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Chapter Text

Karkat practically flies up the stairs to the meteor’s roof. He can’t hear anything over his own breathing, but he feels the snapping of blood from blood.

His powers are not what you’d call “useful.” More “irritating.” Or actually, try “fucking asinine”! More than once had he jerked away from resting his eyes (never sleeping) at Fuckno o’clock to his rapidly-expanding powers informing him that somebody was feeling a bit sad and bugged him until he found them and made them feel better.

But it means he has some insight. He feels when things are wrong. And oh fuck, are they ever wrong. He feels like he’s going to throw up, but he just forces himself to fall up the steps even faster. Don’t be late again. Don’t fucking do that, Vantas.

He’s wheezing by the time he reaches the top of the staircase, twists the doorknob desperately and basically collapses through the door. It’s dramatic, but that’s all you can say about it.

“What. Are you idiots. Doing.”

He stumbles out, heaving in breaths as he takes in the scene, brain working furiously to compensate for the terror thrumming in his veins and the pounding of his head.

Terezi half-turns towards him, knuckles wrapped tight on the grip of her cerulean-soaked swordcane. For the first time Karkat can even fucking remember since he met her, she isn’t smiling. Her face is a flat mask. Gamzee flickers in and out of sight, shadows lengthening, snapping back, contracting to dense lines, and dark chuckles rise from the general latitude of the clown. Vriska bleeds out on the hard regolith, pierced lung filling up with blood. Karkat can feel her dying from the staircase. Eridan and Kanaya are midway through circling each other, Eridan the closer of the two to Karkat.

“Karkat,” Terezi says flatly. “Good of you to join us.”

Eridan twists around, expression flashing equal parts anger and fear- Kar’s here? that fuckin peon. It’s not what it looks like! It’s almost comical, except not even a little bit. Too late, he realises his mistake and turns again, back to the real threat. By the time he does, Kanaya is mid-leap, snarling and chainsaw revving as she bears down on the violetblood. He makes to bring up his wand, but she pulls down sharply, and his right arm neatly separates at the elbow, and she kicks him in the chest.

Eridan sprawls at Karkat’s feet, winded, violet splattering across the rock. Kanaya advances towards them, taking a step out of her way to bring her heel down on his wand. It snaps in half. For a second, the only noise is the roar of the chain saw, and then-

“Maryam, stand fucking down,” he screeches, scrambling forward to stand between her and the prone troll. He has an empty hand towards her, as if that can stop the teeth of the chainsaw.

She hesitates for a second. “He destroyed the Matriorb,” she replies curtly. Her face is hard, but she is shaking with rage. A laugh in the distance distorts to the limits. “He has doomed us.”

“We are on a cloning facility. Stop. Please.” Behind him, Eridan stares in muted horror at the new endpoint of his arm. Seadwellers are tough, but if Kanaya doesn’t finish him off, bloodloss might. “We can rebuild, trust me, but he has to live first.”

Kanaya purses her lips, still trembling slightly. “I’m not helping him,” she said after a moment.

Karkat almost sags with relief. Get her away from him; don’t let her change her mind. He jabs a finger to the side. “Vriska. See if there’s anything you can do.”

Her gaze sharpens and she turns to Terezi and Vriska.

Gamzee is visible now, tilts his head to the side and frowns as if something’s not gone the way he expected it.

Kanaya sprints towards Vriska, roughly shoving Terezi out of the way as she skids to a stop beside the girl bleeding out. Terezi stumbles back wordlessly. Karkat focusses his attention on Eridan. “You’re alright,” he hisses between breaths. “You’re fine, you fucking murderer, you’ll be fine, and I will tear you a new one.” He grabs the seadweller’s ridiculous scarf and winds it around the wound. The Pulse is feeding him information he has no idea how to use, but every time he does something right it thrums deep in his bones, and his shaking fingers yank the knot tight. By the time he’s done, the scarf is soaked in blood, but it’s no longer gushing out of him like a juicebox with a hole in the bottom. Karkat sighs and, as fucking stupid as it sounds, actually relaxes. Eridan might actually live at this rate. And then he starts shuddering.

The seadweller is delirious, eyes unfocussed and he rakes at the grit and the gravel with his good arm, beginning to arch his back and kick his legs. His remaining hand flails, almost catching Karkat in the face before it’s pinned under his makeshift medic’s knee.

Karkat doesn’t know what to do. He never had to deal with fucking seizures.

Eridan croaks something unintelligible, still shaking wildly as Karkat tries to keep him down.

“Terezi,” he calls, turning to her. She looks almost awkward, hovering nervously a few feet from where Kanaya is furiously tending Vriska’s wound. “I need you to knock Eridan out so he doesn’t hurt himself.”

For a long second, she doesn’t move, doesn’t turn from Kanaya uncaptchaloguing bandages and a medicine kit, mumbling “You’re okay, you’re okay, you’ll be okay” on front of her. She’s staring at the hole in Vriska’s chest.

Karkat would be the first to admit he’s a shitty leader. None of his plans ever go off without a hitch, his style is best described as abrasive with a side of asshole, and he micromanages like a fiend. But he knows his team. He knows what they need. And he knows her.

Terezi eventually looks over at him, still not moving. “I’m not strong enough to knock him out myself, dickhead,” he says through gritted teeth.

Terezi needs something to do.

Her gaze flickers from him to Eridan for a long moment, and then her shoulders fall from their tense stance, and she begins to stumble across the empty rock towards him.

Gamzee is shaking his head, agitated. Terezi kneels down and decks Eridan in the face. The seadouche’s head snaps back and hits the ground, his eyes fluttering closed and his limbs finally, mercifully, stopping. Karkat can feel the damage it does, but he’s got Blood powers, not fucking body powers. They’re trying to keep the asshole alive long enough to be worried about brain damage.

Karkat leans on her in exhaustion and gives her an awkward pat on the back as he sits up straight. “Look after him. If the scarf starts bleeding through, call me or Kanaya.” He stands, feeling like he’s run a marathon, and sighs in relief, trying to ignore the roiling knot of fear in his stomach.

“This ain’t fucking it,” something growls. With a start, Karkat realises it’s Gamzee. The clown is shaking, the flickering flashstep around him stretching and moving further and further. “This ain’t how it goes, motherfucker.” Juggling clubs drop from his sylladex.

“Gamzee, what the fuck are you doing?” Karkat demands, even as he feels through his blood like the whole universe had tipped onto its side and his stomach flips. Something is cosmically wrong. “Stop fucking about, you idiot.”

He pauses, stabilising for a half-second, glancing at Karkat.

There’s something like a jump-scare in chemical form as they make eye contact, and Karkat feels carbonic acid fizzing in his veins.

“…Nah.”

He flickers to nothing and reappears above Vriska and brings his club down. Kanaya’s reflexes are quick, and she yanks the stabilised troll out of the club’s path just before it cracks into the meteor, sending flecks of stone flying up with the force of the blow. “This bitch is supposed to be dead.”

Kanaya snarls, dragging Vriska in a circle behind her and pulling out her lipstick. Gamzee bats it aside, swinging a club almost lazily through the air and aimed at Kanaya’s head. It makes contact with a sickening crunch, and Kanaya falls to the side.

Karkat rushes to the fight, Terezi hot on his heels. Karkat barely has time to register the gathering glow coming from Kanaya before he has to duck as Gamzee swings again. The sickles fall into his hands, and he slashes twice at the purpleblood’s chest, biting nothing but air. A split second later he flinches as Terezi blocks a blow that was about to crash down onto his skull.

“Fuck, Gamzee,” Karkat screams, twirling around and going back-to-back with Terezi, guard up. “What the fuck is wrong with you?”

He keeps his eyes scanning across the dark-grey stone of the meteor. Three seconds pass, and he can hear Terezi’s quick breaths behind him over his own.

“You alright?” He murmurs.

She exhales a shaky, humourless laugh. “I don’t think Vriska killed Equius and Nepeta,” she replies.

Karkat’s eyes widen. “Shit.”

“Yeah.”

Gamzee flickers into visibility to Karkat’s right, and he tenses, ready for the gangly fucker to try to rip him apart again, but he’s gone as soon as he appeared. Karkat feels Terezi tense in response, and he scowls. Gamzee could be well beyond everybody still alive on the meteor combined. Or he could be just a little stronger than Equius, just a little quicker than Kanaya. Karkat had never kept track of the stoner’s actions until he’d fucked up the King, and after that he’d been busy. Stupid. Stupid stupid stupid.

Karkat grips his sickle tighter to stop it shaking. Are they totally fucked?

Kanaya groans, stirring. “Think three of us can take him?” Terezi asks.

Karkat snarls. “If we die to that stoned fuck, I’m going to kill myself.” It’s not the most sensible answer, but it’s one Terezi apparently understands, because he feels her steel herself just a little bit.

There’s a rush of air and he feels rather than sees as Terezi slashes wildly to keep Gamzee at bay. Karkat twirls, barely catching his club with the inside of the sickle, yanking down and around so the bash goes past them harmlessly. Terezi scores a small cut across Gamzee’s forearm before he disappears again. This time, Karkat can track him as the Pulse attunes him to a quiet plip-plip-plip as drops of blood hit the rock.

“What is happening?” Kanaya asks. She sounds dazed.

“Gamzee’s gone mad,” Terezi replies tersely. “Can you fight?”

Before she can answer, Gamzee flickers to solidity on front of Eridan. He seems to be working something out, staring at the unconscious seadweller with a puzzled expression.

It’s too far for Karkat to make out the words Gamzee mutters, but somehow, he knows exactly what they are: He ain’t supposed to live either. The club raises.

Karkat doesn’t think- he flings his sickle as hard as he can at the clown with a scream.

Gamzee sways out of the way, and instead of slicing his head in two, it nicks his ear. He quarter-turns, and Karkat can just make out blazing purple eyes as the weapon clatters to the ground twenty metres away. Karkat is drowning in the Pulse, barely able to hear over the sound overlaying his vision. A quiet glow filling Kanaya, knitting her fractured skull back together, Vriska possibly stable but asleep, and Eridan, weak but alive. For now.

Then there’s him, Terezi, and Gamzee. Terezi’s blood looks like battle lines and manoeuvres, compared to the nonsensical lines and trap whorls and mad spirals in Gamzee’s. Karkat’s own crashes in his ears, and he reaches for his weapons sylladex to pull out something, anything. He lands on one of the daggers Spades kept berating him to carry, reverses his grip, and advances on the troll.

Gamzee turns, smile widening until it fills his face. “Shit, brother,” he says slowly, captchaloguing a club and touching a finger to his ear gently. “I’m just doing what needs to be done.” He gives a modest shrug, and the club returns to reality. The finger roams over it, trailing the small amount of purple blood onto the weapon. Purple on olive. Karkat chokes. Gamzee grins. “But now I get to make a motherfucking rainbow.”

Kanaya groans, rolling onto her front and trying to prop herself up on her hands- they give out, and she sprawls to the ground again, until she manages to make it up into genuflection, steadying herself with a hand against the pitted rock. “What just happened?” She repeats, raising unsteadily. Karkat puts out an arm and she grabs it to steady herself.

“Kanaya, get your chainsaw,” Terezi says, crouching slightly and preparing to move towards the clown. Karkat borrows the conclusion: she’s preparing for a difficult fight. Terezi can’t use her speed to the fullest advantage in case she ends up too far away from Karkat, and Gamzee can pick them off one at a time. Karkat is getting defence buffs from protecting Vriska and even some from Eridan, but if he starts to move too much onto the offensive, he’ll lose that.

“Try not to kill him,” Karkat says, wondering if they could even if they wanted to. “Limbs are okay,” he adds.

No response. Karkat glances at Terezi, and she sniffs, clearly not sold. After a moment, she nods. They begin to creep forwards slowly towards Gamzee. Kanaya stands beside the bodies for another moment, still shaking her head clear.

It doesn’t look like flashstepping, he notes distantly. Gamzee just laughs and shatters into bits. Karkat ducks as a club goes whistling by his head, lashing out with the dagger. It comes back dashed in purple. They’re getting hits in, but they would have to keep doing that for the next two days to take down a purpleblood. They have to keep getting lucky. Gamzee only has to get lucky once.

Kanaya revves her chainsaw, hefting it and joining their defensive huddle. “Do we move towards Eridan?” She asks.

Karkat almost laughs- a minute ago she was ready to kill him. Maybe she just wants the pleasure herself. “Fuck if I know. This is worse than the Black King. Maybe one of us drags Vriska over and the other two guard them.”

Neither of the other two say anything, but Kanaya- well, she glances at him expectantly.

“Wh- right.” Karkat crouches and grabs hold of Vriska’s hood. “Don’t you dare die, you fuck,” he tells the comatose figure as he begins to drag. He flinches as above his head chainsaw meets club and there’s a horrific woodchipper noise. He doesn’t look up (it might cost him his fucking skull), just keeps yanking Vriska along. Another few droplets of purple sprinkle onto Vriska’s outfit, and Terezi snarls in victory.

It takes twelve nerve-wracking goddamn seconds, but they haul the two injured trolls into a pile, and Karkat stands up and rejoins their now expanded triangle. He thinks he sees Gamzee to his left and flings his dagger as hard as he can towards the spectre. To his right, he hears Terezi grunt as she blocks a club to her leg with her cane. Kanaya bears down with the chainsaw, but Gamzee’s already danced back, flickering steps taking him back a few metres. Karkat reaches into his sylladex again in desperation and comes back with-

Thunk.

Why didn’t he think of this earlier?

Chapter Text

Shields were not a commonly used weapon on Alternia, despite their obvious appeal. Pre-Imperial warring Fuchsia-led states had been content to throw lowbloods at one another without regard to casualties, so they hadn’t been needed. Against a psychic they weren’t much use, and on a battlefield, they needed to be co-ordinated and disciplined to be worth using. Not Alternia’s style.

Against a sole opponent armed largely with speed and strength, however…

Karkat grins without humour as the rectangular wooden and metal barrier drops into existence around his left arm.

Gamzee appears to his right, and Karkat pivots, blocking. The blow connects, jarring Karkat up his arm (hurts like a motherfucker), but Terezi stabs forwards, catching Gamzee in his wrist. His club drops, thudding onto the floor. He flicks back again, expression unreadable. Something’s changed, and he stays off them for almost thirty seconds, flashstepping all around the trio and looking for openings. Karkat can hear their three fraymotifs harmonising, but against against the discordant notes of Gamzee’s he can barely focus on them. He digs deep, pulling out all the stops the game gives. His psybuffs are draining almost as fast as he’s filling them, and it’s freaking him out (which is draining them faster), because his are almost the best in the fucking game.

“How do we do this?” He asks, each of them still scanning madly, flinching at each glimpse of purple. “We keep injuring him, but we’ll get tired before he will.” He wonders how true this is for Kanaya. Her blood feels… off. [Persistence predatory] is playing in his mind’s ear when he focusses in on her.

Before anybody can reply, Gamzee drops out of flashstep a dozen metres away, in Karkat’s line of sight. His expression turns to quiet confusion as he attempts to jerk back into the flashstep and can’t. “Something’s changed,” Karkat says slowly. “He’s just standing there.”

“Do we charge him?” Terezi asks.

