space to you and be alone. I wanted
you to..." You take a long, even, preparatory draught of breath – "I didn't
want that to be the way you remembered me. But now -"
"...Now -" You're picking up steam, you're sneering, there's hot slow roiling
in your veins again and this comes out almost as a formal challenge, like you'd
offer if you really were black for him, only jumbled and pity-raw and stretched
so much tighter, and the stakes - "I am tired, Sollux, I am ten times my
natural age and half that again, I am beyond repair and I am in love – and yes,
I want you to be the one to end it for me. So do it. Bring me to you. You, the
only troll alive with the hubris to try this and the mind to pull it off, and I
love you for it, unquestioningly, I trust you absolutely – and when I know my
role I promise you that I will fill it, if it takes everything that I have
left, if it takes more."
Your claws are scoring now against your will, clenching into his shoulder and
the base of his throat, and you're hardly aware of what you're saying over the
roar of what you mean, cresting a high of crushing agony and desperate turned-
inward loathing and the black despair of giving into this, oh and that tiny
sweet-bright-complex pinhole unnameable thing – he could - you never let
yourself dream – he could -
His eyes search yours, caught between mad hope and despair, and the almost-
silent gasp says he sees the thing you cannot name.
“I love you,” he says, again and again, like there are no other words left, and
you know he’s going to fade out, wake up soon; and underneath it you hear the
other thing he’s saying over and over, only silently in his mind. I’m sorry.
You condense into your body slow as the spreading of a fever, fall back into
captivity tiny pieces at a time, wring and leech at memory, experience, and
it's never taken this much from you, before, there have never been so many
swathes of your mind to darken, one at a time, lit-up twists and folds in your
brain to snuff and blanket and hide that which must remain unseen. There is
hardly anything left of you untainted by what must be hidden; only a meager
scrap of self that you can allow back into the Battleship Condescension. All
else is secrets, and wonders, and terrifying anger, and love, and you'd be the
gouged-down speck of yourself that returns to the rig for millennia rather than
risk that.
You know slow-dripping anesthetics. You know coordinates. You know
monosyllables.
And in the walled-up expanses of your mind the loss screams and batters at your
barriers as he fades. In your forbidden reaches you answer him even after he is
gone, again and again and loud and futile, I love you, but also Please, let it
be soon -
 
It’s mere hours before you find out, with no warning, exactly what he is sorry
for.
Chapter End Notes
     (The working title for this chapter was Everything Hurts.)
***** come take the line and I'll take the line and I will pull you out *****
Chapter Summary
     Well I'd wade ten thousand klicks for a just one more chance, just
     one more chance
     To see your face again
     Well I'd pull ten time the weight of the earth with my teeth, the
     earth with my teeth
     To touch your face alive
     -- Wax and Wire, Loch Lomond
Chapter Notes
     Some of the most intense pain described in the entire series. Use of
     needles (not extremely graphic). Epic brinksmanship. Some dying. A
     wild ride.
See the end of the chapter for more notes
==> Sollux: now.
It's not easy to travel by day; transport pods are a semi-restricted item,
precisely to keep young trolls from traveling and associating freely. But
they're not that hard to build, and now it doesn't matter so much if others
notice you have them.
You wish the sun weren't up because you'd rather fly; it doesn't matter if
anyone notices that now, either. All of you are converging on the spaceport,
but Feferi came to you, first, away from her entourage, and now you're in the
pod with her, staring out through darkened glass as it follows a plotted course
toward the destination. By the time you arrive, the earlier crews will have
cleared the way, or not; but either way you'll see messages about it. KK is
updating the memo periodically.
Her hand is trembling, so slightly that you couldn't see it if you weren't
holding it.
"I need to trust this," she says, "I need to just get into plaice and let fins
happen, I've known forever that ascending the throne would be exactly this
complicated and difficult or more, but you - you're so precious to me, and -"
"You don't need to worry aboat me right now," you tell her, pushing your face
into her hair, breathing warm air on her face. "Focus on you. You're going to
win, Feferi, and it's going to be amazing -"
"Is that the knowledge of our doom speaking, or are you just being optimistic?"
she asks, a nervous smile playing on her lips, like she knows the answer.
"It's mostly just me, but I haven't heard anything to contradict it." Anytime
you descend below the level of your thinkpan's forced confidence, you're scared
shitless, but that much is true.
You ride in silence for a while, lost in thought, messages periodically
arriving, and finally:
 CG: AYEM TERMINAL IS CLEAR.
followed by,
 AG: Cred8 where cred8 is due, 8nyone? ::::)
You take deep breaths. They don't seem to give you enough air.
"I hope he'll make it," Feferi says softly. "You're reely good at making fins
happen..."
"...and if he doesn't, I'll stay here for you." You can barely get the words
out audibly, but once you do, her whole body relaxes against you. "Aw, FF.
Didn't you know that already?"
"I did, but so much has changed." She kisses you, on the lips and on the
forehead, still having to lean up to do so, but only just; then she hides her
face in your neck, her horns rubbing against the side of your head, her arms
squeezing you tightly.
"Even more is going to," you say, and you meant it to be reassuring but you
can't keep your face from a feral grin as the transport shudders to a halt.
The sun is disappearing behind the horizon now, and dimly through the glass you
see faces you know coming to meet you - you pick out the keen-eared
greenblooded scout, the strange seadweller scientist you've consulted with only
by Trollian, legions of Signless cultists lined up in perfect Imperial militia
formation, Gamzee's mirthful miscreants dripping with paint and regalia.
~~~
The block you're working from is set up to your specifications; a small medical
team on standby here and another more extensive one in wait across the
spaceport, ready to deploy sylladex-bound resources that amount to a portable
high-tech hospital.
"You should have asked for a bowl of chocolate-shelled candies with the brown
ones removed," Kanaya says dryly as she closes the block portal behind you. You
laugh delightedly - it's been a bit of an inside joke lately, Troll Van Halen
disguising engineering checkpoints as foolish particularities, and she's
reminding you that she's on your wavelength about it.
The site team had their work cut out for them fitting everything you needed
into this small and low-ceilinged place, tucked away in a half-reconstructed
wing overlooking the main palace and spaceport. A bank of computers and
Feferi's communications equipment are crammed up against an ancient stone wall,
with shelves of medical devices and what looks like a fancy gaming chair some
wriggler donated to the cause taking up the more modern parts of the room.
You sprawl out in the chair and close your eyes; no more waiting, everything is
in motion now and you have one job to do.
You close out the world and pull yourself deeper into dream-trance than you’ve
ever been before while waking. It’s oddly forlorn, your mind rising up into
blackness, bereft of all the constructs and comforts you usually steer toward.
This time you’re coming to him.
It will take you all the power you’ve learned to draw on these sweeps; yours
and his as well. The enthusiastic tealblood medic who you've been coordinating
with for a while is standing by, monitoring your vitals, ready to inject you
with glucose if you show signs of knocking yourself out. They wanted to give
you a drip, but you need to be able to get on the move in a hurry.
He’s dim to you - the spark of consciousness buried deep - even as you know the
ship is close, can imagine you feel its position in space, even from the
outside, you’ve been staring into star-maps and projections until your eyes
cross, running yourself through simulations until you can calculate the
parameters of a jump yourself without a computer, just in case -
- and you're not on the outside for long.
You slip in, through your uncanny connection, overlay your mind into his,
quickly enough that he can barely register your presence, thinking over and
over again I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.
When you first step into his mind it's a vaulted cavernous near-emptiness, so
much of him held dormant away from this place, holding your secret close, that
the ticking of code and the remnant hum of consciousness here are terrifyingly
quiet, like a pared-down structural drawing of him and not him, not there –
Not until you speak, like tripping a switch, your own voice processed and
identified and I'm sorry and - the rushing awake and the recognition and long
waiting and the knife's-edge impression of strange depths to him that you
barely knew in dream – You, you're here –
And as pain wakes and bleeds down from joint to joint in your fingers and out
through your hipbones instantaneous but slowed to impossible insect's-eye
detail, as you suck in information with it, breathe in coordinates, no, whole
dimensions like pulling your 'pan sideways to receive them, like gasping in a
flood – Do what you need to for me, it's all right, I love you, I'll always –
You wish you had time, wish you had the overhead to just stop for a minute and
ride here in his head preparing and bracing and holding him, more than this
fleeting lost instant, more than shouting I love you, I'm sorry, but the stream
of data you've prepared by painstaking rote has to run now, and any wasted
second is a second closer to being caught and stopped –
The scream of neural feedback is worse than it's ever been, so bad you can't
stay with him even as you force your commands in through his body and his
networks, and you shove aside questions you can't afford to ask – about whether
he can even survive this level of resistance, because he certainly couldn't
force it on his own – he will or he won't, and either way you must do this –
The worst is that even without anything that could truly be called contact,
without speech or touch or sight – the worst is that the inside of his mind
still feels like him, that this appalling maelstrom of crashing-roiling-
onrushing pain is shaped like what you have held for him before, designed into
the mold of his thinkpan and the shape of his body and where that mismatches
with what you are it goes rushing past you, ripping at neurons as it goes but
not settling in, not burning through. So you are able still to bend your mind
to the sequences, figures and lines and the ways that this bypasses code
altogether, odd involuntary jerking movements of your hands and legs where you
sit, where you reach for the controls, where you yank at the ponderous engines
and they pivot under your fingers, against the strain of the puny backup motors
that might slow a rebellious Helmsman of lesser caliber but not one who has
gathered and ascended in power for eons uncounted –
Bilocated, split, so you mark the moment when someone traces you, finds your
slow-breathing self on Alternia and hammers on your thinkpan with fists that
slide off like windblown feathers -
You are knife-hard and effulgent with power, at least for now - a perfect
weapon against an Empire, invincible, indomitable.
And helpless to protect your matesprit but you can’t think of that now, only of
the sprawling mainframe that is your external mind, while it still answers -
and it does, and you pull on all its might (every system responding with its
own unbearable screech of agony at once) and bore a hole through space and time
-
And through the screaming (from his body where he is trapped, because you
cannot set him free of this, cannot risk taking it into yourself for even a
moment – beyond anything he could tolerate willingly, beyond the ability to
push through - you are aware, in slow motion, that you are interposing yourself
into his nervous system, a meddling intermediary in the efferent side,
substituting your own signals for linkages that would take hold of his
reflexes, substituting yourself for reflex itself even as every afferent nerve
tries and helplessly fails to make him recoil from every action - aware,
through that, remembering dimly in some time-frozen moment that once, sweeps
ago, he saw your neural networks and told you you were beautiful; that his
complexity is one of the most sacred things you have known, and you are
brutalizing it -)
Through the terror and the shocks that rend down and through you and follow
veins and congregate around your – his – bloodpusher, through the catch and
pause and restart and pain like being run through – you spread your wings.
Galaxies part before your soaring, the shape of all things ripples and snaps
and the mass of the vessel is a triviality before your power that barrels like
a swell. Beyond the confines of ribbed-in steel you are flight itself, you are
motion beyond the confines prescribed to light.
Through the whistling rush and shuddering pulled-apart impossibility of the
jump it's impossible to tell whether the searing clangor of something is about
to go wrong speaks prophecy or mere deduction, outside your thinkpan or within,
the patchwork edges where you rebuilt code to meet the Battleship Condescension
at a more distant point in its trajectory nag at your racing mind and numbers
blur past faster than stars and still you fly, weightless, standing on the
engines like a colossus, feeding into their incinerating depths like a drying
river – heat beyond suns lapping at your fingertips and fuzzing and permeating
– heat and code and system.warning:thermal&sensor:2943&status:marginal and
sensor:0187&status:failing and sens=or:30?n(*~v%#6....
And behind and between and within the onrushing stars omnipresent and
surrounding through your skin that is all-over vision the void of space
shimmers – flickers ruddy, draws together like an inhale – glows. Pressure like
swimming beneath the surface of the world, force and current and crushing heat,
and Astris' voice crying out as sensors scream and rip offline and gouge at
your senses, missing swathes of knowledge where phantom perception bites at you
instead like ice between the bones of your hands – stars press together like
wrigglers at the mouth of the caverns and surround and loom in and there is no
void, any longer, only the seethe of harsh coronal glow all around you and
ahead fusion, ahead blinding brightness – ahead ¶meter:time&value:null –
And you know that you are on the edge of utter cataclysm because even now, even
battered and repulsed and feedback-rent in Astris-mind where you know this
anticipatory reaching for other than your own because you know the flavor of
your own terror; know foreign mind by its utter absence – his yearning fixes
itself on that light, he turns his face into the fiery countercurrent of
feedback and longs for it –
(this is where your plan breaks in two, something in the distant reaches of
your consciousness reminds you, you will still win if you lose - and the guilt
you feel for wanting to win cannot reach you in your focus -)
- the coordinates ever so slightly wrong, in your haste, corrected to the
position of the Battleship Condescension but not quite and you’re headed for -
you run the numbers, shove them through straining computer systems faster than
you could work on your own even now -
- for a point in spacetime that doesn’t quite exist.
You claw at the limits of your senses, the limits of computation, and find only
a jumble of heat and wrongness, reality crunching in on itself - hurtling
toward nothingness - no way to find purchase against the flickering walls of
bad parameters - lost, careening toward disappearance without a trace - no way
out -
Not from here.
It feels like a betrayal, is a betrayal to do this, to choose this defiance
when death is guaranteed, and some tiny clamoring verbal part of you has never
stopped repeating I'm sorry, I love you, I'm sorry through all of this but you
don't know if he can hear your mind anymore over his own screaming.
Your own body, dimly felt - the other pole of the connection - reaching through
yourself with his power and your own -
- and you're fully cognizant that you could burn yourself out, and it might be
worth it. That you could die - and your only thought is that if you do, you had
better fail, in the process, because if you died and succeeded - no.
With the sight that does not belong to your eyes you reach out - out and up,
you know the jump points here, and it's a relief being able to think in three
dimensions again, though a thread of your consciousness still rides trapped
with him in the suffocating faulty wormhole - gathering power to yourself until
you feel white-hot with the pressure of it, there must be some outward change
in your vitals because you feel, very distantly, the pressure of fingers on
your arm -
It's strangely intimate doing this, as if your power were a pair of hands,
dragging through the fabric of the universe and tearing it like a cobweb,
gathering space in luminescent rings that halo a rent into nothingness -
Arcing toward nonexistent coordinates, driving blind into no-space anchored
only by the beacon of his presence -
The hole is thin and tiny and keeping it from closing up around you is harder
than you could have imagined, without the amplification of a starship to push
through, it takes all the power and focus you can muster - burning through
energy like torn paper - the syringe drives home and you barely feel it, but
you feel the boost not long after, bringing back clarity from haze - you think
it's not long - time is not a sequence but a substance now to both sides of
your split consciousness - perilous like ocean-bottom pressure on metal skin
not your own -
- you are drawing a line toward yourself, a stitch of thread with one of
Kanaya's needles, brute-force yanking when finesse fails, you're not sure what
part of you is gasping for breath -
until you punch through, perforate a wormhole into a wormhole, and the ship
jerks and wobbles -
You push commands up through his wires without any time to give warning, not
that the warning would help against the searing-awful wave of futile punishment
- angle toward the new trajectory -
MEMORYOVERFLOWimmediatelyrepo.reformatting…::....sysauth=)(§ors=(9742.5??1,
b07.N66, VALUEN03ALLOW2%,
000.00...n^3)rtsubversiMEMORYOVERFLOW.reformatting...-
and reach -
Dizzy, barely hanging onto thought, this one thing only and you give yourself
over to it completely - push psionic force ahead through the new-made wormhole,
widening, clearing the path, and then the course is committed, the motion
unstoppable -
- sting of another needle, barely felt, ghostly under half-numb skin - senses
cutting out in bursts - draining faster than they can prop you up, overclocked
and overheated and you feel yourself dwindling but you hang on, just moments
longer, holding your anchor point ghostly-whirling in the sky -
and your head hurts. It’s almost too much to be pain, blazing through your
thinkpan, and you try to say help and the word dissolves into yelling around
you, dissolves into heat and the pounding of your head and then blankness.
~~~
==> Astris: grieve.
You float to the surface of your own mind like a leaf in stilling water, and
everything is wrong.
You have fallen back into time, somehow, into familiar starry-crystalline
webwork and space in which to orient yourself and tumbling end over end in
great slow arcs, engines idle, red heat radiating from struts out into
nothingness – Awoken into pain like being poured into a new mold, like dripping
down the inside of yourself, like opening your eyes into noonlight and needles
and – you remember a pinpoint in the onrushing distance, remember reaching, how
are you here –
this shouldn't be, this is a daymarish impossibility, you're alive, you're
whole –
No – the ship is whole. Your mind – you – you are torn in two.
You are halved.
Sollux is gone.
Minutes ago in turmoil and the unmistakable fading sparks and snaps of
overstrain as the raw inside of the universe grasped you and carried you away –
those last slipping scraps of touch, his mind to yours in final fragmented
whispers of code to bring you here, even through his consciousness closing up
on itself, the swirling-in descent into dark – and now you are empty of him,
his hold on you slipped, you know the signs of a psionic overtaxing himself and
he has let you drop and he is gone. And the stars still wheel in their
clusters.