Before Karkat can say no, Terezi, we do not charge a murderous purpleblood that we’ve barely been holding our own against for the last two minutes, Kanaya dashes towards him, and Terezi, startled, follows.

“God fucking dammit,” Karkat says under his breath, hauling after them. So much for the circle of protection. The shield slows him down, and he gets a good look as Kanaya brings her chainsaw down like an executioner’s blade. Gamzee bats it to the side with his club, then employing an open-handed slap with his injured hand. Kanaya falters, grunts, and then brings her chainsaw around to try again, this time with a horizontal slash-thrust. Gamzee sways backwards out of its path, and then Terezi is stabbing and slashing like a whirling top. He blocks each attack with his remaining club, and then Karkat’s there as well. He doesn’t try anything fancy, he just holds up the shield and charges. He doesn’t expect to connect, just put Gamzee off-balance enough in dodging that one of the other two can get a good hit in.

This means he is un/pleasantly surprised when the shove connects and Gamzee is pushed back a step. The two of them look at each other in surprise for a moment, and then Karkat tucks down his head and shoves forwards again, hoping to keep the momentum they’ve got against Gamzee until one of the other two can do something significant. This time, Gamzee twirls his juggling club and sidesteps Karkat’s charge. Karkat barely manages to bring his shield up to protect him before Gamzee slams a kick against it and sends him sprawling across the floor, yelping in pain as the bones in his leg creak ominously. He grits his teeth and bites down the pain.

Kanaya moves into the hole Karkat leaves and hefts the chainsaw to and fro in a dizzying attack. Gamzee ducks, sways, and evades, ending with a precise shove on the flat of the chainsaw- you know, between the spinning teeth of instant amputation- which sends the last attack harmlessly past his head, and bashes as hard as he can down on Kanaya’s temple. She crumples and Karkat’s heart leaps in his throat as the club shatters.

The chainsaw deactivates as Kanaya’s fingers uncurl from the ignition, dropping the weight down onto Gamzee’s shoulder.

He winces as it impacts, and then again as Terezi shanks him in the arm. He pulls back, and she lets go of the cane sword, dancing out of range. He rips it out, shoving the chainsaw off his shoulder.

Terezi snaps her fingers, and Karkat tosses her his sickle. She stands a small way away from the clown as he fumes. Karkat gets to his feet, rolling his shoulders, and standing to fight. He pulls another dagger out, moving to try to circle around the clown and overwhelm his defences, but Gamzee turns suddenly and begins to batter Karkat with blows. It’s not Gamzee’s specibi of choice so he blocks most of them easily, but Gamzee’s speed is unnerving and he eventually takes a long gash on his right arm and drops his knife. A scarlet line runs up the arm, immediately soaking blood into his sweater. Gamzee winds back to kick again and Karkat braces behind the shield.

He feels the full rage of the blow that removed the Black King’s extra head slam into his little wooden and metal toy.

It shatters, of course, sending splinters into Karkat’s chest with enough force that they pierce the skin. Karkat goes ass over teakettle for about six metres, just getting a flash of teal as Terezi jumps up and slashes down at Gamzee. Then his head cracks against the ground, and he loses the thread. Colours flash, and his blood feels like acid.

You were neverwh-

-I saw them gothat way, maybe we-

-freakof na-

-ead back inthe game, boy. GET YOUR-

-love you-

When Karkat’s head isn’t exploding with pain, he glances up, the action sending his vision swimming again. Gamzee is missing a hand and inexpertly blocking a weapon he isn’t familiar with a weapon he isn’t familiar with. He’s losing ground and Terezi seems almost possessed, sickle and sword flashing in quick movements, snarling. Gamzee is compensating with raw power and speed, not even anticipating the attacks but just reacting to them once Terezi makes them, but it’s not enough, and after a few seconds, Terezi hooks the stolen sword cane with her borrowed sickle and turns, yanking, disarming the clown. The sword cane clatters to the ground behind her.

Gamzee stumbles, falling backwards onto his ass and stump of a hand. His expression turns from confused to understanding to amusement in a smooth parade, a slow smile spreading across his face. All a motherfucking joke, his eyes say, twinkling like he’s seen the trick. For a moment, he looks… normal. Terezi advances on him.

“Terezi, don’t,” Karkat croaks, head still spinning. He feels sick. “Arrest him or whatever the fuck, for fuck’s sake don’t kill him.”

He feels the Pulse pull on her, he tries to put authority, friendship, morality behind his words and make them stick, and then-

“He killed Nepeta and Equius,” she replies quietly.

-his blood falls flat. His objections die on his lips, and he closes his mouth.

She steps forward and shoves her sword through Gamzee’s throat. He gurgles once, and then falls back, the blade sliding out without moving. Dead.

Somewhere, far off in a distant reality, a clock that should never have been set ticking scythes decisively to a conclusion: JUST.

Chapter Text

The room is spartan, but Kanaya already has it set up with a bizarre array of equipment. Karkat slouches in.

“How is she?” Karkat asks, wincing as his dozen tiny puncture wounds protest. He sets an endurance fraymotif on, but he can still feel the pain.

Terezi stirs. “Coma.” She stands and gives him a hand.

“Will she wake up?”

“Don’t know. Kanaya says a non-Godtier wouldn’t.”

Karkat fishes for something reassuring to say, but he comes up empty. He closes his eyes, focussing on Serket’s Pulse. Her blood’s full of tiny tears all over, but nothing fatal that he can sense. “I think she’s on the mend.”

Terezi sniffs at him. “How can you tell?”

Karkat hobbles forward and motions to Vriska’s chest. “She was drowning in her own blood. It’s mostly gone now. I don’t think it’s physical wounds keeping her under. I think she’s recovering from everything that happened.”

“You mean me betraying her,” Terezi says in a quiet voice.

Karkat’s heart sinks. He pulls Terezi into a hug. “I meant her coming to terms with losing for once.”

Terezi hugs him back tightly, and Karkat… his expression has been several rungs below frown for the last six hours, but it lightens a notch. “I know you didn’t want me to kill him,” she sniffs into his shoulder.

He shrugs, pretends he’s okay. It doesn’t work. “I didn’t. I don’t think he would have stopped, though. You did what you had to.” He tries to believe that.

They stand there, clinging to each other for a few seconds. Karkat pulls back, tears pricking his eyes. Terezi stares at him sightlessly, and he sniffles. It’s hitting him, at last, through the fog of exhaustion. “We lost everybody,” he whispers after a moment. She says nothing, empty stare dropping to the floor as Karkat turns in shame. “I couldn’t—” keep them alive, he doesn’t manage.

Terezi shakes her head. “Not your fault. Those three went insane.”

“I didn’t want you to kill him,” Karkat continues, miserable. “I didn’t want to fuck up even worse than I already had.”

Terezi grips his shoulders, turns him reluctantly to face her. “Listen to me, Karkat,” she says. “You kept us all alive through the game and the Black King and when the victory fell apart. Not your fault.”

Karkat tries to meet her stare, but he keeps sliding away in shame. They sit down side-by-side on a gurney in silence.

Karkat cries, and Terezi hugs him.

--

Kanaya sighs in exhaustion and glances down at her patient. She could drain him of blood right now. She could just unwrap his bandages and let him bleed out. She could even just leave him to fend for himself and claim she didn’t notice his condition worsening.

Those thoughts hang in the air for a moment. She could kill him. He destroyed the Matriorb and killed Feferi. And her, technically. Her stomach aches.

She looks down at his pale face, neck gills fluttering pathetically as they try to suck in enough oxygen. Just hold them closed until they stop flapping. She could-

“hey KN,” comes a voice from the doorway. “ow,” it adds as its owner bumps into the doorframe.

Kanaya moves gracefully to Sollux’s side and offers an arm. “How are you feeling, Sollux?” She asks, trying to banish her earlier thoughts.

“eh, not too bad to be honest,” he responds. “i’m missing a bunch of teeth, but i don’t have a lisp anymore, so that’s pretty cool. be honest, i’m less insufferable like this, right?”

In spite of everything, this manages to make Kanaya smile a little. “You were never insufferable, Sollux.”

“tell KK you said that, he needs a laugh.”

“I’ll try to remember to pass it along.”

“this him?” he asks, looking towards Eridan’s medical gurney. Well, in its general direction.

Kanaya stares at it. “Yes. …He has suffered a great deal of blood loss, and I will have to teach Karkat how to properly react to seizures- he caused a significant amount of bruising, and I think it caused a breakage in his remaining arm while pinned.” She rubs her tired eyes with her free hand. She’s been awake long enough. She feels grey. “Not that I can blame him. He was not the trained medic in that situation. Overall, if there are no complications, he should recover. However, it is too soon to tell if he will avoid said complications.”

Sollux shuffles, reaching a hand out to follow across the seadweller’s arm. He feels shark smooth skin, and then down to the coarse bandages and the slightly wet, almost bizarre end of the arm. He draws his hand back and sniffs the air. The smell of blood wafts up. He makes a face. Bleh. “youre wondering if we should arrange some complications,” Sollux says after a moment.

Kanaya pauses before responding. But after all, if anybody would understand…

“…It merely seems unfair that he should be left alive at the end of this ordeal. Given his actions. And I have examined the cloning facilities. While they would allow us to create a great number of trolls, the paradox aspect appears to have shut down automatically. They would have only the genetic code of we the survivors to draw upon, which would not have sufficient diversity without a matriorb’s help. Not enough to rebuild the Empire. Not nearly enough to rebuild Alternia’s population. Perhaps eight hundred trolls, perhaps a dozen generations. If that. He… We are living in wait of our extinction.”

“does he need to die?” Sollux asks, tilting his head and looking curiously like Terezi.

“…I suppose the decision can be deferred, then,” she replies. “I do wonder, though. Does he deserve to live.” There’s a taught line in her voice, and she feels like if she follows it, there may be justice at the end.

Sollux is silent for so long that Kanaya is about to ask if he is feeling alright. Then: “killing him won’t bring her back.” He gazes sightlessly at Feferi’s killer. Then he blinks. “fuck, will it?” He asks suddenly. If Sgrub had been less of a garbage fire, that might have been a stranger question.

She sighs. “It will not.” But that’s not why she wants to do it. “He is responsible.”

“what would Karkat think?”

The answer is obvious. Karkat doesn’t want anybody to die. “He would have saved Gamzee,” Kanaya says. She isn’t sure if that’s a criticism or not.

“no shit?” He hasn’t seen the bodies—obviously. But Terezi brought him to the room where Gamzee had killed them, and he’d smelled them. Nearly thrown up. “KK is pretty forgiving.”

Kanaya stares at Eridan’s flushed face, examining his features. “…Yes.”

--

Karkat looks up as Sollux hobbles into the room, Kanaya following carefully beside him, pushing a medical cart out of the way.

Karkat stands up, and Terezi jerks awake with a snort as his shoulder stops being available. “Sollux you asshole,” he says hoarsely. “I’m going to hug you now. You don’t get a fucking choice in this.”

He collides with the yellowblood in sniffle and hug. Sollux smiles, weirdly zen about the whole affair as he wraps his arms around his friend and pats him on the back. “miss me KK?”

“Yes” is the muffled reply from somewhere in Sollux’s shoulder. “You shitheel, I thought you were dead.”

“’mnot.”

After a while, Karkat lets go, eyes red-rimmed with tears. He doesn’t see Kanaya blink in surprise as he wipes them away.

“hey TZ,” Sollux says as Terezi stands up. He holds his hand up for a bump, and she obliges. They both miss horribly and it’s the worst thing Karkat’s ever seen.

“Eridan is stable,” Kanaya says, and Sollux smiles as Karkat audibly sags with relief. “I cannot guarantee he will be fine- he lost a limb- but I have stopped the bleeding.”

“Thank fucking jegus.”

--

Vriska wakes up to a lot of pain, in a dim room with several loud beeping noises. She glances to the side to make out Terezi half-leaning against Kanaya. Both are asleep.

She manages to get as far as “Wht…” before slipping back into unconsciousness.

When she wakes next, Karkat is staring at her from the chair beside the bed. Hands in his lap, posture relaxed.

“Hey,” he says.

But his knuckles are blanched with the force he’s lacing them together with. So. Not so relaxed. She pats at her chest vaguely, as if trying to find something. She moves over the bandages and follows them to the centre, and after a minute, she finds the wound. “…Ow.”

“Yeah. Think you can fight anybody in this condition?” He asks. He’s had time to rehearse this, she can tell.

“It had to be done. I was trying to protect us,” she replies weakly.

Karkat shakes his head. “No, you weren’t.” He looks exhausted, but he still makes the effort to give her a proper telling off. “You were going on an ego trip. Protecting us- making us acknowledge that you’d saved us, without any help- that was just a handy byproduct.”

She squirms uncomfortably.

“Fucking look at yourself, Vriska. You couldn’t take a blind girl who wasn’t even a godtier. That’s not your call. You’re a heavy hitter. Congratulations. Don’t mistake that for having a brain.”

He fidgets for a minute. And then he sighs.

“But you fucking do. You’re at least as good at tactics as me. Better at combat. So, why couldn’t you see how stupid this was? Even Eridan’s plan wasn’t that shitbrained. And it was pretty shitbrained.”

She struggles to think of a response. It’s a bit unfair, having this conversation when she’s still woozy from having a current count of only one and a half lungs. Judging by Karkat’s expression, he knows, and that’s part of the point. “I…” wanted to be the one to win?

She wanted to die on her feet. Not hunted like a fucking dog. “I don’t like being helpless.”

He snorts. “Well then, heal up or get used to it quick.”

He looks awful. But then, she looks worse. He cards a hand through his hair, and frowns as some grit scatters from it.

“This can’t be how we do things. You can’t just do something that puts the rest of us at risk. If we’re going to survive this, which between you and me, I have no fucking idea how to do, we need to work to-fucking-gether.”

Vriska is exhausted too. But she also knows he’s right. “Okay,” she says quietly. “Okay, O wise leader. I’m not going anywhere.”

Karkat snorts. “No shit. Kanaya’s got you on bed rest until she says otherwise.”

“You could just kill me now,” she suggests. “It would heal me.”

Karkat shakes his head. “If it didn’t take Terezi’s wound as the thing that caused the death, and mine that just completed it. The game didn’t exactly give the heroic/just shit clear guidelines. We have no fucking clue how this works.” The unspoken comment is obvious. There’s no universe where that WASN’T a Just death.

Vriska falls silent. She hadn’t-

“You didn’t even think that through, did you,” he says, rubbing tired eyes. “God, story of your life.”

“Hey,” she protests weakly. “It’s only been like. eight times.”

Karkat laughs, actually laughs, and then winces. “Sure.” He nods to himself to a moment, grinning just a trace. “Eight. It’s good to know you’ve got your sense of humour back.”

“Fuck you,” she retorts, shifting with a gasp. Something is missing, tickling at the back of her mind.

Karkat’s eyes snap to her again, radiating concern. “Fuck, did something puncture? Should I call Kanaya?” He stands up, wincing as he stands up, hands resting on the rail on the gurney.

Vriska shakes her head, trying to pin it down. “Just- gog, Terezi stabbed me.”

He quirks an eyebrow, and when he smiles, she gets the weird feeling it’s not catharsis at her getting her shitty comeuppance, but more like… pride. “She did.” And then his expression goes dark again. “She had to.”

“I… I get it.”

He sits down heavily. “Yep.”