You knew the shape of this end and so you marked out for him his limits, taught
him the consequences, but it was never enough – he is you, how could it have
been – somewhere on Alternia your love lies in a pool of gold and he left you
here and you roar like a beast left mateless, there is nothing in your
programming that proscribes grief and you howl. Uncaring what they know – the
strictures you built in your thoughts against his name are meaningless, they
will find his remnant shell, they will parade it in the streets, it won't
matter – you open yourself to the whetted shear of pain as your feedback
circuits flip from coercive to punitive and shred into you, you suffer and
scream and wreathe yourself in hate, cloak yourself in its thorns and its teeth
–
He left you, in his pride he would have had you for himself, in his callous
manic ambition he denied you the one thing, the only thing when it was in his
hands to give – Trampled on every oath made in pity and in love, when it came
to the test, and left you alone –
But you can't. Oh god you can't, here drifting in some indeterminate oblong
around the planet where he lies bleeding you cannot numb yourself against the
tracery of new sensation that he taught you, his living legacy under your skin,
the newly-felt intricacy of tears as they gather one by one into wet yellowish
crescents inside your goggles, sting in barbs of saline purity where the wires
anchor.
You should hate, but all your memory turns on a fixed point now, sweeps ago,
when hardly more than a child still he turned his pity on you enveloping like a
light, like starbirth, ion-tiny and greater than galaxies. You mourn and cry in
dumb futility for his hands to hold your pain as feedback crashes over and
soaks through and orbit corrections trickle up connectors and – you were wrong,
before, about how deeply you were broken. Even if your soul was reduced to
dust, it could always be ground finer.
Even the barest touch of radiance, even the push of your home-star's solar
breath could swirl away what is left of you now and the pain rises like a
vicious storm-tide so much stronger than that and you are no one, then, no
sapient thing to know loss.
Yawning staticy sensor gaps thundering for repair. Broken systems shot through
with errors, fractured code like claws on glass – being ravaged and surrounding
eerie vastness and the screaming –
The screaming whistles through your bones. Feedback circuits promise to force
in more pain for every second that goes by without gravity. You batter your
will against the centrifuges, but they are welded gobs. In parts of the ship
where your pathetic grayish scrap of flesh is not, you jar and spin and paint
your sensors cerulean, turquoise, violet. You batter your will against the
stabilizers, but they are scrap metal. The feedback says that it will strip the
sinew from your forearms thread by thread. The screaming howls.
...that something has the Helmsman, your most motherfucking Imperious
Condescension, something picked it right the fuck up like a plaything and SHOOK
it, you think I don't know when a motherfucker is up and POSSESSED, Highness?
OoooOoohhhhh, high and wavering, I knew it couldn’t be him, he’s Mine I made
him mine in every shell and he would never betray me, couldnever, such care I
took, you can’t beginto comprehend - we have to fix this, we have to stop it,
it’ll be all right then -
You reel through space, a wriggler's spinning toy, a bird unfeathered. Your
code says jump and you try. You will be wrenched past death and dragged back
again, the voices of your punishment hiss as invisible hands force your own
power back down your throat, you will be clawed bare and rebuilt all of agony.
You aren't here, but there is nowhere else to be. Your code says jump and you
try. The engines say core systems shutdown and the light you feed them slams
back into you, red-blue crazing where you once had vision. Your code says jump
and you try and the screaming is chorus, it's the ship, it's the dying, it's
your body –
It's you, closing in smaller and darker than you have ever been, pared down to
pain and the few thin lines of faulty code that insinuate through the great
clots of conflicting commands snarled up and festering in your fingers,
withered even beyond the capacity for finally, finally now –
– WE CULL IT BEFORE IT KILLS US, THAT'S WHAT WE MOTHERFUCKING DO. Ain't no
shame in taking apart a traitorous piece of motherfucking HARDWARE, now is
there, your miraculous Majesty?
You, you despicable hagfish, that’s trenchery and treason, how dareyou defy Me,
I have culled greater trolls for less insult -
– clean through a swathe of what little is left, through the dull hiss of low-
priority information arriving too late, a great hacking cut and then dark –
~~~
Her hands pluck you out of the dark and you're a scrap of sea-wrack thrown
aloft on the rise of something colder and larger and more forceful than you or
even her, something passive that neither loves nor hates you but answers to her
call every time, and she reaches into your bones with that and pulls with her
fingers and wills more sweeps into you for every moment of resistance -
(Her hands pluck you out of the dark fearful and determined and lips press cool
on your forehead, gentle and steely at once, an icy tingle and the puff of her
breath and her fingers closed around yours and you find the sound of her call
and ascend it like a stair -)
Your lungs slam open deeper than they have for sweeps; air ramming in ice-edged
humid and cold and your ribs scream and no matter much it hurts –
you're back because there is something vital for you to do – the gnarled skein
of nerves in the wreck of your wrists knit themselves whole again but their
distant endings in hull and sensor and system are no less mangled and and
molten you wail and sob until your throat tears even as it mends and
she clings to you, wild eyes underlined with weary royal-tinged smudges,
childishly round cheeks framed by brambles and arabesques and fractal coilings
of dark hair, and she's saying –
she's growling through her laughter, claws and golden tines and dripping with
indigo gore, crouched in the pool between wires that ascend into the screaming
suspended flesh entangled with the drenched trailing ends of her hair and
throbbing with new cold vitality and –
you're reaching out for something hopelessly distant from the reach of small
teeming life but intimately close on the scale of stars –
but your hands are thin and dim and wispy so far away from where your newly-
beating bloodpusher and your gray scrap of body limned by tubes and lines and
humming machines lies, your hands are fading and curling back toward you,
almost spent –
(hands all over you, from every angle, and the high clear voice calling Sollux?
Sollux! and you have something to do-)
==> Sollux: Come to.
It's dark - your forehead is cool, tingling -
There's a funny echo where the thinkpan-cracking headache was, like your nerves
are answering a cavernous silence -
A voice shrieking “OH COD SOLLUX -” that anchors you in the darkness and your
instincts tell you to calm her but there’s no time and your hand flies out and
clutches at her convulsively - knocks askew an IV needle - doesn’t matter -
head clearing - focus - focus -
His crying out in mourning in your mind is like an open wound.
Feferi’s saying something, rattling off words and you’re answering them mush-
mouthed barely knowing what you’re saying, it’s okay, I’ve got this, have to
land -
Have to land, and you drag yourself up through exhausted scorched ache to
interpose your will over his, into millions of afferent nerves, overlaying back
into his wires and into the mainframe as if you’d never left.
There are no words left here, and if you hadn't heard him crying out into the
darkness for you, you'd fear he was gone - but you can feel, still, in scraps
and pieces, a dumbstruck recognition assembling from fragments, the dim
coalescence of his consciousness reaching toward your name, beyond even
disbelieving –
And you only know the shape of him by the way he folds around you, the seeking
and the bare exhausted whisper of his mind and the reservoir of his power,
matching frequencies - so close it's like touching, no longer a stretch across
galaxies, and wordless and knowing - he pours power like love into your
fingertips, and then you are lit up with it, and no longer in the ship at all,
no longer needing to operate through it or under its threat, as he fades out
and the million controls and sensors and awarenesses fade with him.
Your own body, head immersed in something cool, hand clasped in Feferi's, feels
like only a small piece of you, and your real hands are made from energy,
pulling the Battleship Condescension through space -
But easily now, this is physical space and the threats are simple ones, spatial
and no longer temporal, g-force and momentum and obstacles, the atmosphere of
Alternia. A child’s game only, like circling your hivestem writ large.
It circles you, looming, large as a moon and as silent, and you know its
structure like the structure of your hand but you have to guess from a chaos of
alarms and warnings filtered through remembered, imperfectly shared senses
which structural anchor points might still be sound enough to close your newly
given strength of light around and pull –
Like lifting your tablet pen or a stone, none of the visceral, dizzying knowing
of height and speed and direction that comes to you in true flight.
You catch and hold on and the ship slows, loses energy, falls – for a strangely
satisfying moment the rate of its fall keeps pace with the curvature of the
planet and it describes a perfect circle in your grasp, and you expend more
light than you might to move an ocean and still Astris' reserves run deep –
unburned you hold the white-hot hull in your far-reaching grasp as it plummets
into spheres of ions and scattered air, and the thunderous crack of its
approach shakes your body where you lie.
In the distance mercenary ships converging to other landing pads, like small
wingbeasts against the ponderous weight of this -
No engines scorch the earth when you drift the ship down to the field at the
center of the once-ruined city – still configured for the interstellar void,
bristling with instruments that rake over ancient spindly towers and crumble
columns, it hovers over the newly smoothed old stones and you're burning more
power now against gravity and atmosphere but you bleed off the last of its
momentum as gently as if you were cradling something infinitely small, not
city-sized (a strange dream of your bees, long ago) –
And you land, red and blue and dust and the building din of shouts and
footfalls.