She figures it out. He hasn’t mentioned Tavros yet, which probably means-

“How many did we lose?”

Karkat’s eyes widen. “I didn’t realise you’d care,” he says, but the words are hollowed out, lacking any bite. She winces anyway. “Aradia exploded right at the beginning—were you there for that? I don’t remember. Anyway, we still have no idea why.” He takes a deep breath. “Nepeta. Equius and her, that was Gamzee. Feferi. Terezi killed Gamzee for killing the two of them, and Eridan is laid up on account of not having an arm anymore. Sollux is blind, courtesy of prince douchedweller, but he seems okay with it for some unfathomable doubledouche reason. Tavros.” Karkat fixes her with a stare, lets some anger out with his head tilted. It’s precise and somehow brutal, worse than yelling or a punch in the face, and she knows what’s next. “Did that have to be done, too?”

Vriska squirms. “I had-”

“No, don’t bother,” Karkat says, disgusted. “You were just finishing a job you started fucking sweeps ago. I’m going to check on Eridan.” He stands from the chair and walks towards the door.

“And Vriska?” he says, just before he leaves. She twists to see him. He looks beat. “I’m glad you’re alive. But I am fucking furious at you. Get some rest so I can yell at you some more.”

He leaves.

--

Kanaya catches up with him in the hallway. “Karkat.”

“Kanaya.” She’s blocking his way just a little bit.

“I have not had a chance to check up on you,” she says, shifting ever-so-slightly to still block his way past, without it being obvious.

“I’m… doing alright,” he says. Don’t let her see.

She knows that’s a lie. But she doesn’t know in what way it’s a lie. She can’t remember most of the fight. But he got knocked over by Gamzee at one point.

Or did he? She…

She shakes herself.

“Well… Alright,” she says. “If you have any issues, please tell me,” she says. She isn’t sure what’s happening.

He gives her a reassuring smile. “Of course. Yeah, of course. You’ll be the first to know. How are the patients doing?”

She blinks. “I- stable. They should recover.”

He grins. “That’s good news,” he says. It sounds like he’s trying to convince her as much as anything else, and she briefly wonders, do I look as exhausted as he does? As I feel? “Just saw Vriska. She’s talking, which is a good sign, right? She can’t be that hurt if she’s getting snarky again.”

She smiles a little. “Yes. It is a good sign.”

“Good. Good. I’m going to check up on Eridan, then. How’s he doing?”

“Stable. If he is asleep, it would be best if you don’t wake up.”

He nods. “Good to know. But other than that. Is he going to recover?” He’s looking at her intensely, as if he’s trying to read something off the back of her eyelids.

“Yes. But he has lost an arm. He will be less able to fight in future. Which may be to our advantage.”

“I’ll handle that,” he says, and she’s entirely thrown. “I’ll talk to him. Heading there now.”

And then he pats her on the shoulder reassuringly and pushes by her. She watches him walk off. He’s limping down to Eridan’s room.

She reruns some of that conversation as he disappears from her sight. That was… strange. Why did she…

She frowns.

He’s limping.

--

Eridan is propped up in the hospital bed with his eyes on the ceiling, half-closed. He looks. Bad. Gaunt, like he hasn’t eaten in days. That’s probably the strain of losing an arm.

“What’s up, asshole?” Karkat says by way of greeting.

Eridan visibly jumps. “Kar,” he says warily.

He leans on a chair before he drags it across the room and beside the bed. “Listen first, speak after,” he advises as he sits. Eridan opens his mouth, sees Karkat’s expression, and closes it again. “Good choice.”

Karkat begins to speak, and then chokes off. He takes a moment, blinks harshly, swallows, and tries again. “Feferi is dead. And Sollux is blind.”

Eridan flinches violently. “What?”

“Yeah. Figured. Kanaya is STILL wondering if she should just kill you and pretend it was an accident or a medical mishap or whatever. She won’t,” he adds after a second. “That’s partly because she’s worked out that the cloning facilities need live donors.” He doesn’t add that it’s because he used his ectobiologist credentials to turn the paradox features off. He doesn’t know if she knows, and at the present moment he doesn’t really care. He’ll turn them back on if they really need them. But he imagines they’re unlikely to.

“Fef’s… dead?”

“I assume you meant to get it the other way around?” Karkat retorts sarcastically. “Yes, you fucking idiot. You also blinded my best friend and destroyed the Matriorb.”

Eridan looks crushed. Karkat can feel the violet curdle in his veins, almost follow the racing thought process through the rush of emotions. I just killed Fef- I killed the Heiress, I killed a fuchsiablood-

Karkat lets the feelings whir for a moment until Eridan remembers he’s still there.

Karkat sighs. “Sollux and you need to get your shit together. You can’t keep fighting, if only for collateral damage’s sake. No more fucking fighting.”

And Karkat gets up abruptly, unrehearsed, and limps to the door. He’s too tired for this. He’s- well, he’s too tired.

“Kar? What happens now?” Eridan knots his good hand in the bedsheets nervously.

Karkat waves a hand. “What happens now is I go to sleep, and nobody wakes me unless someone is actively dying, which they better not be.” He walks away. “I’ll deal with this bullshit later.”

Eridan doesn’t hear it as Karkat slumps against the wall when he’s out of eyeshot. He definitely doesn’t hear it as the troll whispers “fuck,” and yawns wide enough to crack his jaw. Eridan doesn’t hear any of that.

With nothing else particular to do, Eridan settles back into bed. And thinks.

--

She’s walking down the hallway when she smells Sollux coming the opposite way. “Hey,” she calls out.

“Oh. hey,” he calls back.

She closes the distance. “What are you doing?”

“This… isn’t near my block, is it?”

She snorts. “Nope. You’re two corridors away.”

“well shit.”

She leads him towards it, and it’s halfway when he speaks again. “you can see, right? or smell or whatever.”

She tries to guide him around a corner. “It’s… a different thing. I can smell colours. Helps me navigate.” She hits the wall, and scowls. “Which, on a grey meteor is more difficult.”

Sollux snorts. “can you… teach me?”

She hesitates. She doesn’t know, but more than that, that implies they have time. That they’re not all going to be dead soon. “…Sure,” she says, because that other thing is too grim.

She drops Sollux off by his door and starts walking towards hers.

And then she stops, when she passes Tavros’ room.

She stares at it, not really breathing deeply enough to refresh the image, until it fades into the general impression of grey-different grey-grey again. She knows Kanaya is tending to the wounded, but the more time passes, the more she wonders why. Why are they even bothering? He’s out there somewhere, searching for them. Whenever he finds them, it won’t matter if they’re healed or not.

They’re going to die.

There’s a creak from somewhere deeper in the meteor and she flinches.

He’s coming for them, and he’ll kill them all.

So, this doesn’t matter.

She turns from the door and stalks off towards her own room.

--

Kanaya heads to the roof. She will only need a minute. Karkat is with Vriska, and Eridan… he is unwatched, so far as she knows. But she will not be long. If he has another seizure, it will be bad, but not fatal.

And if it is…

Well, there is justice in that, too.

The scene is almost forensically identifiable. A small spray, and then a neat puddle of cerulean, where Vriska fell to the ground. Eridan’s violet is a spray, arcing across the rock, sputtering out in strange directions, and his arm laying unregarded just beside it. A dash of jade, where she herself was struck. And here and there, little drops of purple and teal, evidence of the fight.

Those aren’t what she is looking for. She is looking for…

She comes up to Gamzee’s body and regards it. She feels. Floaty.

She can’t quite…

She blinks, and the laughter goes away. Which is strange, because she didn’t notice it in the first place. It just slowly was.

She kicks him over gingerly, and her face curls in revulsion as his head lolls to the side, revealing a broad rictus grin over his features.

She… looks around, until she locates the blade that he took from Terezi.

She kneels down beside it and picks it up.

Dashed with flecks of Gamzee’s own purple, and.

And.

Hm.

Across the edge of the blade, some of it mixing into Gamzee’s purple, is something bright red.

She touches it carefully, and stares at the tips of her fingers. Which are dipped in, she must assume, Karkat’s blood.

Chapter Text

--

Karkat sees Kanaya through the door, and speeds up nervously. She’s making notes on a chart.

“Hey,” he says quietly, scanning the room as he enters. The bed is empty. “Where’s Vriska?”

Kanaya looks at him. “Karkat, I have concerns about the health of some people on the meteor, and I would like to discuss them with you. Can you close the door and take a seat?”

Karkat closes it with a quiet click and leans in towards her, not sitting just yet. “What’s wrong? Who are you worried about?”

She sets down the clipboard on the desk beside her. “You.”

He frowns. “What? Maryam, unless you forgot, I didn’t get hurt.” He spreads his hands. “All my limbs, I still have two functioning eyes, and yes look at that, no holes where there shouldn’t be. I’m fine.”

“I have not examined you, Karkat.”

He stands. This is bad. “Listen, I don’t have time for this. You don’t have time for this. I appreciate the concern, but-”

“Sit on the bed, Karkat.”

He stares at her in disbelief. “I-”

“You are not leaving until you have been examined.”

“Maryam, I don’t want you poking around my naked body, especially when I’m fine.” His eyes narrow ever-so-slightly, and he listens to the Pulse. Her heart is beating steadily, calmly. He puts team hierarchy, trust, privacy, and—what the hell—embarrassment into the words, because he cannot let her see his wounds. Would you really force Karkat to sit here and be prodded when he doesn’t want to be?

He can read it in her Pulse. Yes.

“Sit on the bed.” Because he is not invincible.

His face twitches across a few emotions, but she meets his gaze calmly. “I have-”

“-Nothing else to do. I checked.” Because he has run himself ragged.

He opens his mouth to give another reason, but nothing comes out. “Kanaya, this is ridiculous,” he says at last. “I am your leader,” he tries.

“Yes. And for this moment, I am your mediculler. Sit. On. The bed.” Because he cares so much about everybody, but not about himself. So, I will have to care for him.

“I don’t- you can’t,” Karkat says, grasping for any straw.

“Karkat,” she says, calmly. Kindly, even. “I know.”

He doesn’t say anything.

“I know. It is okay. I truly do not care.”

Karkat’s breathing is shallow. He’s panicking. “I’m-”

“You are my leader.” She smiles at him. “You are my friend. And we are far past caring.”

He watches her with such a guarded expression, stance like he’s going to run at any moment. “Did Terezi tell you?” He asks, and his façade cracks a little. She sees disappointment, fear.

“The fight. Some of your blood got on Gamzee’s weapon.”

His shoulders drop, and he lets out a shaky breath. He sinks down to sit on the bed. “Fuck this,” he mutters. “Fuck this fuck this fuck this.”

“She learned as your server player,” Kanaya guesses. “That secret must have been weighing on your for…”

“Forever,” he mutters, so quietly she almost misses it. He takes a deep, angry breath and the walls are back up. “Okay. Fine. You don’t give a shit. That’s great. You can treat me now.” He moves to sit on the bed. “Fantastic.”

“Karkat, if you would like to talk-”

“I really don’t need to.”

“I understand, but this must have been… sweeps.”

“Nope,” he says. “Thanks, Kanaya, I’m flattered, but- no. I don’t need to talk about it.” It’s a lie, but she isn’t trying to pale proposition him, so she doesn’t push it.

She purses her lips. “Alright then.” And after all, if he does not want to talk to her about it, she cannot force him. She can only treat his physical injuries. “I was unconscious for a significant portion of the fight, and my memory in the aftermath is… not perfect. Afterwards, I was busy keeping two people alive. I will need you to tell me what happened, and if you have any injuries.”

He shrugs. “When you went down, me and Terezi held out long enough for him to get a blade through his arm. I pushed him off-balance with my shield, he cut at me, and then booted the fucking shield so hard I went flying. By the time I got back up-” she can tell by his voice that ‘got back up’ is a generous assessment of his condition at that point “-Terezi had cut off his hand. And then she stabbed him in the throat.”

“I see.”

“She had to do it,” he says.

“I know,” she says. “Well then, what about your own injuries.”

“Nothing to report,” he tells her, shrugging.

She purses her lips, frustration restrained. “I do not believe that. You said you were cut?”

“Not badly. It’s practically already healed.”

“Nevertheless, I will examine it.”

“But why?” He’s really starting to piss her off. She tries to remember that he has held this secret for his entire life, but all she can think is, Karkat is by far the most stubborn, idiotic troll I have ever met.

“Because I need to make sure you are safe.”

He gives her a reassuring, totally fake smile. “I’m fine, really,”

And then he flinches when Kanaya brings her fist down on the table hard enough to cause a massive BOOM.

“You,” she begins, eyes flashing and teeth glinting as she speaks, “did not sleep for a week. You were in a fight with a crazed lunatic who succeeded in killing two close friends. You are not fine, you are anything but fine, and I swear to the Universe itself that if you are not honest with me, you will quickly regret it,” she hisses. His heart thuds and something inside screams at him to fucking run from the scary rainbow drinker, but he feels rooted to the spot. The speed of the change leaves him dizzy. “Tell me.”

He… deflates. Looks away. “Some wounds where the shield splintered into my chest,” he mutters. “And where he got me down my arm. …I think I’ve hurt my leg.”

She makes a note of all of this. “Take your sweater off.”

He thinks about arguing, briefly. He thinks better of it and pulls it off.

She moves her chair closer to examine him. “Some of these will need to be pulled out with tweezers.” She swears. “If you had told me about this right away, it would have been significantly easier and less painful.”

He snorts as she starts gathering materials. “You were tending the others. Afterwards, you needed the sleep. Gog knows I did, too.”

She returns three minutes later. “This will hurt.”

“Do it.”

She takes a sponge and begins to dab it over the skin. He winces at the sudden chill, then yelps as it starts to sting where a few of the wounds reopened when he rushed down. “Christ, Maryam, what is that?”

“Iodine solution. It is meant to feel like that.”

“Couldn’t you have warned me?” He asks through gritted teeth.

“You could have told me,” she shoots back. “Do not ever attempt to hide wounds like this again.”

“Jegus, fine!”

She sets down the sponge and begins to prepare her instruments. “This will be more painful because you did not see fit to inform me. Reflect on that.”

“I said fine!”

She doesn’t believe him, but she can always threaten him again, so it hardly matters. “Lie back.”

He shifts back onto and lies down on the gurney. He stares at the ceiling, into the bright fluorescent strips as his mediculler leans over him and fixes her gaze on his wounds.

“Like the view?” He snarks.

“You know I do not.”

He tries to diffuse a bit of tension with a shaky laugh. “I can’t tell if you mean because of the wounds or because you’re-”

“Both. Either.” She turns and takes a sewing needle from the desk into one hand a pair of tweezers into the other. She takes his unsettled jabs in stride. “It is never pleasant to see a friend hurt like this.” She hesitates. “Do you want to be awake for this part?”

He grits his teeth and nods. “I have blood abilities,” he says with a shrug. “Might be useful.”

“Very well.” She pokes the needle into one of the wounds, and then pushes the tip of the tweezers through the hole. A second of fishing later, she pulls out a millimetres-long splinter out of the wound, and Karkat grips the railing of the gurney to stop himself from screaming.

Fucking hell, he doesn’t manage to say, but a pained breath escapes as she drops the splinter into a small metal dish. And then she does it again.

And again. And again. Fourteen splinters, some almost a centimetre long. By the end he’s breathing in sharp gasps, and he’s tearing up. His blood powers turn out to be fucking useless as far as the procedure is concerned.

“We are almost done here,” she says, and he lets out an exhausted rattling breath. She picks up the sponge again. “We have disturbed the wounds so this will sting more than before.”

“Just do it,” he replies shortly. She begins to clean the wounds carefully, wiping away the small amount of blood delicately. He casts a reflexive look at the door. But the only person who isn’t bedbound and doesn’t know is Sollux.

But still.

He sits there silently for a moment as she dresses the wound. The pain subsides from a crescendo to a background repetitive, insistent cymbal crash. “Fuck,” he whispers.

“Your chest will be fine within a few days, so long as you don’t strain yourself. They missed your grub scars, so there should be no long-term issues. In a few months’ time you will forget they were ever there.” She hands him his sweater.

“Feels unlikely right now,” he says weakly.

“Trust me. When you’re ready, I will need to examine your leg and arm.”

He takes another minute to compose himself. “Okay,” he says eventually. He sits up. “Which first?”

“Arm.”

He rolls up his sleeve and offers his arm and she has him lay it on the gurney’s side table.

“Interesting,” she says as she examines it. “This looks like a week-old wound.”

He grunts. “Blood powers, I guess?”

“Possibly.” She pulls out a roll of bandage. “Alright. So long as you do not stress it, which you will not, it should be perfectly fine. What about your leg?”

He pulls up his trouser leg and grabs his shirt. “It’s been pretty sore since the fight.”

She prods the skin, and he winces. “Looks like a fracture of the bone. It would be best to keep weight off it for the next fortnight.”

“Have you been walking on it like normal?” He nods. “Stop doing that. Borrow Terezi’s cane, or alchemise your own, but keep weight off of this leg for the next two weeks at least.”

“Okay.”

“Some bruising, but not much. You have gotten away rather lightly.”

“Bruises are a blood thing, right?”

“Yes. Perhaps why you seem fairly recovered already.”

He rolls down his trouser leg, and she offers her arm as he stands on his good leg.

“When you say stuff like that,” he says, wobbling a little, grabbing the edge of the gurney for support. “The others are going to take a while to get back to full strength, aren’t they?”

Kanaya makes a noncommittal noise as they began to walk, supporting Karkat’s weight as they do. “Vriska is a godtier, and I do not know how that works. Eridan is a seadweller, and they are… versatile. He will be functional, even if his healing process back to proper form will take months. You should not be functional right now, not with how little sleep you have had. And I died. It appears.”

“So, you’re saying it’s just me, dragging down the average.”

Of course she isn’t. He should be comatose to the world with the amount of sleep deprivation he must be operating under. And yet he will not appreciate that fact if she tells him. So, she keeps it simple. “I am saying that the game may have put its thumb on the scale.”

“Well, either way, it can’t happen again. We need to be at full strength.”

“We as in you and me?”

“We as in all of us. Jack Noir didn’t just disappear.”

Kanaya pulls open the door to the room Karkat has claimed as his own. “Neither did Eridan. And Vriska.”

Karkat growls. “If they do anything stupid like that again, they’ll have me to answer to.”

She imagines him being ripped to shreds by either of them, especially Eridan, and her heart clenches in fear and anger. “Will that deter them?” She asks, trying to stay calm.

He leans heavily against his recuperacoon and slides to the floor. She sits beside him. “It will, because it has to. But I’m not spending every waking hour waiting for a stab in the back. I’ve got better things to do.”

Kanaya nods.

He holds his fist out to bump. “I need you on my side for this. I can’t be waiting for any stab in any back.”

“Do you think I would do that?”

“I think,” Karkat says wearily, “that you will always be tempted to see a situation and slice first, ask questions later.”

Kanaya doesn’t bump the fist. “There was a time where you would have done the same.”

He shrugs. “Maybe I’m a coward now.”

“You are not a coward, Karkat.”

“Prove it.” He waggles his fist. “I need you on my side. Our side. All of us, together. No fighting.”

She hesitates, and then bumps it. “Okay.”

He smiles, and it unwinds him in a way he hasn’t been in… In far too long.

Chapter Text

He doesn’t even get a proper wallowing period. He gets caught up on sleep, wakes up and isn’t dead, and then Terezi is yelling at everybody over Trollian to get up to the top of the meteor.

(Not where the fight happened. He hasn’t been back to there yet. Nobody has.)

…Then again, thank fuck he didn’t have time to wallow. He needs to keep moving.

He stares at the two humans.

“Hi,” the Dave human says.

“Um,” Eridan replies, face still sickly pale from the blood loss. He’s standing with Vriska, the pair of them just a step or two away from the other four trolls. “Hey.”

“It’s… nice to meet you all,” Rose says into the awkward pause.

Kanaya smiles, shifting as she helps keep Sollux upright. “Likewise.” And then Rose smiles back.

Karkat fucking ignores that response, because he doesn’t feel like throwing up just this moment. “Okay. No. Fuck this. Where the fuck did you come from?” Karkat asks, leaning on Terezi a little to keep the weight off his leg. He’s not even angry. He’s sailed right by anger, and he’s discovering a whole new emotional continent. Look! Hairless monkeys! He feels fine, actually.

“Okay, so basically: we got pranked.”

“That does not answer the question,” Karkat protests.

Dave nods. “I know. Sorry, dude.”

That actually manages to make him feel marginally better. At least he’s in good company. He sighs. “Alright. Fine. Whatever. Welcome aboard the meteor cloning station or whatever. The more, the merrier!”

“I’m glad you think so!” Sollux looks around, empty eyes going wide.

No no no fucking way. He spins around. “Go fuck yourself,” he whispers.

 “AA?”

“Hi!” She says brightly, touching down gently on the meteor. She slings Sollux into a hug, tugging him away from Kanaya and giving his hair a ruffle. “Did you miss me?”

“Where did you come from? Where did you go?”

She rolls her eyes as Dave whispers something to himself and giggles. “I’d be delighted to explain all the intricacies of that, Karkat. In great detail.”

He sighs. “Yeah. Later.” He’s basically achieved enlightenment at this point. Old friends resurrected suddenly? Fine, no worries! He broadcasts a general thought: If you feel like giving me some more of my teammates back, I will NOT complain. But Sgrub’s death toll has ended up at below 50%. That’s something.

“That’s all fine, but does this really help us?” Eridan asks. He shifts uncomfortably when people look his way. “You’ve followed Jack Noir to his killing field. Are you able to stop him?”

They exchange a look. “Well, uh,” Dave begins. “It’s like this. Nope.”

“But we do have a plan,” Rose adds quickly, giving Dave a slightly exasperated glance.

“Oh,” Karkat says. “Fucking lay it on us, then.”

She points out into a random direction of empty space. “We need to travel through the Furthest Ring. Between the dream bubbles.”

“We’re just going to run?” Vriska asks, incredulous.

Kanaya gives Vriska a Look. “You are of course welcome to stay behind.”

Vriska winces. She makes eye contact with Karkat. The look says something like, ‘I get I promised to chill out but swallowing my pride fucking sucks.’ His return look says, ‘Honestly? Fucking agreed. Let’s commiserate over our shitty personalities later.’

“And, I presume, you need a big push,” Aradia prompts. She’s still grinning.

“Yes, ideally. We need to make our way through the interuniversal medium. When we arrive at the Scratch session—” The fucking what now, Karkat doesn’t say, because Terezi pokes him in the ribs as soon as he opens his mouth. Which is a fair assessment of the quality of his addition. “—we can attempt to create a genesis frog there. And win.”

“We can escape?” Terezi asks, her eyes wide. Karkat’s the only one who hears the small waver in her voice. He holds his hand close to hers, and after a second, she takes it, squeezing it.

“We can keep ahead of him,” Rose corrects. “Barely. He'll follow us, no doubt. But we will get there first. And then... hopefully, we will have the resources and allies to defeat him.”

“This sounds threadbare, but our current plan is to not get killed, so this is a clear upgrade.” He glances at Aradia, who’s frowning and looking around. “How do you suppose we get this ‘big push’ that we need?”

Aradia doesn’t appear to have heard him. “Hi, Eridan,” she says slowly, as if she’s noticed something.

“Um. Hi. Glad you’re not dead?”

“…Likewise.” She gives him a perfunctory smile, but then she’s scanning the people on the meteor again. “I presume Gamzee is… downstairs? or something? In a fridge, even?”

There’s a delicate silence. Karkat’s expression darkens considerably.

“He, uh. Terezi, she-”

She takes over for him, lets go of his hand and folds her arms as attention heads their way. “He killed Nepeta and Equius. I put him down.”

Aradia blinks. “That’s… not how it’s supposed to go. Huh!”

“What the hell does that mean?” Eridan asks.

“she’s a time player, dude. it probably means time shenanigans.”

“Oh, most definitely!” Aradia assures them. And then she glances between Eridan and Sollux, noting Eridan's missing arm. And then she glances at Kanaya, eyebrow raised. “Um.”

She looks like she knows something about what happened. How, Karkat couldn’t begin to guess, but Kanaya decides to fill her in anyway. “There was an… incident. But we are all trying to ‘get along’.” It almost doesn’t sound forced, and Eridan almost doesn’t flinch.

Aradia is silent for a few moments. “You’ve chosen a… more peaceful approach,” she says slowly, like she’s trying to reconfigure. Compared to what, Karkat doesn’t ask; her expression is a study in this wasn’t in the manual.

Sollux leans on her. “we’re keeping conflict to a minimum.” Eridan hums awkwardly in response to his nod. “plus KK gets weepy when he thinks about us fighting.” Karkat flips him off. Sollux, guessing correctly at his reaction, snickers.

“One big happy weird alien family,” Dave suggests, and he sounds absolutely absorbed in the Troll drama already.

“But if this is… I should go.”

Karkat frowns. “What? Fuck that.”

“I may be needed elsewhere!”

“Where elsewhere? Fucking where else is there you could possibly be than here?”

“You knew about the push,” Rose adds slowly. “You know the plan can work, can’t you?”

She hesitates. “This doesn’t feel Doomed,” she mutters.

“It ain’t,” Dave replies. “Fuck if I know what it is, but I know doomed timelines. There aren’t enough of my own corpse lying around.”

“Yes, brother, let’s open with that on front of the cool aliens we’re going to be spending the next three years with,” Rose says with a sigh.

“Those are like a perigee, right?” Eridan asks.

“Oh, you are not ready for that conversation,” Dave replies.

“Even if it isn’t doomed, I think I—”

“Aradia,” Karkat interrupts. “I don’t know what the fuck you’re dealing with. But you said you might be needed there, wherever it is you’re going.” She nods slowly. “How much? Because we definitely need you here.”

“I-”

Karkat feels the Pulse. He feels Aradia’s uncertainty and pushes at it directly, trying to fill her in on what the past forty hours has been like. We’re all here. We’re all that’s left. Stay.

Please.

The Pulse whorls around him. He’s already sensing Rose and Dave, already mentally tagged them as in the team, and Aradia’s seamlessly back where she was. He pours his heart out. She has to stay, because if she doesn’t…

She has to stay.

“I- think they could do without me,” Aradia says after a moment, as if she’s figuring that out in real time, staring around at all the people arrayed on front of her. Then she nods, her voice surer. “I’ll stay.”

Karkat relaxes, giving her a grateful smile.

Dave nods. “Hell yeah. Time players together strong.”

“Alright,” Rose says with a smile. “Aradia, can you take it, and us, away?”

“Oh! Yes, definitely,” she says, rising into the air and rolling up her sleeves. “Sollux, can you give me a hand?” She doesn’t add: we need to be quick, though! He’ll definitely be following me.

“sure.”

They rise around each other in caducean ascension, and then there’s a rumbling. From below them.

“What’s happening?” Karkat asks nervously. Aradia gives him a laugh in response. He doesn’t like surprises. The meteor rumbles. “The meteor is rumbling,” he points out.

Dave pats him on the shoulder. “It’s probably all according to plan,” he says sagely.

“Probably,” Karkat replies, not exactly reassured by that response. And then he yelps and says, “fucking what?” when a bucket drops out a suspiciously Jade-shaped hole in space, smacking him on the head and bouncing away. Dave looks up just in time to see John wave and Dave give him a coolkid nod. Dave nods back. Rose waves, expression mystified.

Aradia glances over her shoulder. She sees Jack Noir snarling, headed straight for them, ripping the sword out of his own chest with a spray of carapacian bright-red blood. She elects not to mention it. Karkat’s poor heart probably couldn’t handle it. “Here we go!” She announces cheerfully.

And then her and Sollux fling the meteor into the yellow yard.

Chapter Text

Karkat is sitting silently on the roof where the fight happened, rainbow staining his clothes and hands, watching smaller dreambubbles just as colourful snap by as they speed onwards.

After a while, he hears the tap-tap-tapping of a cane on each step up. He scrubs his face furiously to clear the tears.

“Karkat?” Terezi calls.

“Here,” he answers. His voice doesn’t break, and he’s so goddamn thrilled about that.

Terezi sniffs and retches. It’s been a week since the fight. “We forgot to take care of the bodies,” she says. Being outside must be preserving them somewhat, or maybe this was just a sterile laboratory asteroid, but there’s a limit.

They’re starting to smell.

Karkat shrugs, swallowing thickly around a lump in his throat. “I moved the other ones up here. Didn’t want anybody running into them. And Dave and Aradia mentioned some sort of burial rites humans have. Something about laid to rest. Figured they deserve some fucking rest.” And he doesn’t mention the itchy sensation he gets every time he thinks about the bodies being on the meteor. Doc Scratch’s last message doesn’t make any more sense to him now than it did then, but fuck if it didn’t freak him out.

“Makes sense. Can’t help noting the bodies are still here.” It’s not a question, just an observation.

“Yeah. Waiting for a sign, I guess. But that’s stupid.” Karkat stands. “It’s time.” He walks to the bodies. He’s placed them each at the edge of the meteor, all the easier to be pushed off. Below, a massive dream bubble is just barely at the end of an eclipse of the bottom of the ship, some light-days across.

He rolls Equius’ body off first. It bounces as it tumbles from the meteor. Karkat watches it disappear from view over the curve of their regolithic residence, and he feels a dull ache. The way the body falls… it makes him look like a thing. Karkat hates it. “I sent you to your death,” he says after a moment. “Sorry,” he finishes lamely. Truth be told, the only person who would really mourn Equius’ death was already dead. He feels like a grade-A piece of shit for thinking that, but thinking about Nepeta makes him feel like one anyway, so he doesn’t care.

Next is Feferi. He looks up, to avoid seeing the body as it slides into empty space. “I couldn’t stop them from acting like fuckwits. Couldn’t stop him until it was too late. Neither could you, I guess. Anyway, sorry for this, but I’m going to squeeze your death for all it’s worth to keep both of those fucks in line.”

Nepeta. “I told you to stay away, and in hindsight, that was not only fucking idiotic, but also shitty. I—” He swallows. “I… I’m sorry.”

He comes to stop at Tavros. He pushes the body off. “Vriska’s sorry. I’m sorry I never tried to stop her.” He thinks about that for a moment. “No, I’m not. Trying to help would have gotten me killed. It got Aradia killed.”