Everything is a blur of voices now, so close you can barely hear what other
trolls are actually saying around you, but you know that everyone is beginning
to move; that the fighting will come soon -
You pull another needle out of your vein and peel sensors off your arm through
double images that swim before your eyes and lift your head up, hair dripping,
and Feferi is scolding you and trying to stop you but there isn't time for that
either, Kanaya is tugging at her, putting jewelry on her arms and legs, drawing
sigils on her forehead -
You pull yourself upright, you know what you've done but your vision is coming
back and you have to see - and when you step out into the corridor on wobbly
legs it's there, the massive monolithic garish bulk of it visible on the
landing platform through the wide window, units converging on it from every
direction -
There's the banner of the Signless waving in the distance, and a swarm of lusii
approaching out of the sky, and as you try to look closer the Mirthful
Miscreants storm through the hallway so enthusiastically that you wind up
flattened against the wall with greasepaint smeared on your clothing, the floor
shaking with the roar going up from them as they charge forward.
You drift and stumble after Feferi and her entourage, aware on some level that
you're barely standing but you feel good, still alert, still holding your wall
of red.
And then cold, not in the salt-lush vibrant way that Feferi is cold but
whistling through your bones like ash, subtly like light moves through you but
–
Your palmtop buzzes.
 AA: we have s0mething t0 d0 n0w
AA: y0u d0 n0t
And far ahead of you in the hallway as it begins to dim and spin, silhouettes
of horns and the dully luminous colors of thousands of eyes seen through the
backs of shadowy skulls and and among them, tattered gray skirts billowing.
Your momentum lets you dash forward with them for a moment, sighting the open
hatches, the blaze of gunfire.
You pull on what is left to you of light, a thin sheen so far away and deep
that it's tunnel vision reaching for it, a point in the dark, and you draw that
point out of you and cast it fiery past the ghosts, into the dull clamor of
distant explosions – and the tunnel closes around you and you fall sightless
into someone's waiting hands.
Chapter End Notes
     This chapter is dedicated to chlorinetrifluoride (check_out_their
     fic!), in gratitude for all the beta-reading and reaction comments
     over the years and as a reminder that Captors need to keep their
     blood glucose up.
     /\^o-o^/\
***** to touch your face alive *****
Chapter Summary
     An ambitious surgery; a ritual combat; valor and desperation, death
     and life.
     "You don't need to stay for this," she tells you. "It's going to take
     a while."
     At some point you find that you're sitting in a chair, with no idea
     who brought it and stuck it under you. Scraps of news cross your head
     and you barely record them in your mind; you are focused on two
     things and only two, but mostly only one.
Chapter Notes
     Content notes: body horror, blood, violence, character death [major
     canonical/minor in-story character(s)], we swear this chapter is
     mostly supposed to make you cry in a good way.
     It honestly wasn't planned that the first-time scene was chapter 14
     of Initiation and this is chapter 14 of Consummation but we're happy
     about the resonance.
You've known what to expect for a very long time -
Known it by heart, as your team knows their orders - that this will be the most
extensive biotech extraction surgery ever performed, successfully or otherwise
-
Known how the wires close over his hands and feet entirely, the shape of the
saltwater pool - not known that the ones running into his left hand would be
crudely cut, dripping blood and ichor, that his arm would remain - crushed in
onto itself in the air, in no position an arm should be in, unable to drop
normally.
You were prepared for the dead speared through with the Condesce's culling
fork, dead that you saw first through the eyes of his systems - prepared for
the sight of him hanging there the wretched shell of himself, head dropped to
his chest, a mess of blood and spit, face hanging slack - not prepared for
small things. Tiny things, in the measure of it. Goggles hanging askew, and the
torn side spattered with blood and purple fluid, and the side that remains
sealed to his face is rimmed with pooled tears -
And you can't hear his mind.
Didn't hear his voice among the clamoring echoes of the future dead, either,
and you don't now, only - his mind twinned to yours is silent and the silence
is deafening, and you know why, you think you know why, but - you can't take
for granted that he's survived within himself until you know -
And you can't cry, can't construct what you're feeling, there's nothing to
feel, everything is flat and icy and carved-out dull and logical while they
work and you wait.
~~~
 
Later you will hear, learn, know - assemble to yourself from a fractured array
of viewpoints the way that Gamzee Makara died -
How squadrons poured out from hatches, defending the ship, even as the Condesce
fought her own subjugglators in the helmsblock -
How he stood and fought and his sect fought behind him, how he took the
loyalists all down with him, how he flayed his own fingers to the bone
fighting, smiling, deep in the wisdom of blood-rage, thirsting and quenched -
exulting and sorrowing for every troll that fell, allies and enemies, his last
breaths prayers of joy and adoration -
Probably some five hundred should have had to in his place, but Gamzee did, and
he was as good as five hundred, the force of his dozens of compatriots as good
as thousands -
Karkat will never accept that it wasn't his fault.
 
You will hear in tones by turns awed and grudging of the motley legion of ships
that slunk out from the shadow of the Pink Moon as the flagship passed and
descended on the spaceport, engines screaming – how they disgorged hordes of
mercenaries, armed to the fangs, who charged into position at the sign of a
bolt from Eridan's legendary rifle – you will witness through staticky video
the haloes of covering fire that seemed to explode from every boulder and bit
of rubble as Feferi advanced to the ship -
You will meet loyal Imperial officers now sworn to Feferi, will hear of
hundreds of them, living when they would have been dead, because Vriska did
something right for once and dragged them out of the way thinkpan-first.
 
And you will watch from the Helmsman's thousand cameras the record of how
Kanaya Maryam fell, and rose again, her skin illumined with a strange inner
glow -
How she guarded Feferi, how she held a wide berth around her, blue and violet
blood spattering from her chainsaw, not stopping until they reached the
helmsblock -
How Feferi stood and faced the Condesce, and spoke the words, once, twice,
three times, her voice rising over the commotion until every troll still living
in that hellish place stood or lay silent.
 
They will say that the final curse of the Sufferer became flesh and blades and
fury – that the Second Signless spoke courage into faltering legions and
shouted fear into ravening hordes, that a fearsome blur of green and claws
rallied at his side, just as had been foretold – We were on pawposite sides of
the furmation from each other, Nepeta will complain.
And they will say that just as the flagship was taken and Her Condescension was
dragged out from the helmsblock some creature – some say a stag, others a great
cat – bowed and laid a bloodied club at Tavros' feet where he rode at the head
of the fighting lusii, who encircled him as he mourned. That he emerged,
steely-faced, and marshaled his forces to guard the procession to the arena,
packs and flocks and herds solemn and watchful, fending off those who would not
respect a challenge made by law and right, who would have kept Feferi from
ascending -
 
But all of that will come later. Right now scraps of news cross your head and
you barely record them in your mind; you are focused on two things and only
two, but mostly only one.
~~~
Every so often Equius or Evesta the seadweller or one of the other medicullers
gets a short break and makes a beeline over to where you're alternately
standing and sitting on the salt-damp floor. This time it's a tall woman with a
Signless medallion and broad lowblood horns; you've been staring blankly as she
methodically teases some wires free and severs others, leaving ends in place to
be removed later. "You don't need to stay for this," she tells you. "It's going
to take a while."
"And you don't know if he's going to wake up," you fill in flatly. "I got the
memo." You're going back and forth between watching the surgeons working on
Astris and watching your palmtop, tapping into a live feed of the challenge,
exchanging messages with Terezi in between her duties as officiant.
The fight is long, but TZ thinks it might be shorter than expected; she says
things are going as planned at the arena.
You don't have a feel for the physical intricacies of the formal combat. It's
been going for hours already, and for hours more it looks like they are dancing
around each other, 2x3dents not even touching, the Condesce walking with a
predatory grace that makes fear clutch at the pit of your stomach.
But then you catch the odd way the Condesce is moving her head, tiny rigid
flinches from something unseen, the way her feet stumble more and more with
every circle around the arena, and you realize that she's not merely exhausted
from fighting her own crew; the camera feed does not render angry ghosts
comprehensibly. Thanks, AA.
At some point you find that you're sitting in a chair, with no idea who brought
it and stuck it under you.
"Why don't you -"
"I'm not hungry and I'm not going to sleep." You won't do yourself the
indignity of claiming not to be tired, but you don't think you could sleep if
they hit you with hoofbeast tranquilizers right now.
At some point a nutrition loaf is pressed into your hand and you devour it,
anyway.
~~~
You still don't think you've been to sleep but time drifts and skips in strange
ways.
A shriek from the live feed sounds through your headphones and jolts you to
awareness and you don't think you've ever seen Feferi so exhausted - except
maybe in the game that never happened.
Your moirail is covered in blood and smiling grimly and yet there's something
effortless about the way she holds and thrusts the 2x3dent twice her length,
every moment of practice in the arena come to this point.
The Condesce is on the ground now, her culling fork flung far from her hand,
and the fearsome dignity she held at the beginning has given way to venom and
screamed curses. Secondhand memory would make the voice terrifying, if you
weren't already too stimulated and exhausted to have normal emotions about
anything outside of the helmsblock where you're sitting.