He stands there. “I’m sorry this funeral is so shit. I’m sorry Alternia was so shit, and I’m sorry that in the miniscule amount space we got to ourselves, we just… didn’t do anything about that.”

Terezi doesn’t say anything.

“I’ll keep her in line. She’s not going to hurt anybody else. I… I promise.”

He pauses at Gamzee’s body. He doesn’t avert his eyes. It’s almost a full minute before he speaks. When he does, it’s hard and brittle, like porcelain. “I don’t know what the fuck happened to you to make you flip out. I don’t care, either. You piece of shit.” He kicks the body, and he watches the whole way as it windmills clownishly off the rock and into void. “Good fucking riddance,” he says. A treacherous thought flickers in his head: you’re using him as a scapegoat. Two other murderers on the ship, and you focus on the one that was high all the time? Coward. He banishes it with prejudice. It’s right, in some ways. But it’s not useful to him right now. Which is about all he cares about.

Catharsis achieved, he turns to Terezi, who’s waiting a polite step or two back. He limps up to her. “Let’s go. I need to get something to eat.”

She nods, and then holds out her cane. “Here.”

“What?”

She shakes the cane until he takes it. “Kanaya said to keep weight off your leg, right?”

“…Yeah.” He takes it. “Thank you.”

She smiles and sniffs the air. A richly detailed image of Karkat’s face refreshes the old and fading one, like a bright flash, like an impressionist painting. He still looks exhausted, like he’s just collapsed from a marathon, but at least right now, at least for a moment, he’s smiling.

“Or you can take my arm,” she says teasingly.

“Go fuck yourself, Pyrope.” She snickers, but when she offers her arm, he does take it.

They head inside.

Chapter Text

Eridan Ampora is hearing angels.

He could always hear them on LOWAA, even a little bit through his hive walls, and he’d more or less convinced himself he could hear them even when he was in his recuperacoon, because he was ridiculously paranoid and hated their stupid feathery fuckin guts.

So, even laying in this recuperacoon, far away from LOWAA, he can still sort of hear them. Occasionally some small sound breaks the silence, and he suddenly realises he can’t hear them. He’s imagining them. But then the cycle starts again.

Eridan Ampora is staring at the ceiling of his room, up to the gills in sopor, unable to sleep.

--

Kanaya Maryam thinks about hope. She is the only one awake, she’s pretty sure. Since she... started glowing, she’s also begun to keep strange hours.

She is thinking about how it was destroyed. That—murderer—crushed the matriorb with a gesture. After saying he should be involved in the resurrection of their species, he then destroyed it.

She walks down a path that will become well-worn. He’s dangerous. He’s mad. He’s a threat.

And she doesn’t know what to do about it.

--

Eridan Ampora thinks about angels, about prophecy. About his role. He heard scraps of the prophecy a thousand times, and he'd thought he knew what it meant: he was meant to destroy the Lord of Angels.

And then he'd thought he'd known it was wrong: his destiny was never to defeat the Lord. It was to join him at the right hand, a servant to a superior being.

And now, for nearly the first time in his life, Eridan Ampora does not know.

--

Aradia Megido is thinking about life.

She’s glad to be alive. She is very glad to be alive. She grins when she just thinks about it, repeating it to herself—I am alive!

She hadn’t even felt like this when she was on Alternia. It’s been a few days since she came back to life, and she’s barely slept. The sleep deprivation is making her a little bit loopy, she knows, but it’s fun. Hey, it’s not like she needs to steer. She snickers. The meteor probably counts as heavy machinery. She feels exhausted and it feels good. Because it’s real.

She needs to talk to Sollux. It feels like the last time they really talked was back when she was really alive. It’s been forever. She’s so excited.

Aradia Megido is back, and she’s not wasting time.

--

The station creaks slightly, and the imaginary distant screaming goes away.

Maybe he'll feel like this forever. Paranoid and hearing angels that hate him. Maybe the destiny he remade and then failed to fulfil was his chance to do something glorious, and he fucked it up, and now he's stuck with screaming.

He doesn’t think about the words of the prophecy.

…But killing those angels was good, wasn’t it? The rest of them didn’t think so, but he was uniquely qualified to know it was. It was his fuckin land, after all. They were his angels. He was proving himself. Clearly not enough, because he didn’t end up with wings or hope powers (until later) or anywhere near being able to beat Jack, but he proved himself fair enough, didn’t he?

Enough to kill Fef. He flinches. Enough to blind Sol over the right to kill myself an’ everybody else. And then doom our whole fuckin species to extinction.

The screams creep back in.

The more he thinks about it, the worse what he did feels. The more he feels like maybe if he peels back his skin, it would be the bright white feathery wrath of the angels that greets him. He guesses that as screaming, unreasonable, wrathful, hyper-powerful entities go, the costume hardly matters when he’s got the mannerisms down.

But he feels along the edge of his stump of a right arm. And there’s no feathers there. Not tonight. So, it mightn’t be too late.

Or so he hopes.

--

Her stomach aches in pain. She can feel the damage his shot did to her, even after she became… whatever it is she is, now. Her mouth is parched, and she tries to ignore the craving on her mind.

She walks herself down the path again. She sees the pathetic heart of Eridan Ampora, and she can’t forgive him. If it were up to her, she’d—

(What?)

If it weren’t for Karkat staying her hand, she would—

(What?)

She shakes her head. She doesn’t know. She…

She wants to kill him. And she wants him gone. But try as she might, she can’t quite make those meet in the middle. She can’t quite want him dead. Perhaps simply because that seems too easy an ending for him. In the few moments they have spent in the same room since the incident, she has stared at his missing arm. She feels sick when she looks at it. It feels like a perversion of what she did for Tavros. Or maybe not enough like it.

And for almost every one of those times, like it pinged some internal radar, Karkat shifted, entirely naturally given the circumstance, maybe to move something or to yell at somebody, and he would be standing just-not-quite in between them. Close enough that he could take one step and end up between them. Shielding Eridan.

Shielding Eridan. She wants to yell whenever he does it. I’m not the murderer, here.

But she knows he knows that. So maybe he wants it to stay that way.

She resents that. Her hands are not clean. She does not want them to be. She wants—

(What?)

Revenge.

(No.)

Closure.

She wants closure.

--

Vriska Serket is in her room. If anybody was looking for her in the past week, they would have been best suited to look in her room. She has spent, all told, about three hours outside it since...

She doesn’t even remember which corridor she killed Tavros in. She can’t even tell where it was when she finally put a lance in his chest. Every corridor in this fucking station looks the same.

Which means any of them could have been where she killed him.

Karkat's right. She wasn’t doing the smart thing. She was… scared. She wanted to go out fighting. And Tavros gave her that fight.

Not very well. He never did give her a good fight. Even back when the FLARP games had been much less deadly, she had barely needed to bring her A-game before Aradia needed to start bailing him out. That had always frustrated her.

Well, she’d got her wish. He’d stood on his (hm) own two feet.

It hadn’t been enough.

Her powers feel. Disrupted. She can’t reach out to meddle with other people’s minds (which she’s sure she’d be unsettled by more, if she had any desire to make them do anything except leave her alone). And the dice feel lodged stuck in wherever it was they go when she isn’t using them. Like she’s being punished. For being scared. Or…

For killing Tavros Nitram. For almost getting everybody killed.

Yeah. Well, that’s why she doesn’t leave her room that much. She doesn’t feel like reliving that again. Thanks, no thanks.

So, she stays in her room.

--

The prophecy for the Prince of Hope goes something like this:

He will kill angels. And he will become one.

He will kill hope. And he will bring it.

He will fight the lord of angels.

He will lose the fight. And he will win the victory.

Parts of it were emblazoned on several buildings and statues on LOWAA, and the angels would whisper scraps of it constantly, whenever they weren’t screaming. Just like the rest of his life, he’d been given a place, a purpose, a role and a task. Killer of angels? Not much more difficult than killer of lusii, even if they had taken for-fucking-ever to kill. He’d read it and heard it and read it again, so many times that he’d stopped paying attention to the actual words, jigsawing the pieces together by instinct. He will lose the fight, he'd assumed was him fighting Sollux. It had stung pretty bad, so any excuse to make it part of his inimitable rise was fine by him.

He’d assumed. Just to hit the highlights, he’d kill the angels. He’d bring the hope. He’d fight the Lord. He’d win.

And Eridan Ampora finally drifts to sleep, wondering what went wrong.

...If one were minded to reach out to Eridan Ampora and soothe his worries, they might be tempted to draw his attention to the fact that prophecy is rarely wrong. But it is just pearls of wisdom. Not strung together. Nothing coherent, no order, no sense. You can’t wear them, can’t use them, until you find the right throughline. You need to know what has come to pass and what is yet to be.

But, of course, he knows none of this. He will have to learn it the hard way. But he can learn. He still has a long life to live, if he can.

And so much of his prophecy is still to come.

--

Aradia slows to a stop, looking at her phone. Her grin widens considerably. It’s a message from Sollux.

Ah, sleep. The ternal slumber. The little practice death. She doesn’t fear it, of course, not when she’s old hat at the real thing and brimming with new conditional immortality, but she just has so many better things to be doing. She could be knitting. She could talk to people. She could sit up writing fan fiction until the wee hours, like a big nerd.

The point is the opportunities are limitless! How can she plunge into a recuperacoon until she’s explored all of them?

…She really is starting to feel the wooziness set in, though. Good old Sollux, looking out for her. She supposes she can sleep, if only for him.

Even as she stumbles into her room, throwing her clothes in a pile (they’re godtier clothes, they don’t wrinkle, it’s fine) and climbing into her recuperacoon, she takes one last look around her room and thinks, I should really decorate.

But tomorrow, though. Sollux is right. She slips further in, and her breathing slows immediately in the soporific. It does its work, and within seconds she’s drifting off to sleep.

Chapter Text

Dave and Rose are halfway through a conversation about nothing. They’re both deliberately not saying anything of any value or importance, waiting for the other to break first. Dave’s crafting the world’s greatest metaphor, running indomitably into its fifth page, and Rose is gamely implying that it reveals his deep personal issues. It probably does.

Eventually, the conversation lulls for about ten seconds, which is long enough to break the dam.

“Fuck,” Dave says.

Rose sighs. “Fuck indeed, brother mine.”

“We’re so fucked.”

She takes that opportunity to make a joke. "If we play our cards right." He ignores the shit out of that, because fuck no.

"How does this even happen."

“Once is coincidence, twice is enemy action."

Dave's fine to take that logic, even if it doesn't actually make any sense. "Our enemies are getting so much action," he mumbles.

Rose says nothing in response to that. Really loudly. "Do you think it’s something in our shared ectogenes that makes us attracted to aliens?”

“That’s dumb as shit, but it’s not like I have a better explanation. So.” He gives her a Look. It looks identical to his normal looks, but she can tell the difference. “You and Kanyamaha, huh?”

She Looks him right back, and he squirms a little. “I am more than willing to start this conversation, Dave. Provided you don’t abscond the second that we get around to you and… Karkoyota.”

He thinks about this, but something about the way they’ve both absolutely fucking mangled Karkat and Kanaya’s names feels just ironic enough for him to not feel like sprinting out of the room. “Deal.”

Rose nods. And then the façade cracks just a little bit. “Bro,” she says. Her voice is quiet, as if somebody could be hiding around the corner, listening in.

Dave nods back. “That bad, huh?”

“She’s intelligent, she’s witty, she’s tall, and she seems, for some unknown reason, to find my jokes very funny. I know I’m not quite that funny.”

“Yeah, me too,” he says, because just because she’s being vulnerable doesn’t mean he can’t still be a dick until it’s his turn.

She rolls her eyes. “I mean, I already felt... maybe an allure towards her, when we were simply talking over the internet. Now that I’m in the same room as her, I feel like screaming into a pillow when she smiles at me.”

His mouth twitches up a little. For Dave, that’s practically back-slapping and nudges in the ribs.

“I just have no clue how to approach this sort of thing. I’m not exactly well-versed in xenocourtship. Any hints?”

He declines to call her a nerd for the word courtship. “Dude, blind leading the blind there.”

“So you and—”

“Karkoyota,” he interrupts, so it stays hella ironic. “Uh, yeah.”

“How are things going for you two?” She frowns. “I was convinced it would have been. Hm. Tereminems.” She frowns. “That one is…”

“Shit, yeah.” He shrugs. “They can’t all be winners. You can probably just say that one to be honest.”

“I was convinced you and Terezi had a moment.”

“A few incredibly stressful traumatic ones, yeah. Good bonding shit. But… I don’t know, whatever the fuck ‘the incident’ was that Karkat doesn’t want to talk about must’ve changed things. She’s different. He’s different, even if he yells about as much as before. Still a shitload of fun to draw chalk shit with, but she isn’t flirting nearly as much.” He shrugs. “Maybe she’s just people-shy.”

"My Seer powers are telling me that's not it." He snorts. "From the little I have managed to glean she might be holding a torch for somebody else.”

“Or eight?”

Rose grins at him. “Did Karkat tell you that?”

“He let it slip. And then swore me to secrecy, but—” he gives her an expressive shrug which conveys the idea, if you can’t tell your paradox sister apocalypse buddy joint apotheotic suicide friend, who can you tell? “So yeah. She’s still really funny,” he says, because he feels like he’s giving the wrong impression. All of the trolls are hilarious, Terezi especially so. “But she doesn't scream nearly as much, it’s so much funnier to mess with Karkaaaaaaoh for the love of fuck.” He buries his face in his hands. Freud is rolling in his grave.

Rose smirks. “The irony could only last so long,” she says reassuringly, because if Dave gets to be a dick when it’s not his turn under the spotlight, then so does she.

“Okay yeah. So, basically: I think I have a crush on the shouty asshole alien.” He pauses, and then adds: “Guy.”

“I think as you would say, big mood. I have a crush on the well-spoken fashionable alien.” Identical pause. “Girl.”

“Who saw that coming,” Dave asks, in lieu of thinking about the admittedly terrifying idea that shit, he’s gay isn’t he. Or bi or whateverthefuck, he doesn’t know. He likes dudes. But it’s just aliens (so far, his brain adds unhelpfully. he tells it to shut up), so does that make it worse or better? Shit, uh. Not better or worse. Nothing wrong with being gay. Hell, he has a penchant for the guys, too. Apparently. Fuck. Which isn’t a problem. He just means—

He’s spared the rest of his spiral by Rose’s reply. “Not Karkat’s shipping chart.”

Dave nods in relief. “Oh, I definitely need to remind him about that.”

And then a thought occurs to him.

"Does this make us furries?"

"You're the one with an alternate self merged with a bird running around," Rose points out. "Among other things. I'll defer to your expertise."

"Hey, wait, what the fuck does 'among other things' mean?"

"Wouldn't you like to know." And then she shrugs. "Probably not. Aliens are hardly the same thing as anthropomorphic animals." Dave opens his mouth. "Anthropomorphic non-human animals," she clarifies, and he closes his mouth again. "But I defer to you."

Dave puts two fingers up to his temples. "My Time powers tell me... jack shit."

Furry question "sorted," they stare past each other for a minute.

“So. Yeah.” He shrugs. “We’re fucked.”

“We’re fucked,” she concurs.

It’s always nice to know where you stand.

Chapter Text

“Any sixes, Karkat?”