Feferi's weapon catches the bases of her ancestor's horns and pins them to the
ground, and the prescribed strife specibus and some of the odder specifications
Terezi complained about suddenly make sense. The tines of the fork and the
ridges of the stones are spaced exactly so that the tyrant cannot slide free,
can kick and flail but cannot roll backwards or free her head.
Feferi opens her mouth and speaks in a voice that is high and clear but somehow
booms, even through the tinny rendering of the feed. "Before all who witness
this night of my ascendancy, before the deepest of all watchers, I proclaim my
right by triumph!"
Her Imperious Condescension the Empress Meenah Peixes twists, struggles, hisses
like an animal - trying to reach her weapon, wounds dripping royal blood into
the flagstones.
"Do we acknowledge the combat justly won?" That's Terezi, who doesn't have an
eerie horrorterror voice and is thus broadcasting with a microphone from the
arbiter's rostrum. You can tell that standing on her feet for the length of a
night has affected her, but only because you know her well. The first streaks
of dawn are changing the color of the sky.
A vast rumbling roar goes up, quietly at first - Terezi grins showing all her
fangs and makes a gesture in the air - then louder and louder, and it silences
any other sound that would reach you as Feferi kneels by the culling fork and
deftly makes the cuts.
Blood spurts freely and the thrashing stops.
~~~
They've managed to dig out another spinal power feed, pulling it away with a
weak trailing crackle. At least the psionic centers of his brain must be
functional still. You'd worried the suppressants would make it hard to tell one
way or another, but apparently the amount it takes to draw you down to null
just takes him down to flashlight-class.
The oily iridescence to the blood matting his uniform, the glow mirage-dim and
shifting and fitful – hardly identifiable in its colors but that you would know
them anywhere, in sleep, in the extremities of desperate agony, stretching to
ripple around his outline, receding, but –
– a wisp of glow lapping at his mangled arm and something moves, and it would
be a flinch but that you don't dare hope for a flinch, the surgeons hover and
assess and glance nervously at you and one of them must have touched –
Tiny movements, and you've stopped pacing now, you could be hallucinating the
tightening in his jaw, wasted on exhausted desperation as you are, the
fluttering spasm where his neck meets his shoulder, torn muscle straining
against nothing –
Your eyes are everywhere at once, your thinkpan trapped in tip-of-the-tongue
limbo listening internally for signals of consciousness with the unreasoning
intentness of sweeps of repetition, of waiting on the floor of the darkened
amorphous dreamspace for him to coalesce from memory and distant prison back to
you – the new wetness gathering at the seams of his eyes, that could be hope
and illusion, watery yellow marbled darker –
You draw nearer, look to Equius for permission before passing the line of the
operating zone - the helmsblock is nothing remotely resembling a sterile field,
you know how the biowires take care of that, but you're entangled in magical
thinking and ridiculously grateful for him being here and doing the things you
can't, and if following the protocol of the medical team makes a difficult job
even a tiny bit easier -
EQ catches your eye and nods, once, stiffly, and everyone pulls aside just a
little to let you pass.
Astris is struggling toward consciousness now, clear enough to let yourself
believe it, his chin lifts from his chest a feeble straining half inch and
falls again with a squelch of blood-soaked fabric that seems louder than
engines to you against the sounds of humming machinery and footsteps of
mercenary guards outside, and his breath has been coming barely-visible shallow
– once or twice you caught yourself dizzy and faint from timing breaths to his
– but now his chest shudders expanding in a slow raspy gurgling inhale, and
even in ruin you know extreme effort in him, smoky wisps of light dissipating
up the dulling wires above him, fizzling cinder-sparks.
All that comes out of his mouth is a croaking scrap of unintelligible sound and
a dribble of blood, and an even quieter grating hiss, and his throat moves
convulsively but the third breath emerges open-mouthed futile silence and – you
realize that he's using the critical dregs of strength left to him trying to
scream –
"Astris!" You shout his name out loud, racing toward him through one of the
narrow aisles they've cleared of wires, and as it leaves your lips you realize
you don't even know whether he'll recognize it spoken, don't know how much of
everything he always back-translated through code - can't reach what's going
through his mind and can scarcely begin to imagine, waking to numbness and
silence and the ship powered down and being disconnected point by point.
"I'm here," you tell him, "I'm here, we won," and you reach for him unthinking,
and all the phantoms crowd around you, the memories of touching him in dream,
and something locked down inside you is starting to crack, and you're making a
high miserable sound of pity as your fingers settle on his face, shaking,
barely daring to hope -
And Astris stops. Just stops, stops shaking, stops clawing for sound, stops
breathing, the gauzy film of light drifting around his eyes freezes in place
and dissolves into nothing and – you almost believe that he stops time as you
freeze with him, the half-dried tacky mess of blood and sweat and dripping
fuchsia and spattered indigo smeared down his face adhering to your fingers,
his skin clammy even beneath that, eerily cold – stillness that if he wasn't
weak and wounded and depleted might be the pause before attack – you think his
red eye opens, a sliver of sickly muddied light – and the silence breaks,
something tics in his cheek a beginning of movement and a wavering struggling
inarticulate sound around one cracked fang dangling loose, thhhhhhhh –
"Yes, it's me, it's Sollux," and your bloodpusher has gone to thundering in
your ears, your voice hoarse and thick and cracking and you can't bring it out
of the dregs of your fortitude to care who's watching you start to cry - "You
can remember -"
You're telling him that he should unlock anything that's left of his
safeguards, that it's safe to let go, but the words quaver like a question,
because you're so afraid he can't. That he'll just keep whining mindless
confusion, as the sound that was something like speech unravels into a whimper
and his cheek pushes at your hand, more drooping into the pull of gravity than
leaning into you – light washes static-spark fleeting across your face, the
withered remnants of a wire anchored in his cheekbone scrape across the back of
your hand, his battered mouth falls open and – he is so frail, so paper-thin
and drained-pale and riddled with perforated places where wires sink in and
faded scratchwork of old insertion-scars and everything he ever recoiled in
angry shame from showing you and worse –
And he gasps as though sucking air around a lump caught in his throat, he's
stuttering syllables but they're nonsense now, reach nothing in your thinkpan
no matter how you connect them, no language that you know – until fragmented
with sandpaper breathing they resolve into the lisping beginning again, and
between drowning gasps, hanging limp as if every resource left to him is still
caught up in each expansion of his lungs, he manages the half-voiced shape of
something jagged and interrupted but unmistakably your name, unmistakably lost
and unbelieving and a call and a question and he mouths back to you we won as
if repeating a fragment of an ancient scripture, grasping uncomprehending
through centuries after lost meaning, and don't – as the teary-wet crescents
gathered under his eyes form into spheres and drop – don't, but he runs out of
voice again, trails off into undifferentiated scoured-harsh breath –
And you're used to sentences that finish themselves silently, used to luxuriant
bandwidth filling in the gaps, but now you don't know for certain the words
he's trying to say and even though you were very careful about the terms of
your terrible promise, you're holding your breath, laid open under his
judgment, because some of the words he could speak next would tear your heart.
Gape-mouthed he leaks a misty-fading halo of light that shears toward you as if
blown on a wind but goes out before it reaches, an unearthly wail in light and
finally in voice and "Don't – don't leave, don't leave me –"
Desperate repetition as if he can hardly hear himself, as if, having bent and
folded space like clay with you to reach you, he now can't know if his words
are crossing the remnant inches to your hearing – panting in scraping jarring
too-fast breaths from the strain of speech, a new trickle of blood from his
nose mingling into the lacerations around his lips, his eyes twitching behind
puffy yellow bruise-swollen lids, hinging halfway for a moment bleary-unfocused
and dim almost to black, and he slurs "Don't go" as his eyes and mouth fall
closed and he sinks fangs into his own lip clawing at awareness, a sluggish,
barely responsive muscle-jolt of pain in his neck and shoulders –
"I'm staying right here," you're saying as soon as he manages the words, tear-
choked and loud to shouting, your hand on his face clutching desperately and
carefully and you want to press warmth into him, you will, only there are miles
to go before the moonrise - "I promise, I won't leave, yours, Astris, always -
" and you're lisping worse than you ever let yourself in front of other people,
still haven't comprehended quite that you can be in front of Astris and in
front of other people at the same time, and remembering that makes hot tears
stream down your cheek.
And if you can't understand then Astris must still wander unspeakably vast
ripped-open synaptic chasms from even beginning to imagine that you are here
together, and you have to hope that some warmth of comforting inflection can
sink through to him even if your words fail to convey it – that you can press
this truth in between the waves of lightless unconsciousness that he is
fighting, that you're right when you think you see relief smoothing across his
face however fleeting, the faintest yellowing of renewed strength creeping into
his skin.
He is so close beneath your palm but so insurmountably distant in the claws of
mind-crushing suffering, mumbling "It hurts" like a wriggler without enough
language to describe fear or pain beyond that, leaning his head into your hand
as if he could lean on you entirely, and you have to hope that you can trust
your senses through the delirium of unnameable hope to name the soft strange
sound he makes then, the grainlike seed of a tiny trusting chirp, almost the
time-paled memory of a purr.
"It'll be better soon," and new tears choke your voice just from what it is to
say that with certainty - you're still afraid for him in so many ways but - if
he doesn't make it through he'll die knowing you were here to catch him, and
right now that satisfies even the part of you that looks for doom in
everything. "I'm going to be right here, the next time you wake up, I won't
leave the helmsblock until you can come with me -" And you turn to the medical
team and ask, "Have you got the blood samples figured out yet?"
They're looking at you, at Astris, thunderstruck and frozen in disbelief,
Equius less incredulous than the others but still flustered - maybe from seeing
you break down, or from the sheer impropriety and bizarreness of the situation.
The seadweller calls up some information on her palmtop and breaks the silence
by listing off concentrations of arcane drugs and substances in her odd voice -
you've been doing your research and you still only know half of them; soon
there's a discussion going back and forth about blood oxygen and tolerances and
exactly what constitutes safe anesthesia, and you're still standing there with
your hand on the soft fragile skin of Astris' face, feeling the flutter of his
pulse at his blood-matted temple, when they crowd back in and you ask, quietly,
"Is there a way we can do this where I won't have to step away until he's out
entirely?"
"Up," Equius suggests. Just the one word. And you realize he's right: there's
room for you around their implements if you take to the air. God, you're tired.
But you start drawing power anyway, inhaling and flaring with light.
And you know Astris is still with you, still as close to conscious as he can be
because he reacts to the surge of your power gathering near him, strains to
lift his head again and croaks, "What –" Not panicked, just flat and exhausted
but you think he means what's happening to me, think it might mean that he
cares –
"We're going to get you down," you tell him, "we're going to get you out of
here, and they've just figured out how to knock you out so it won't keep
hurting -" You're rising as you speak, your hand still pressed to his face.
Even the small effort of levitation makes your thinkpan feel scorched, brings
on a sense of incipient migraine, and you're uneasily aware that the brightly
lit operating space is not going to treat you kindly later. But you push that
aside while you can and hover stretched out in the air, limned in red and blue,
bring your face closer as the medics work below.
And Astris sighs, a slow whistling release of breath, and the light coiling
around him slows to gradual circling, diminishing and fading as injections take
hold.
Without the shimmery overlay of power his cheeks hollow into cavernous shadow,
the sucker-welts and pressure-lines of the goggles and straps and wires better
defined on his face in the overbright raking light than his own features are.
Purple sludge dripping onto both of you from the severed wires' coldblooded
slow-motion twitching above, and lengthening breaths and slowing pulse and the
hum of lights and the whine of delicate medical tools and hushed footfalls, and
even half-conscious Astris is still crying, tears dropping warm between your
fingers, still mouthing wordlike shapes like the small involuntary motions of
broken sleep, sometimes forming pieces of your name, once don't go again, a
muffled disconnected fragment of distress –
And you don't realize how close you're hovering until the brownblood taps you
on the shoulder gently, awkwardly, because you're blocking her way, she can't
put the mask over him to keep him breathing evenly while you're nearly cheek to
cheek murmuring that it's going to be all right, that you're staying.
You drift higher and brush against slippery biowire that makes your skin crawl
to touch it and you press your lips to his eyelid, softly, carefully, covering
over your fangs - then just drift there, saying his name again and again so
that (if he wakes) he'll wake to echoes of your voice.
***** well I can make your face brand new *****
Chapter Summary
     An awakening; a flight; a ceremony.
     He relaxes his head and neck back into the hold of your power and for
     the first time looks away from you, up to the ceiling half-unseeing.
     He doesn't thank you, just adds, as if from far away, "In the dreams.
     Sooner than let you have me, they would –" Even exhausted to the
     point of burnt-down unfiltered he hesitates, fangs resting against
     his lower lip, harsh-breathing – "It won't be clean, or quick, but –
     it's an end. But... I always know you're coming – and I always – I
     want you to reach me first. I want you to stop them." The closest he
     can say to what hecan'tyet.
Chapter Notes
     Content notes: hospital stuff, tenderness, vulnerability, hurt/
     comfort.
     Oh, also a bit of ritual cannibalism.
Day into night into day -
You know you must have been sleeping, that at various points time has just gone
away. You don’t really remember sleeping; you don’t remember dreams, except for
one, where he was back in the helmsblock and screaming for you to kill him -
the gory tableau of the vision stopped short by his real voice next to you only
saying your name, and you woke crying, grateful for a moment that his eyes
couldn’t focus enough to see -
Mostly though time just fades in and out and there is the smell of the hospital
wing and the long shallow medical sopor bath next to you, telling you where you
are; there is sprawling out between machinery and coming to consciousness when
he needs you.
At some point you stopped having a terrible backache; at some point later than
that you noticed that your hard metal chair had been replaced by a much softer
one; and when your phone went off you remembered that this probably coincided
with FF stopping by, and thanked her for it.
Feferi is the other constant in your world, when the world unblurs enough -
But she’s also the Empress now, and faced with urgent necessities of her own.
There’s an up-and-coming oliveblood adminislayer by the name of Elesna whose
job is, right now, entirely comprised of coordinating schedules between
medicullers and highbloods and officiants and Feferi so that some of the breaks
from her ongoing routine will overlap with points in time when Astris is fully
unconscious, and making sure you both get down the hall to see each other; and
you don’t remember if you’ve even been saying any words to each other, only the
way her horns feel in your hand and the silky ends of her hair and how the
world is slightly more bearable afterward and you’re going to find that
adminislayer later and get her a promotion and a hot meal out.
Later. When you can think.
Right now -
The smell of medical sopor. Your hand on his face, on his head - it’s an
awkward position for your arm, bent around trays and poles, you drift away and
drift off and shift in your sleep and he makes a noise and you find him again -
sometimes press your palm to his chest under the thin translucent warm sopor to
feel his heart beating -
- lose contact again, wake up with dry sopor on your hand reaching up toward
him and drool on the chair cushions.
Astris is murmuring in his sleep, rhythmic sounds and tiny mouth movements,
incomprehensible at first but vaguely sweet in a strange way, that he is still
and his eyes are closed and the noises are hoarse but quiet; that he seems
peaceful enough, for once, as you lean closer, hesitant to touch – his
breathing slow and even through the mumbling that, at least, isn't screaming –
– propellant level critical –
...it's worse.
– unit 0243 0.004% unit 0244 offline unit 0245 offline unit 0246 0.0003% –
“Astris,” you’re saying his name soft and insistent though your own voice
croaks from thirst and chair-cramped sleep - you lean closer, rest your hand on
his face - “Astris, hey, hey, I’m here - it’s Sollux, I’m here -”
His eyelids twitch. Muscles in his cheekbone jump and pull at the plasters and
small bandages that dot his face and curve over his brows and he flinches,
muttered numbers going to a soft whimper, ripples in the sopor casting eerie
greenish smears of shadow under his jawline as he struggles up from dream. When
his eyes finally slit open they're still dim with half-sleep, a thin, cracking
layer of dried tears and mucus smeared underneath – you don't know how long
you've slept, how long he's been dreaming – dim, but his forehead furrows deep,
creasing bandages, and the ghost of a spark drips from his blue eye, hovers
tearlike at the corner for hardly a breath – thins into a dusty sheen and
disappears into his skin and he makes a hoarse wordless noise of effort,
rasping close to speech but closing into a whine halfway.
You want so badly to be able to hold his hand but both hands are carefully
immobilized, in between surgeries, encased in blocks that let sopor flow
through - there’s enough of them left to save, especially with your cloned
tissues to fill in the patchwork of flesh, it’s just taking a while - and you
stagger to standing, just to bring your face into view, to be able to hover
close over him. “Astris, love, it’s okay, it’s going to be okay, you’re just on
suppressants so you can heal -” and so you won’t kill us all if you wake too
confused, you don’t say. You leave that to be obvious in hindsight when he’s
thinking more clearly. “You’re safe, I’ve got you, I’m protecting you,” you
say, stroking his cheek with every word.
He recognizes you even like this, still climbing out of sleep and hardly half-
present; not aware enough yet for holding back, he leans forward, or tries, as
much as sedatives and muscle relaxants and hand restraints allow – opens his
eyes as far as he can and blinks and squints to see – relaxes back, satisfied,
and there's a sound he makes only for you, a scrap of a hum, or a short purr,
or a chirping sort of murmur. His face is still twisted into bewilderment,
released from sleep's stilling hold enough to start to shiver but not enough
for words. But he knows you – can reach that sound even when your name is
beyond his grasp, even when he would tear up his throat in barely-audible
cough-studded growling at anyone else. He pushes his face weakly into your hand
and the tiniest static discharge clicks at your palm, his breath hitching
around an unformed sound, almost a sob.