“Go fish,” Karkat says. Terezi picks up a card, sniffs it, and then grins. He glares at her. “No Seer powers,” he says, fake-irritated.

“You can’t prove anything.” He scoffs.

“twos, ED?” Sollux asks. He picks up his cards and flares them- it’s a difficult trick, given just one hand. He shakes his head.

Then he realises his mistake. “Sorry, no.” Dave snickers, and Eridan gives him an embarrassed smile.

“it’s fine,” Sollux says.

Karkat leans over. “Why are you- you asshole, you already have all the twos.”

“yep.”

“That means you put them down as a pile,” Rose adds helpfully.

He grins. “i think i’ll hold onto them, RS.”

“…Up to you.”

Kanaya watches the group, far away that there’s no risk she is asked to join in, close enough that she can intervene if needed. She watches, pretending to read, fingers tapping a rhythm on her forearm, the other hand discreetly clutching her chainsaw lipstick behind the cover of the unregarded trashy novel.

She looks up as Aradia approaches her. “They’re really getting along,” she says, like it's a question.

"They are."

"I suppose it has been two weeks."

"Yes."

"…Any thoughts about that?"

Kanaya doesn’t say anything for a moment. She sets the book down. “I haven’t forgiven him,” she says, as if eager to keep it on the record. Aradia nods. “But Sollux appears…” She searches for words. “He appears not to blame Eridan for what happened.”

“But you do,” Aradia prompted.

Kanaya raises an eyebrow in disbelief. “He blinded somebody, killed two other people, myself one of them, and doomed our species. There was only ever one finger on the trigger every time it was pulled. Yes, I blame him.” Her lip curls up, but she tries to force herself to stay calm. “I would find it difficult to blame anybody except him.”

Aradia digests this without comment, which Kanaya is glad of.

And then Kanaya sighs. “I believe Sollux places some blame for what happened on himself. I suppose he feels he can relate to Eridan in that sense. Whatever the case may be, they do appear to be getting on.” For now. Until he explodes again.

Aradia no doubt catches the words she doesn’t say.

She changes the topic slightly. “And Karkat? How’s he doing?”

“He seems to be doing better. He spends a lot of times with the humans.” She hesitates, but she hasn’t had a good gossip since the game- which already feels like sweeps ago. “One in particular. Truth be told, I think they’re flushed.” She frowns. Humans send a lot of mixed signals (she thinks, for no reason in particular). "Or pale."

“Really?” Aradia asks, smiling.

“Yes, it is a bit strange. He asked me what, and I quote, ‘sorta shit karkles likes,’ so I suggested he try introducing Karkat to human romcoms. It seems to have gone well, and I think Karkat is reciprocating. But it’s difficult to tell with him. The pair of them seem to be working together well enough, though. They all do.” Her mind turns back to the topic Aradia tried to steer her away from. She tries not to grit her teeth. “Even—Even Eridan and Sollux. It feels like nobody even cares. We have a sweep and a half. Why bother thinking about the future or the past.” The words come out even more bitter than she means them to.

“And how do you feel?” Aradia asks, glancing at her curiously. Kanaya doesn’t move. Eventually she unfolds her arms.

“Conflicted,” she admits eventually, fiddling the lipstick tube between her fingers. “The Matriorb was the last thing of my lusus I had. He has doomed our species. He should pay for that, no?” She glances to Aradia. Maybe the girl has some insight.

Aradia shrugs. “I’m not the best person to ask about ‘should’ anymore. We’re off-script, now! Fun, isn’t it?”

“Anything you can say for certain?” Kanaya asks, voice shading to irritation.

“Not much. But I can say, three years from now, we’re in for the fight of our lives. Or unlives, as it may be.” She nudges Kanaya and gives her a rictus grin. It unnerves her.

--

“Karkat,” Terezi calls across the computer room. There’s nobody else around.

Karkat turns from his computer. “Yeah?”

“Are you… doing okay?”

He blinks. “This a feelings jam?” Karkat asks. He tries and fails to inject some sarcasm into the question.

She shrugs, trying to act casual. “Maybe. Wanna go onto the hor-”

“Fuck no.”

“Alright, fine.”

They sit in awkward silence for a few seconds. Long enough for Karkat to remember. She knows. She knows and she was right there with him when it mattered, she’s always been there when it mattered, and she’s asking if he’s okay. And, fuck, he could tell her.

…And now that he lets himself picture it as an option, he’s realising he wants to tell her. And that he wants to know if she’s okay. He wants her to be okay. He’d like to be there for her when it matters.

God. He’s fucking sappy.

“…Is there something else soft we can lie on?”

Terezi grins. “There might be.”

Karkat spins around in his chair to his computer with his good leg, hiding his smile with a scowl. “Please tell me it’s not your scalemates.”

She snickers. “That’s privileged information!”

To be fair to Terezi, it isn’t. “Dave called them ‘beds,’ which sounds very high-blood to me.”

Karkat shifts suspiciously, no longer leaning on her as he sits on the end of the bed. “Why is it flat?”

“Humans sleep on them. Don’t ask me how they apply the sopor, I don’t know.”

“It looks like one of the medical gurneys. Softer, though.” Terezi lies down, and Karkat lies down beside her. “This feels weird.” He glances at her.

She shrugs, turning onto her side to face him. “If it works, it works,” she replies. “So! What’s on your mind.”

Karkat sighs and tries to put the weirdness out of his mind. As a (younger) kid, he’d built a pile once or twice and imagined climbing into it, building it to allow for burrowing in, lying facing one another or facing away, all that stuff. Sort of like the human equivalent of planning your wedding when you’re ten years old. But this is throwing him, for some reason. Well. That, and the fact he doesn’t have the first clue what a feelings jam is actually like. “Just… stupid things.”

“Like?”

“…The deaths,” he admits. “I think, does Tavros ever clean up his fucking fiduspawns? and then it hits me.”

Terezi nods. “Yeah. I know the feeling. I think one time I saw you just. Yeah.”

“What was that one?”

“A movie. I think you were about to start discussing the romantic subplot with Nepeta.” He winces. He remembers it.

“Yeah.” Karkat shifts, turning to Terezi. Her eyes are as red as his will be one day. “How are you dealing with it?”

She shrugs, her expression as soft as she can make it. She feels like it could burn him if she isn’t careful. “I don’t know. I just try to keep moving forwards, I guess.”

Karkat looks past her, at the grey rock wall of the meteor’s various rooms. “Yeah,” he repeats. “And it’s not like I’m ungrateful,” he adds, looking back at her. “You’ve got to look at the positives.”

She squeezes his hand. “We’re alive.”

“We’re alive,” he echoes.

"We’re not fighting."

“I know. And we’ve got, what, over a sweep before we even need to worry about fighting?"

"Yeah.

"I like hanging out with Rose.” He smiles. “The mayor. Eridan and Sollux are getting on surprisingly well. Kanaya’s alive and flirting with a human like an idiot.” Terezi snorts. “You’re alive. Fuck, Aradia’s alive, somehow. Even Vriska’s alive, if you’re into that. And when I’m with you, or Dave…” He shrugs.

She smiles shyly. “If it helps, I enjoy spending time with you, too.” Her smile turns mischievous. “And Dave really does.”

Karkat tries and fails not to blush a delicious shade of red. “You think so?”

“I’m not bli-” She snaps her mouth shut.

Neither of them say anything for a second.

“Were you about to say-”

“What happens in the pile stays in the pile,” Terezi says firmly. “Let’s talk about you and Dave!”

Karkat deflects. “What about you and Vriska?” He shoots back.

Terezi’s expression turns shocked, and her mouth opens in an ‘O’ and she feels herself blushes as well. “How very forward!”

“Well?” Karkat presses. “You stabbed her. You can’t get more forward than that.”

Terezi shrinks in shame. “Yeah. I did.” She turns over.

“That still worrying you?” Karkat rests a hand on her shoulder. “I can guarantee you she feels shittier about that than you do.” She shakes her head.

“I had to do it,” she mumbles, repeating the mantra which has been circling around her head for every moment since it first happened, curling into a ball beside him. She feels his arm curl around her, anchoring her to this timeline, this set of results. Because she had to do it.

She Saw the outcome. Karkat dead or Vriska dead, that was her choice.

She knows that wasn’t the choice, though. The choice was Vriska or all of them. And so, she had to do it.

…But she didn’t.

Vriska is still alive, and so is everybody else. Maybe she didn’t have to stab her.

She almost killed Vriska for no reason.

Karkat disagrees. “Of course you did,” he says, shaking her from the battle-lines of distant decisions, “of course you did. Are you fucking joking? She was going to get everybody killed so she could play main character. My exact words to her were, you couldn’t even beat a blind girl.”

She doesn’t smile at that, which honestly worries him. “I’m always fixing her messes. I’m always dealing with the consequences of her shit,” she says hollowly.

“No argument here.”

“I’m always hurting her to stop her.”

Karkat really doesn’t know what to say to that.

“…I don’t want it to be like this.” She turns back to face him. “I was trying to kill her. And I would do it again. But I don’t want to.”

Karkat nods. “I know.”

“I… I don’t want this. I want to be…” normal. Feel nothing. Be a good little Alternian. “I want…” I want to rest. Honestly, that last one sounds pretty good to Karkat. But as for the rest…

“I don’t want you to be anything else,” he says softly, and she stares at him in disbelief. He doesn’t look away. “I don’t,” he says, defensively. “You did the right thing. Thank fuck Maryam was on hand, but there was no version of that fight where a conscious Vriska was better than an unconscious one.” He tries to prove he means it. The Blood meets the Mind, and he tries to tell her: you did the right thing.

She shakes her head. “I should’ve found another way. That’s my job.”

“Terezi, I know it, but it worked. She’s not dead and neither are the rest of us.” He shrugs. “Whatever happened, it was for the best. And if it helps, I think she’s learned her lesson.”

“She didn’t last time.”

“Last time, she got you back, didn’t she? She ‘settled the score.’ It’s been three weeks. Has she tried to get back at you?” Terezi doesn’t say anything. “I think she knows. She knows she went way too far. She feels bad about Tavros. She’s not going to do this again. I promise. Fuck, I’ll make her promise.”

Terezi manages to smile. “When did you become the optimist?” She asks.

He shrugs. “I… I’m just… assuming. Because the alternative is that we’re fucked, to be honest. So why walk around on eggshells? …But if I boss her around now, when she’s recovering, when I can pull on the guilt, maybe by the time she’s better, she… I don’t know, she knows you did her a favour.” Rather than attempted murder. “In the meantime, I need to make sure she wants to work with the team. In a sweep and a half, we’re going to have a fucking difficult fight, even if we get everything we hope for at the other end. I want her there, with us. Helping us.”

Terezi frowns. “That’s the grand plan? Guilt trip her until she chills out and we can steer her?” She snorts. “…You’re not much of a planner, are you?”

“Go fuck yourself, Pyrope,” He says, rolling his eyes. "That was always your job." She lets out a breath that might just be a very small laugh. “But it’s step one. I don’t have any other cards to play, Pyrope,” he confesses. “And if anybody could help me steer her, it’s you.” She steels herself and nods. He grins again. “Especially given she likes you.”

“What? No, she doesn’t.”

“She really does.”

“I stabbed her.”

“Yes, you did. Nobody is more surprised to hear that works for her than me.”

“She hates losing.”

“Apparently not to you. I think she likes you even more, now.” Terezi sniffs, and he takes that as a decent sign. “Seriously. When I came to see her the second time, she asked me what happened, since I guess she didn’t remember much. When I told her that you stabbed her and then guarded her body from being killed by- by that fucker, she genuinely didn’t have anything to say. It shut Vriska up. She actually blushed when I told her that. I think she found it attractive that you could beat her up, which is fucking weird.”

He's ready for the obvious jibe he knows she’ll send back—the affronted and you don’t? >:O— and already has his response picked out (Not for that).

But it doesn’t come.

So, he pokes her in the ribs just to be an asshole, and she squirms, smiling reluctantly. “You’ve got an admirer. Not that you’d have noticed. You practically hold your breath when she comes into a room.”

“Feels wrong,” she mumbles. “Smelling her.”

“Oh, fuck at least all of the way off,” Karkat retorts. That cannot be allowed to stand. As leader, he won’t allow it. “You idiot. If you’d been smelling her, you’d have seen the way she looked at you. That’s like saying it’s wrong that I like the sound of your voice, so I should just plug my ears from now on.”

“Do you?” She asks. It’s such a blatant fish for compliments, he rolls his eyes.

“Yes.”

She turns around to face him. “You used to call it grating.”

He snorts. “It is. It’s also very nice to listen to. What a goddamn paradox.”

“Weirdo,” she mutters, and he grins. “How do you know how she’s looking at me?”

“There’s two answers, and one of them is that I have eyes.”

“Hey,” she says, trying not to smile.

“…And the other is that I’m the resident expert in Blood around here. It’s literally about relationships. How somebody feels about you counts.”

“Ouch. Point.”

“And the point is, you’re hot shit and stop punishing yourself for saving all of our lives from Vriska’s ego. I sure as hell don’t understand why you’d want to date her, but I give you 90% odds of her saying yes if you ask her out.”

“Ask her out where?” Is Terezi’s reply. It’s a perfectly reasonable sarcastic followup, but she doesn’t sell it. It’s too genuinely asked. He pretends he doesn’t notice, because he’s so goddamn polite.

So, he shrugs and says, “Find a storage closet and-”

“Okay, grossgrossgrossgross!” Terezi says, snerking. “Thanks, Karkles,” she says after a minute.

“Any time. And thanks for-”

“-Telling you that Dave likes you back?”

“That, and also hearing me out. About the, y’know. Thanks.”

“Any time. …If you want that.”

“…Yeah,” he says. “If you do, too.”

“Yeah,” she says.

He’s kinda surprised. Just like that, diamonds. But it feels... right.

They sit like that for a while, curled up beside one another, til they fall asleep.

There’s no nightmares.

Chapter Text

Sollux’s piles are always hard game rectangles and uncomfortably pokey. She insists they have the feelings jam at hers.

He complains automatically about the softness of her pile, all scraps of fabric and actual pillows, but they can both tell by his smile that he doesn’t care. He’s just happy to be here with her. Which is kinda the point.

He feels the floor around them, sniffing loudly and turning his head every which way. It feeltastes echoey. “AA no offense, but your room is kinda empty.”

She frowns as she settles into the pile. “I know,” she says. “I wanted to decorate it last night. But then somebody told me to go to bed.”

He snickers. “I appreciate you holding back, then. you want some help?”

“That’s sweet of you,” she says, smiling at him.

“So. apart from that, how are you doing?”

“I’m thrilled to be alive.”

He rolls his eyes. “yeah,” he says, but his voice is fond. “I’m thrilled you’re back too. but how are you doing doing?”

“Your pale game is rusty,” she says, snickering at him. She drops her voice low, faux-sultry: “How do you feel feel?” He pushes her a little, and a few quilts dislodge around them.

“yours is mockery, huh? interesting technique. did KK teach it to you?”

They both laugh, Aradia more so at the idea of Karkat’s pale game. OOH BABY YOU LOOK SO PATHETIC.

“Alright, alright,” she says. “I’m doing good. I’ve got some sleep stuff to work out, clearly.”

“do you just not want to sleep, or…”

“No, sleep is fine!” She throws her hands up. “I just know there’s so much more I could be doing with my time, so why sleep? I’m alive!” She shakes him lightly, grinning. “I’m alive! It’s great! And I don’t want to miss a moment.”

He laughs. “are you worried you’re going to lose it?”

Her grin falters. “…No?”

“then why would you miss a moment?” He grins at her, now. “you’re immortal AA. you have as long as you want.”

She blinks. “Yeah,” she says, and doesn’t say: not with you. You’re not immortal with me. She doesn’t say it because she deems it too sad for the first feelings jam back. Second time’ll be the charm. It usually is with Sollux. “But still,” she says. “I’m sure godtier stuff has given me some resistance to sleep deprivation.”

“i’m sure it gives you some resistance to poison too, but i don’t see VK slamming back spider venom.”

“Maybe she should. Sounds fun.”

“AA.”

“Okay, okay, fine. I know it’s a problem. I think it’s less of a problem than it would be for anybody else—”

“except KK”

“—anybody else except Karkat, but I do know it’s a problem.”

“so long as you know.” He considers this. “and do something about it.”

“Haha, yeah.” She shuffles closer to him, and their horns clack together, a few sparks of grey and silver spitting out. It’s different enough from the old silver, red, and blue they used to see. She guesses it’s not the only thing that’s changed. “What about you? How are you feeling feeling?”

He snorts. “I said it before, but i’m okay.” She opens her mouth but he cuts her off. “yeah, i know, i’m getting there. i’m okay, but that’s kinda surprising i guess.”

“How’s not being able to see?”

He shrugs. “most of the time it doesn’t even bother me. apparently i wasn’t using it for anything important.” He snickers.

“Really? You’re just okay with it?”

“TZ is teaching me her smell thing. and i still have my psionics, even if they’re, uh.”

“Different?”

“I was going to say weird now, but sure. but I’ll probably be pretty good at seeing things close to me after a while. i might never be able to see stuff that's too far away, but that's what you're for.”

“Sappy.”

“i thought it was cynical and meanspirited.”

“I meant the way I thought it was cute was sappy.”

“aww. you think i’m cute.”

“Surprisingly.”

They both snicker.

“anyway, yeah. the blindness thing doesn’t bother me. and i don’t hear the pre-dead anymore.”

“Is that because there aren’t any?”

He shrugs. “no idea. heh, maybe it was my teeth getting knocked out. i think blindness related, though. but maybe i just never have to hear them again because nobody’s going to die horrible deaths like that anymore.”

She holds out a fist for him to bump. “That would be nice,” she says. “Bump.”

He bumps it, badly. “it’d be fucking sick.”

She stares at the ceiling. “How about the rest of it?”

“of… what?”

She sits up. “The fight! All the stuff you guys just call ‘the incident’!”

“oh, yeah. so me and ED got in a fight. and then i think he killed KN and FF.” She studies his expression carefully. He just looks sad. Not angry, not scared. Just sad. She's not the best at working out what people are 'meant' to be feeling (though she's getting better!) but she's pretty sure this is weird. But then again, it's Sollux, so weird is normal.

“That's terrible.”

“yeah. and GM took out EQ and NP, and somewhere during that, VK killed TV.”

She glowers a little at that. Vriska finally managed to take out all of Team Charge. Sollux pokes her and she jumps. “What?”

“your psionics.”

She realises she's wrapped her horns in a bit of telekinetic energy to let her headbutt with them harder. She forgot she used to do that when she was stressed (when she was alive). It's been a while, but Sollux still knows her tells. It makes her bloodpusher squirm a bit, and she calms down just a little bit. “Sorry. Just. I'm going to be civil, but come on.”

“hey, i get it.” He glances at her, which obviously doesn't help him in the slightest. “do you wanna talk about that now?”

She bites her lip. “Um. No. Not right now, at least.”

“alright.” Another thing to save for the second time around.

“Thanks. What else happened?”

“That's about it. KK says he got a message from the white text weirdo, something about the bodies, but it didn't end up meaning anything and that guy's dead anyway so who give a shit. i was still snoozing when KK made it to the roof and managed to pull KN off ED after she'd chopped his arm off. TZ had stabbed VK and she barely survived. if that makes you feel any better.”

“Not really,” she admits. And then she frowns. Wait, Vriska got stabbed? That means she was meant to die, but didn't. Or was meant to live but got stabbed anyway? Or...?

"didn’t you know most of that already?”

“No,” she says, lying back, troubled. “I should, though.”

“i thought you had spooky bullshit.”

“I did.” She folds her arms. “But my spooky bullshit told me Eridan was meant to be dead, Gamzee was meant to be alive, and that there was a fifty-fifty chance Vriska was either. And it was meant to be she either gets stabbed and dies, or doesn't and lives. No mention of her getting stabbed and living.”

“hate to say it, but seems like it wasn't a binary set of options.” she thwacks his arm and he snickers. “So your spooky bullshit was wrong?”

She thinks about it. “My spooky bullshit is information about the Alpha timeline. Maybe that’s not where we are.”

“then where are we?”

Shrug. “No idea. But it’s not doomed, either.”

“spooky.”

“Bullshit,” she concurs, and he snickers. “Eridan having one arm wasn’t in the notes, either.”

“…so NP and EQ dying was.”

“…Yeah.”

“AA.”

“Yeah?”

“that plan sucked. No offense.”

“It wasn’t like it was a plan!” she protests and he snickers again. “It was what had to happen for the Alpha timeline to properly proceed. Gamzee lives, Vriska’s a toss-up, Eridan dies.” Among other people who stayed dead. And that makes her a little bit angry, too. If things are changing course so drastically, why not save them all? What's the point in half of her friends dying? She wasn't super close with Feferi and Nepeta (but it's not like she wanted them to get hurt!), and certainly not with Equius (she's saying nothing), but why did Tavros have to die? He didn't do anything. He never hurt anybody. She'd come to peace with that when she was thought it was necessary. This, though.

This is kinda bullshit.

“huh. Wonder what changed.”

“Beats me. If I hang about, I might find out, though.” She notices how saying that she has a reason to stay makes him relax just a little bit, and she grins. So she slings him into a headlock and ruffles his hair, ignoring his protesting laughter. “You're not getting rid of me that easily.”

He shakes her off, cackling. “glad to hear it you weirdo pixie,” he says, and she hears the relief in his voice.

She lets go of him, still grinning, and returns to laying beside him. And then a less happy thought strikes her. It might end up being a second-jam kind of question, but she should at least ask it now, see what the lay of the land is like. “…By the way, how are you feeling about.” she pauses just a tiny amount. Should she say it, or…? “Um. him?”

“about ED?” she nods. He doesn’t keep speaking.

It takes her a few seconds to work out what she did wrong, there. “Yeah.”

He grins. “did you nod?”

“I nodded,” she admits gravely.

“you nodded.”

“I nodded. Eridan?”

“We’re good.”

“You’re… good?” She doesn't quite get that answer.

“yeah.”

“Didn’t you say he killed Feferi? And blinded you?”

“yeah. Would being mad at him bring her back?”

“Nope.”

He shrugs. “Then I don’t really see the point. i’m trying to chill out. We’ve got over a sweep until anything can even happen. why do i need to fight him in the meantime?”

She must admit, if he wasn’t so chill with it for some weird reason, she’d be pushing him to please not fight another duel with that crazy asshole. “I’m not saying you have to, I just thought you might… I don’t know. Hold a grudge.”

“i’m pretty sure he was trying to kill me, not her.”

“…Which is definitely grounds for not holding a grudge. Yes, I see.”

He shrugs. “maybe if i’d been a bit more chill somebody else could’ve talked him down.”

“What? You can’t blame yourself for that.”

“i know.” He doesn’t say, I don’t. Add it to the second pile list. “but if there’s a next time, i don’t want anybody else to get shot.” He smiles a little, though why, Aradia couldn’t guess. “i saw KK talking to him a few days ago. ED acted like KK was the only thing between him and going insane. And KK’s definitely the only thing between ED getting cut in half by KN.”

“So, he’s, what, under control?”

“maybe.” Which isn’t really a yes. It’s a no with hopes and dreams.

But then again, she’s on the up and up, when it comes to hopes and dreams. She reckons she can give it a go. It can’t be worse than her old plan.

“So, why are you so chill about him, then?”

“i don’t have the mental energy to be pissed at him forever. he seems to want to make amends?”

She digests this. “…Do you think he’s becoming a better person?”

He smiles faintly. “ehhh. more bearable, sure, he’s less of a prick when he’s not talking about how much better than me he is, and he hasn’t done that since the incident. but who knows. weirder things have happened. like you.”

She clacks their horns together again, sparks spitting as electric diamonds, and rolls her eyes with a smile. “Things got very weird,” she agrees. “Eridan chilling out still feels like the weirdest one, though.”

“oh c’mon, it would barely break the top ten. we have two aliens on board, for fuck’s sake.”

“They’re not weird. They’re cool.”

“you’re just saying that because you want dave to show you pictures of his dead animals collection.”

“And I just say moonsets are beautiful because they are. Where’s your whimsy.”

“my whimsy is fine. it wasn’t stored in my teeth or eyes.”

“Preserved animals are cool.”

“whatever you say.”

She elbows him. “Don’t make me ruffle your hair again. Not that I could make it any more of a mess.” But she says it fondly, and he knows what she really means is, I like your hair and I like its messiness and I like you. Even if she insists on ruffling his hair when she really wants to get that emotion across.

So, he gently winds her up, hoping she will.

Chapter Text

Kanaya finishes restocking the infirmary.

She replaces the used bandages. She washes the surgical tools, sterilises them and places them to one side. She ignores the sharp pain in her stomach. She doesn’t claw at the scarred skin, because she knows that picking at it will make it worse. She works, keeping her hands busy.

She alchemises some wonder-blood in each of their colours. It really is amazing what you can make with the alchemisers. It won’t go off, and she can store it without refrigeration. She has twelve pints for each of them (the scarlet of Karkat’s catches her eye- of course it does. She’d never seen it before cleaning his wounds. It’s more… vivid than any of the others), more than sufficient if any of them ever need blood.

And she needs blood, now.

…She views herself as if from the outside, as she neatly tears the top of a jade blood pack (doing this with anybody else’s feels wrong. More wrong, anyway). Her hands are surprisingly smooth. Her actions are not desperate. She tips it cautiously, bringing it to her lips.

And she drinks it.

Her eyes close, and she drinks it down. She feels powerful. Whole. It tastes like iron. It’s…

Gone. All gone.

She blinks and looks at the empty pint pack. The overwhelming urge hits her like a tidal wave, to shake the bag, get the last few drops, lick the covering clean, but she puts the packet down carefully,. She is better than that. She has to be.

But her pain is gone. She prods the now-unbroken skin where her stomach wound used to be.

She is against the wall. Somebody is laughing. She thinks it is her, but it might be Gamzee.

She stares at the opposite wall and, with great effort, attempts to calm down.

--

“Come in,” Terezi calls.

Karkat enters the room, stepping over clutter all over the floor. “Hey,” he says.

She turns and smiles. “Hey.”

He laughs. “What’s got you so happy?”

“You,” she replies, and he rolls his eyes. Then she shrugs. “And I’m decorating my room.”

“Grey rock not doing it for you?” He asks.

“It makes my nose ache. I can’t open a window, and it’s not exactly tree-house open plan, so I’m painting it teal. I’ve moved all my stuff away from the walls.”

He glances at the floor, barely visible beneath a layer of stuff. “I… noticed.”

She rolls her eyes. “Are you going to help me or just make fun of me?”

“Oh, I get to choose?”

“If you make another wisecrack, I’m going to splash you with paint.”

He backs up dramatically. “I think I hear Dave putting a fork in the microwave. I’ll go help.”

“Karkat!”

“Okay, okay, fine. But I came to give you this.” He uncaptchalogues Terezi’s cane. “Thanks for letting me borrow it.”

She sniffs the air. “No problem. You can keep it… if you want?”

“Really? Don’t you need it?”

She shrugs. “We can make another. Is your leg better?”

He smiles. “It took a whole perigee, but Kanaya finally gave me the OK. She’s told me to keep exercising it, though.”

“But you feel okay?” She presses.

“Yeah.” He blushes. “I-”

“What?” She tilts her head. “…Why do you smell embarrassed?”

“I was about to say, ‘stop fussing.’ But…”

“But that’s what moirails are for,” she completes, awkwardly. “…If you want that.”

“Yeah. I do.” He sits on the end of her ‘bed.’ “It’s nice!” He clarifies, in case the bursting enthusiasm in that “yeah” gave her the wrong impression. “Just difficult to get used to.”

“…Have you never had a moirail before?” She asks. “I thought with Orchys…”

Even the name is enough to make Karkat’s expression collapse for a moment.

“Nope.” He gestures to his face, and she gets it after a second. “Couldn’t take the risk. Even with. them. Relationships are, uh, difficult when they can’t see you blush. Or cry. Or get hurt ever.”

“You don’t have to worry anymore.”

He shrugs. “There’s a few people to worry about, still,” he says.

Terezi shakes her head. “Aradia wouldn’t give a shit and neither would Sollux. And I think Vriska and Eridan are smart enough to not make a fuss when the rest of us don’t care.” She puts a hand on his shoulder.

“I think I’m going to tell them. I have to, at some point, right? I just hope they don’t take it shittily.”

“Nobody’s going to kill you over it. They won’t even care.” She resolves to make that true, if it isn’t already.

He feels that silent promise, and it’s more reassuring than she could possibly know. The fact that somebody is on his side with this. “I know.” He exhales shakily. “That’s going to take some getting used to.”

She shrugs. “We have time.”

“Nearly a sweep and a half. We have time.”

He falls back until he’s on the bed and staring at the ceiling.

“That worry you?”

He shakes his head and looks at the ceiling. “A lighter shade of teal for the ceiling, maybe?” She doesn’t reply. “We’re not going to get fleeted eventually. We’re not worried about random demented lusii or asshole highbloods levelling our homes. There’s not even a horror from before time living in the ocean whose hunger pangs could wipe us all out. We’re not racing to finish the game.” He lifts his hands up, and then lets them fall to the bed again. “It’s not worrying. It’s- unnerving. Like I’m waiting for another fucking shoe to drop.”

She hesitates. “I don’t know how to deal with things when they’re this quiet, either,” she admits.

“We’ll deal with it together, then. We’ll learn.” He pats the bed, and she lies down beside him. He smiles, she takes his hand, and they stare at the ceiling together. “We’ve got time.”

--

Eridan looks up as the transportaliser activates. “Oh. Hey.”

“hey,” Sollux replies.

Eridan clears his throat nervously. “If you need me to leave, I can-”

“no, you’re fine.”

Eridan hesitates, and then shrugs to himself. “Okay, then,” he says.

They sit in silence a few chairs away for almost a full minute.

“…how’s it going?” Sollux asks.

“Fine,” Eridan says. “Arm still hurts,” he adds, then closes his eyes and curses himself. Bring that up, why don’t you?

“sorry to hear that.”

“It’s alright. How are you…?

“my sight is still totally gone,” he says.

“That… that sucks.”

Sollux shrugs. “TZ’s teaching me to smell.”

“Oh. Well, that’s good.” He isn’t sure what to say.