“I know, I know, I’m sorry,” you murmur - rub the grit out of your own eyes and
lift a soft cloud of light under the back of his head, supporting him with your
own psionics so he won’t hurt himself straining. Your fingers soothe over his
forehead and the planes of his face, and you lean in and kiss at the edge of
his scalp, and you’ve been too tired to care if you’re blurring the line into
pale for a long time now. You knew a long time ago that crossing the distance
to reach him was worth crossing a lot of other lines along the way, if it came
to that, and surrounded yourself with people who would put up with it.
“Astris, love, don’t be afraid,” you breathe into his hair. “You don’t have to
push, it’s okay, I’ve got you,” and your voice is still sleep-cracked and
you’re repeating yourself but he needs that right now, at least until he’s
aware enough to speak.
Sometimes the touch of your psionics helps when he's missing his and others he
just shies away, no real pattern to it that you've found yet, but this time his
sob lengthens out into a sigh at the lifting touch, and he leans into your
power, rocks his head a little as if it was your hands holding up his head and
neck, as if testing the support for a well-known shape. His lips are dry and
his throat swallows convulsively and it takes a try and then another, a soft
hacking catch, before his rhythmic whistling sighs become something like a true
purr, or as close as he gets. You're still sure you hear distress in the sound,
and he still keeps trying to reach and catch at your fingers as they cross his
face, threads of power that fan uselessly into wisps the moment they touch your
skin.
But the touching and the purring seem to help, and by the time you're finished
speaking his eyes are open again, tired and unfocused but more present in a way
that you couldn't describe if you were asked – but even in his scarred and
inflamed face you know what it is to see through those eyes, and you know
moments before his mouth moves that he will manage your name - and he does,
though slurred to almost taken over by the lisped sibilant at the beginning,
still straining to look at you.
"Hey, I'm here," you say again, quiet and steady. The awake parts of your head
are full of updates on Empire business, and you scramble for something to
babble about, trying to give him a thread to follow, with which to pull himself
up to consciousness - it's hard to find the words sometimes, now that you can't
fall into the easy rhythm of beginning a sentence and finishing it in your
head, and so you wind up with a piecemeal of sentence fragments and nightly
errata. "We're here, you're here with me, I'm not going away - the succession
council is nearly over, you've got most of a cycle to rest and recover right
now -”
Astris is still sloughing off the clouding drag of sleep, only half-listening,
blinking as if trying to clear a film away, and you can almost see his
cognition battering itself against the drugs' barriers, nearly as visible as
the remnant wisps of his psionics rippling suppressant-trapped like reflected
water under his skin. "...S – s'press'nts –" he manages, missing the sounds
that take the most breath, and he must have heard you when you said it, even
still mostly dreaming, that means he heard you – "You said – Sollux –"
question-inflected and shaking his head thick-tongued fangs-bared frustrated,
shoulders already quivering just with the effort of speaking.
And you're glad you're still up against a chair, just in case the romcom trope
of fainting from sheer pity is something that can actually happen to a person,
as you lean in, trying to keep your face just at the distance where it's
easiest for him to see you - "Yeah, Astris, you're on a lot of drugs at the
moment - I could name them all if you want - you need all of your energy right
now to recover," You stroke his face as the soft buoy of levitation cradles his
head, the backs of your fingers dragging sopor-sticky against his cheek. "And
because it could get dangerous if you woke up too confused. Won't always be
this way, love -"
"Better not be – or –" And he mutters something about his claws and what you're
fairly certain is supposed to be the name of a body part, either in an old
dialect or else just slurred past recognition, but you're still almost sure you
hear familiar sarcasm through the confused unfocused anger, and the recognition
warms you.
He twists again in the hold of your power, testing its support, as if to break
free – old diffuse caged-in stifled anger chasing confused struggles for memory
across his face evident even through bandages, even through the opacity of his
thoughts to you without the outreaching of psionics that laid them out for you
to read – "Have I –" He's having trouble spitting this out, beyond forming the
concept and physically moving through the words, and you leave him time;
understand when he finishes – "Been... confused, have I tried to –" To hurt
you, you know he's trying to say, flinching against even the concept, tensing
all over under the sopor.
You breathe out softly, quick to reassure, "No, not like that, as long as you
know I'm here you haven't tried to lash out, don't worry, at this point I could
probably handle you even if you weren't on the drugs and even if you didn't
even recognize me - it's just - wouldn't want to disintegrate some poor
medicnician who startled you -" and you laugh tenuously, spreading your palm
out across his sternum underneath the thin enveloping layer of slime, warm and
soothing.
"Mmn, you could," Astris murmurs, satisfied, as if he'd forgotten how powerful
you'd become until you reminded him. Struggles into something like a smile, but
there's still that note of banked panic beneath his calm, of painted-over
light. The muscles in his face cooperate only slowly and his eyes keep trying
to droop closed and for a moment they succeed; balk back open in an urgent
fluttering and half-spark again as he clings to being awake and with you. "Keep
dreaming I'm back there – keep dreaming – they know you're coming for me –
they've cut my power off – and they're – they're about to –" Still focused on
you, face pressed close into your palm, and you don't realize until he reaches
a question he can't ask that looking at you also means not looking down – "My
hands," he says, close to whispering, "I'm numb all over, but – my hands –" Of
course – local anesthetic. He can't feel them.
And your heart twists in your ribcage and you're quick to answer, still
stroking his face, anchoring, trying to keep him present against the terrors
and doubts - "Oh, love, they're there, all right, you're doing fine, you're in
between reconstructive surgeries," you hadn't wanted the downer of reminding
him, didn't want to bring to mind the tenuousness of his will to live, didn't
want to risk why are we bothering with this charade or halfhearted pleas for
you to turn away, but - "They'll be doing more work on your hands in -" both of
your hands are on him and so are your eyes, you can't check your phone, you're
cast adrift in your time-sense - "a number of hours, enough for you to rest.
When exactly... is contingent on whether you want to witness some ceremonies in
the meantime -"
"Ceremonies," he repeats, slurring away most of it, like it takes the
repetition to get the concept fully through to his blurred-over thinkpan. But
once he does he still understands more than you said out loud. "Depending on –
how much of this you can get out of my system by then – they may regret –" He's
stopped by a string of wet muffled coughs that seems to end only when his body
is too weak to sustain the movement – and thinking that, it ends distressingly
quickly. "- Inviting me." His smile is watery, his eyes glazed over yellow
after the coughing fit, his voice raspier, but still he rolls his shoulders a
little and manages, "It's your victory. You want me there – you know I'm not –
a civilized, sane thing." Bitter and a little vicious and somehow a warning,
but still he sounds somehow more like himself saying it.
And you can't help but smile hearing that. "It's my first priority to keep you
safe - in more than one sense of the word - but it'll take a single text
message to make sure what's left of her will be doused in extremely strong
accelerant... and at that rate it shouldn't be hard for you to do the honors."
You're uncomfortably aware that you can only know the tiniest fraction of what
there is to be angry about, but that fraction is more than enough. The Condesce
hurt your matesprit and you've been too exhausted, too busy first engineering
the coup and Astris' rescue and then caring for him, to feel the clean
vindictive satisfaction a troll is supposed to feel about disposing of a threat
to their matesprit's well-being, and it's - so genuinely ordinary that it's
almost bizarre.
"That right is yours more than it’s any one of ours." You know your eyes are
overly bright and your voice rough with sudden vehemence, your mind filled with
the last, worst moments of the Battleship Condescension’s final flight, and the
knowledge that everything you achieved was his, and won by pain.
He turns his head slowly, all strain against lassitude and wincing slowness,
and presses his lips to your hand, dry and unmoving, eyes locked to yours the
whole time, a heavy silence settling over both of you. (Shared memory and the
quiet of the present strange set against old chaos and fear, as much seeking as
offering comfort –) "Then I'll take it," his voice a scoured-down growl that
comes from that remembered place, and he relaxes his head and neck back into
the hold of your power and for the first time looks away from you, up to the
ceiling half-unseeing. He doesn't thank you, just adds, as if from far away,
"In the dreams. Sooner than let you have me, they would –" Even exhausted to
the point of burnt-down unfiltered he hesitates, fangs resting against his
lower lip, harsh-breathing – "It won't be clean, or quick, but – it's an end.
But... I always know you're coming – and I always – I want you to reach me
first. I want you to stop them." The closest to thanks he can offer.
The closest he can say to what he can't yet, and you bend down closer and kiss
him softly on the mouth, keeping your hand there too, every point of contact
you can, not really noticing that you're tearing up until leaning forward makes
you have to gasp suddenly and swallow against the sting in your throat. You
want to say so many things about keeping him with you, about the future; things
that he's not ready to hear, that if he pushed them away would turn you to a
sobbing wreck. So you settle for, "Thank you," for saying what he can say,
thick-throated and barely voiced above a whisper, and, "I’m always yours."
He makes a soft sound when your lips lift from his, something close to content,
and his smile is a simple, fleeting thing, belonging to this moment and meaning
nothing beyond it as his eyes sink closed, dreamy and fading, speaking soft and
softer until he's only mouthing words, "You're here with me, it's really you...
really... here..." Forms love and only and here again and garbled scraps of old
language and starts awake only mid-word, only when his tongue touches fangs to
lisp what might have been your name and pricks a tiny bead of gold and he
gasps, yanked from near-sleep, staring at you like a beacon, as if his eyes
could cling to you all on their own, without holding light to issue from them.
"Keep me –" Startling-clear before his speech dissolves again, old words or
gibberish ones – finally – "Wait – keep me awake, I don't want to go back yet
–" Climbing back in slow neuron-by-neuron motion to his lucidity of only a
moment ago – "Want to stay – with you for a while – please?"
"As long as you want," you say, and in moments like this where you can't quite
find words you can anchor him with your hands, tracing your thumb over his
cheek and up along his horns, saying his name again and again.
~~~
==> Astris: see this through.
It takes hours to get your body cleaned up and dried off and dressed - actually
dressed for a function, simple loose black robes embroidered with your sign -
and it would be just another sequence of events that happen to you, witnessed
from the outside, blurred with the edges of drugged sleep. Except Sollux is
with you the whole time, and everything he does, he asks first, or at least
warns you - and getting into clothes, even with his help, is the first time
you've moved some of those muscles beyond strained twitches in centuries - and
you can't, won't just let it drift through, you are here even if your eyes
wobble tired from following too much movement, even if your hands are locked
into ungainly heavy dressings filled with medical sopor (the blueblood came to
help with that part; it was too specialized for Sollux to do himself, but you
got to see - stitches and wire and translucent temporary skin but more intact
than you ever would have -)
And every time you see yourself, every time a hand touches your skin you
stumble across inflamed and open places, wounds that you wouldn't have thought
of that way for uncountable sweeps, wouldn't have thought of at all, as much as
you could help it, until inevitably she forced you - and you flinch from seeing
or feeling but Sollux doesn't recoil, and in the steadiness of his hands you
can let your eyes blur out of focus and let the canvas of your body be
shapeless and unfamiliar and neutral.
Every time your mind drifts you find yourself reaching for your psionics,
sifting through vivid daymares of failed system checks and disorientation and
still you know they're right to have you medicated - you could half-wake and
lash out and you know you are nothing like safe, that hundreds of sweeps
distilled you into the most vicious and destructive parts of yourself, a
mockery of a troll, even more awake than you've been yet before you still don't
trust yourself - but you trust him to protect the world from you, at least
right now. The reservoir of energy is a little less empty every time you try to
tap it, and you keep trying, instinctive and obsessive, worrying at it as if
for comfort. Sollux keeps telling you that you won't need it for very much,
beyond shaping and forming a spark, and the concept is so foreign to you it
almost doesn't register.
He carries you and you drift, lapped around and laced with his power, staring
up into the abyss – a thought flickers through your formless dozing once, that
his arms must surround you, that you wish – a greenish smudge in dark returns
your gaze; you have eyes, but they are better for feeling the movement of air
stinging at wetness than for seeing – he carries you and for a while a wisp of
some sense opens to you and you feel that you are rising, rocking – but by the
time you land your eyes are dry again and you've forgotten again how to feel
the slowing, the pull of the planet, the stop.
"It's going to be easy," he says, and gives your arm a light squeeze. "We'll
tell you when to do your thing. Don't worry about it." Are you worried about
it? You're fretting over something, but you don't know what; the component
parts of your emotions are opaque to you, hiding somewhere under a remnant fog
of drugs, under fragments and echoes of pain and missing data-feeds and maybe
that itself is what's disturbing you -
And you lose some time despite your best efforts; you remember the four-wheel
device you're reclining in when you surface, and the blueblood - same as the
one who's been acting as medic - is giving some overly stuffy speech about
Empire and honor and tradition when you surface -
Surface in the open, on a high dais in the moonlight, where the crowd surrounds
from all sides but blessedly at a distance - but Sollux is next to you, and the
blueblood moves aside and you see -
You see, and the world goes starkly into focus.
At first the scene seems deconstructed, a surreal piecing-out of memory and
fear and imagination. The Heiress is so small, her horns barely longer than
your own, and yet she is standing.
Standing over - her, you would know those horns in the fractional shadow of
their silhouette with your eyes half-closed, you know - the head now shorn, the
body stripped of its garments - laid out on the ground, at the center, on
ancient stone whose cracks and fissures you can feel yourself etching into
memory, you have seen her nearly every night of your life but never - naked
gray skin bruised and sliced, the weak ooze of fuchsia blood, the unmoving
ribcage.
In your mind the air tastes thick and foul with blood, rancid salt, chill and
stagnation (You have lain antiseptic and half-comatose for nights, whirr of
scrubbed air, sopor astringent-clean and smelling of the yawning edge of sleep
and only dreams have come through so vivid –) in your mind the cold is sinking
and abyssal and leaks out from the thing broken on the slab rolling across
stone to drench you –
In your mind laughter echoes, slicing and malicious and empty as a hole in the
world, those voids that pulverize light and swallow stone –
But the smell of fresh blood cuts through vivid and impossible, not your blood,
hers, hers - welling up viscous-slow from the crack that opens up under the
Heiress' claw.
And you have had your fill of fear, you are passed through fear and emerged
from it and you don't need to clear the illusions from your sight, don't have
to claw away the warpings and leachings-through of memory from the real,
because you are the blazing descent of this sickening ruin to the ground that
drinks its blood, you are the gnarled war-shredded wreck of one monster that
defeated another, and there will be a choice, there will be the splitting and
you will reimmerse yourself into the confines of terror to fight through it
like a pursued beast through a swamp or choose to be cut free of it – but not
yet, now you will watch the claws and fangs of the Heiress complete the
destruction of your tormentor, the remnants of your power pulsing thinly
triumphal through you, and know that you are not the cliff-face in the dark but
you are the wave that drove the ship against it, you are still Death, even
weakly haloed in dilute gloaming light –
The living Empress cuts through skin and cracks bone, bare-handed, some
distant-aeon whisper of memory says that this is part of the rite - digs into
the chest with razor claws and scoops her prize free, gelid-wiggling, slow and
dreamlike - and Sollux standing next to you is braced careful, attuned to her
every movement, you remember moirail and knowledge swallowed down and hidden
from yourself -
Simple, methodical, her hands, and she lifts the heart to her lips and tears
with her teeth, chews and swallows piece by piece - face stained with tyrian
purple that gleams in the moonlight, and you cannot see either relish or
distaste in her - only that it quivers and ceases to move in her hands, almost
at once, and the blood runs down her chin - near-silent, but the crowd almost
invisible to you begins to make a noise, whispers that run gradually to a
massive roar -
Until there is nothing left of what was her bloodpusher, and the new Empress
licks fragments and congealed blood from her fingers, and a silent gesture with
her arm brings a troll closer carrying a can. She takes it up in her own hand
and pours the contents over the empty carcass on the ground, wafting off vapors
so pungent your eyes sting, and when she is done she turns to you directly.
"From here it is yours by right," she says, and her voice rings out small and
sure and clear and utterly solemn, and she licks her lips. Then she takes a
step back, and another.
You are aware, in some miniscule itching way in the very back of your thinkpan,
that all Alternia – no, all the colonized universe, eyes in every disc and
spiral of galaxies where you brought death and empire – watches you now; but
you can hardly see beyond this circle of stone, beyond the swimming grayness of
your periphery, it doesn't matter. In some way, in every way that you can
reach, you are alone with this task and this corpse and history and anger and –
And you try to call three spectres into the circle of your mind, to see the
faces of your friends and form the thought, in vengeance also for you – some
moment on the First Ship and the taste of free air and their smiles; or even
the unworldly red of eyes that saw into some other, kinder, place, at least,
just the color to carry with you.
But you can barely even feel the shifting-humming presence of Sollux behind
you, hardly bear the weight of your own intent, and the images escape you; you
face the powerless husk with its gaping splintered ribs and its nest of purple-
black congealed – wires – remnants of arteries and its shrieking silent
laughter and you will destroy every molecule left that encodes the identity of
the one who did this to you, you will unwrite her name from the vast eternal
memory of the universe word by word if you have to, you latch onto the source
of your light and you could reduce her to ashes yourself without the flame,
claw out every drop of light left in you and burn yourself to cinders in this
and destroy –
You make the spark, a thin snip of power, and the pyre roars as it ignites.
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