Time passes. Sollux starts tinkering with a computer, trying to set it up to give voice prompts. It’s taking a while. Mostly because he can’t see the settings menu.

“I’m sorry,” he whispers. He didn’t even mean to say it out loud. But it pushes out of him like a crack in the dam.

Sollux nods. “yeah. I’m sorry too.”

He shakes himself, trying to blink tears away. Because that feels unfair. He’s having his cake and eating it too, killing her and crying over it. “What are you sorry for? I ki- I-” his gillfins flutter as he tries to pull in more air. “It was my fault.”

“doesn’t mean i’m not sorry,” Sollux replies, a ghost of a smile passing over his face. “doesn’t mean i didn’t fuck up too. this isn’t my first dead girlfriend.” The smile disappears immediately, and he looks like he’s had ice water dumped on his head. “fuck. uh. don’t tell AA i said that. or KK, actually.”

“I killed her,” he says, and the pressure builds in Eridan’s head, white noise overwhelming everything else until he can almost hear the angels screaming again. “How could I do that? To her?” He knows what was going through his head at the time. Knock Sollux out, grab Fef, go to Jack, pledge loyalty.

But then Sol had fought back enough that he had to hit him hard, got his blood roaring, and Fef had jumped at him, and it seemed so important, that he was right, and…

And he’d seen violet. And, well, if you’re holding a hyper-powerful weapon and feel betrayed and want somebody to not be lunging at you, the angels in your head might well whisper, do it.

He’d only intended to knock her out. Jack could have killed the rest of the lowblooded fucks for all he cared (he did), so long as he had left them two alive.

Now, of course, the whole line of thought felt muddled, insane.

And now all he’s left with is that question: how could I do that? Because apparently, however he could, he did. So, what does that make him?

“i don’t know,” Sollux admits. “i really don’t know what was going on in your head.” He thinks about that. “well. except for the ‘joining Jack and hoping he spared you’ thing, you were pretty clear on that. that just makes you an idiot, no offence.”

“Yeah,” he says, sniffing.

“and i guess it’s not like you didn’t have practice with the whole, ‘swear yourself to the most powerful tyrant around and hope they don’t crush you’ deal.” Sollux is taking this in eerie neutrality. Like he’s trying to remember where the last jigsaw piece could be. Under the sofa? Still in the box? Did one fall between the cushions? It’s a little mystery it would be best to solve, but no great loss if it stays a mystery. It’s bizarre.

“I wish I’d never fucking- never duelled in the first place- insecure piece of shit.”

The faint smile comes back. “no argument here.” He shrugs. “guess you’ll just have to live with it.”

His victim is keeping his cool while he’s blubbering about his other victim.

“How?”

Sollux shrugs. “fuck. honestly, i dunno. but it’s a small meteor and a long sweep-and-a-half. i think you can learn.”

It takes Eridan a minute to calm down. “Sorry,” he says hoarsely.

Sollux shrugs. “it’s fine.”

“I kinda lost it there for a sec, is all.”

“feel better?”

He thinks about lying. “No. But I’ve stopped making a mess of myself now.”

“that’s good.”

Eridan waits for the followup. The Karkat-style one-two, the so hopefully you know never to do that again. The this happened because you didn’t fucking think before you leapt. Think.

It doesn’t come. The Karkat in his head is saying all that, but Sollux doesn’t.

“Listen, if you want to- if you feel like getting justice for-”

“fuck no,” Sollux bites out. “god, no.” He laughs without humour. “didn’t we cause enough problems trying to kill each other already?”

Eridan shakes his head. “I wouldn’t fight back.”

“yeah, i know.”

“Karkat would understand.”

“i don’t want karkat to understand. i want my matesprit back. i definitely don’t want to hear another fucking death. I’m not going to kill you, eridan.”

“Why the fuck not?” He whispers. “That’s the rules.”

“i…” Sollux begins. Some actual frustration bleeds through the calmness. “i don’t fucking know. i don’t know, okay? maybe it’s another special from the Captor fucked up power hour.” He breathes out slowly. “but fuck the rules. i don’t want anybody dead.”

“Even me?”

Sollux doesn’t speak, and he feels the frustration drain away. He feels detached, like half-dying quietened down everything, gave him… distance. He doesn’t hear the soon-to-die anymore, though whether that’s because there aren’t any or because he’s half-dead, he doesn’t know. Maybe the dead half of him is hearing himself. He’s glad he isn’t. The peace and quiet is… nice. Compared to what went before.

“eh. karkat would get all weepy. not worth the shitty romcoms i’d have to sit through to make him feel better.”

There’s a wet laugh from Eridan.

Sollux frowns. It’s strange, not being able to see. Somehow, he almost forgets about it, and then suddenly realises that he has no way of telling what’s on the screen of his palmhusk or he suddenly flinches while walking down a corridor when it occurs he can’t tell if there’s some randomly-placed obstacle in his path he might be about to smack into.

He’s dealing with it. But fuck if he doesn’t forget the obvious stuff sometimes.

“which arm did you lose?”

“What?”

Sollux winces. “fuck, sorry, that was random. i just… nobody told me out loud, and i can’t remember which it was.”

Eridan doesn’t speak for a second. “The right.”

“oh.”

“It’s. fine. I can still type. Still figuring out books and shit. But I can get around. …How about you?”

“most of the time. it’s better when there’s somebody walking with me, so i know that i’m not about to crash into something.” He considers this. “or at least, if i do, then i know they’re mad at me, i guess.”

Eridan laughs weakly, sniffling. “If you give me a pair of gloves, I’ll take the hint.” He blows his nose, and that makes Sollux’s mouth twitch up for some reason. of course he has a handkerchief, he thinks to himself.

“ouch,” Sollux says. “guess new shades would be a pretty shit gift for me, too.”

“You could still wear them for fashion.”

“why would i want to be fashionable if i couldn’t see it?”

Eridan scoffs, and Sollux grins properly. It almost sounds like a normal conversation, now, even if these two have probably never had one before now. “Fashion isn’t about seeing your own outfit. It’s about other people seeing it and going ‘Wow. There goes a guy with good taste.’”

“has anybody ever actually said that to you?” he asks.

There’s a drawn-out intake of breath and a creak. Sollux imagines Eridan must be leaning back in his chair from the force of that burn. “I walked into that one, didn’t I?”

“more like you sprinted up to it and pulled me along for the ride,” he replies.

“Fair.” Eridan hesitates. “Do you…”

Sollux tilts his head. “huh?”

“Are you trying to get the computer to use text-to-speech?”

“yeah?”

“…Do you need help setting it up?”

Sollux considers.

He can picture the screen in his head, knows roughly what he’s looking at. He could probably make it to the accessibility options on his own. But it might take a while. And any time he thinks he’s lost, he’d probably have to start over. Even given what he imagines to be the guy’s fairly rocky computer skills, it would probably be faster with Eridan’s help.

Eridan, being genuinely helpful. Wonders never cease. “that would be great. thanks ED.”

--

Kanaya doesn’t know how long she’s been staring at the wall when Rose walks by. The human does a double-back when she realises somebody’s in the room she passed.

“Oh. Hello,” Rose says.

Kanaya startles out of her reverie. “Hello, Rose,” she echoes, standing as gracefully as she can.

“I’m not interrupting anything, am I?”

She shakes her head to clear it. “Nothing at all.”

Rose nods. “Since we are here for, as they say, the long haul, I thought you might like to join me?”

“Join you?”

“I’m going to be reading in one of the rooms we’ve placed sofas in. I thought perhaps you might like a chance to socialise.”

“A… reading club, of sorts.”

Rose’s lips twitch into a small smile. “If you like. You don’t have to read if you don’t want to. You can sew. Or we could just talk.”

“I… would like that very much. Thank you.”

“Excellent,” she replies. “Shall I walk you there, or do you have things to finish up here?”

Kanaya glances around. She hasn’t finished tidying everything away. But-

“Nothing that will not keep until later,” she says.

Rose offers her arm. “Then, shall we?”

Kanaya takes the arm. She is beginning to remember why she enjoyed talking to Rose so much. “We shall.”

Chapter Text

Terezi raps smartly on the door. “Mister grape soda, open up in the name of the law!”

The door opens, and Eridan gives her a surprised look. “Rezi. What’s going on?”

“We have something to talk about. Can I come in?”

He thinks about it for a second. “What are my options here, legally?”

It’s fun that he wants to play along. But unfortunately, she isn’t here to play. She gives him a narrow look. “The main two are step back or get pushed back.”

He shrugs and takes a step back. “Damn. Come in, then.”

She does.

She sniffs around. It’s a big room, and she’s not surprised at all to realise he’s filled it with stuff. Ahab’s Crosshairs is displayed against a wall. Not like he can use his rifle with only one arm, even if it was still his most powerful weapon.

And the room doesn’t smell strongly of anything, just faintly of salt water, which she’s immensely grateful for. Smelling smells at the same time as colours gives her a headache after too long. As it is, the salinity adds a corroded copper sheen to the room which she enjoys right now, but in half an hour will have her chewing her chalks to avoid.

“So, what’s this about?”

“It’s about Karkat.”

“Is he okay?” Eridan says, frowning with what she thinks is genuine concern. That earns him a few points in her book. It’s better than nothing, at least. And they did used to be friends.

“He’s fine. But he could be better.”

“Oh. Okay…?”

Why are you standing in the middle of my room then?

“He’s going to be making a little speech to everybody on the meteor. To get some things on the record.”

His face clears. “You’re warning me Karkat might be giving one of his patented fuck-laden inspirational speeches?” He even smiles a little bit. “Aren’t we all used to them by now? Don’t most people tune them out?”

“Don’t tune this one out,” she says, and his smile disappears.

“Right. Got it.”

They stand there for a moment, looking at each other. Or he looks at her, anyway. But she stares at him.

“Mind if I give you a preview of the headline topic?”

He shrugs.

“It’s about his blood colour.”

Eridan shifts, and she zeroes in on it. Still a little bit uncomfortable with being reminded you’re being led by people so far below you, aren’t you mister purple privateer? “…Can’t say that’s what I was expecting. Isn’t his whole thing the fact that he doesn’t give even enough of a shit to tell anybody?”

She shakes her head. “Think about why he might keep it a secret.”

Eridan looks at her, mystified. “It’s… very low? But it’s not like Aradia—”

“Guess again. Crazier, this time.”

His eyes widen. “Lime?”

“Swing and a miss. Candy red.”

“What?”

“He’s a mutant.” She keeps her head pointing towards his face, but she can smell the way his one good hand curls briefly into a fist. But it doesn’t form offensively into the shape of the wand that’s safely stored away in her sylladex, so on her personal bad-news-o-meter, he isn’t boiling over. “He’s got the same blood as the humans and the carapacians.”

“I—” He begins. She glances, almost casually, into the future Board states, and sees a lot of things she doesn’t quite like at the end of that sentence. Things he won’t like, either.

So, she gives him a hint.

“Think incredibly carefully about what you say next,” she says quietly, and his mouth snaps shut.

He opens it again, this time more carefully. His fingers uncurl. “Nothing wrong with the humans,” He says, and then adds: “Or the Mayor.”

She nods and walks to the door. “Good. Glad to hear it. Act supportive when he announces it, please.”

“Will do.”

She lingers at the threshold, glancing back at where he’s standing, looking very thoughtfully at nothing. “Eridan?” He glances at her. “If you hurt him, I won't fuck about with limbs. I’ll just slit your throat.”

It’s a fairly traditional protective moirail threat (maaaybe she should have mentioned not hurting anybody, but she doesn’t think it’ll make a difference), but Eridan doesn’t seem to notice. He winces and nods.

And then, bizarrely, he doesn’t say, “sorry,” or “I won’t,” or “I understand.”

He says, “thanks.”

She takes one last sniff at him. And then she disappears out the door.

--

Kanaya walks to Karkat’s side as he and Terezi finish up moving the furniture about. “Did everything go alright with Eridan?”

Karkat nods. “Terezi says he won’t do anything stupid.” Kanaya sniffs, unconvinced. “What about Vriska?”

Her eyes slide towards the Cerulean as she sits quietly (uncharacteristically quietly) down on the sofa. Huh. Looks like Kanaya did actually do some scary rainbow drinker shit. He meets her eyes, and she gives him a weak smile.

Aradia walks in. Karkat meets her eyes and flickers his look towards the open sofa beside Vriska. She nods and drags Sollux to sit down, herself in the middle. After a few seconds, she swaps some idle chat with Vriska.

The humans are next. Rose gives him a polite nod and Dave mumbles something about how much he loves meetings. No really, they’re so ironic. This could totally have been an email, but the inefficiency is so ironic. He respects the hell out of it. Rose asks if he’s getting enough sleep.

“Did the Mayor not want to come?” Karkat asks. Somehow, he’s just a little upset by that. He tries to pretend it’s purely tactical; everybody feels better with the Mayor around.

“He was in the middle of a building project. It looked important.”

He sighs. Karkat just can’t bring himself to rip the Mayor from his urban planning.

Eridan walks in. He gives Karkat a quick nod, trying not to look at Kanaya, and sits down in a random chair. Beside Rose.

Karkat winces.

It wasn’t Eridan’s fault. There were two open spaces, and this one happened to be the one beside Rose. He feels rather than sees Kanaya’s eyes narrow, and he turns to her. “Thanks for your help, by the way, Kanaya.”

She tears her gaze away from Eridan’s position far too late for Eridan not to have realised what the problem is (but also too late for him to move without it being a big thing). “It’s no problem, Karkat.” She smiles at him. “I’m glad you trust me.”

He smiles back and feeds that feeling, and it’s only a little bit because of the whole leader-managing-everybody thing. Look at the pair of them. They trust each other.

It feels good.

He takes a deep breath. “Okay. Let’s do this.”

She nods and walks to take a seat.

--

Minutes ago, about fifty.

Vriska arrives at Kanaya’s room. The door is already open, so she steps in. It’s full of lengths of fabric and sewing materials, but just as much of it is taken up with medical tools, which is honestly new. At least to Vriska. “Kanaya?”

“Behind the dialysis machine.”

Vriska has no idea what a dialysis is, or why one is in Kanaya’s room, but she spots Kanaya tinkering at the back of a thin, tall machine beside a chair. I guess that’s a dialysis machine.

“Hey. You wanted to talk to me?”

“Yes. You saw Karkat’s plan for the evening.”

“The meeting? Sure. Is that what you wanted to talk about?”

“It is.” She finishes up… whatever she was doing, and straightens up, stepping out from behind the machine.

“What’s that for?”

She glances at the machine. “It filters blood for you if your kidneys can’t.”

“Kidneys?” She asks.

“That’s the medical term. Your reniform bloodsifters.”

“Oh, that.” Why does mediculling have such confusing terms for things, anyway? “Why? Are they going to stop working?”

Kanaya shrugs. “It’s not likely. But you can never be too careful. I’d rather we have one somewhere and not need it than need one and have to alchemise one from scratch.”

Vriska guesses that makes sense. “…Why in your room, though?”

“Complicated mediculler reasons that you probably wouldn’t understand,” she says, and Vriska’s about 80% sure she’s bullshit her. “That’s not really what I messaged you to talk about,” she says, folding her arms. “Unless you’re actually interested in mediculling, suddenly.”

“Not really.”

“No, I thought not.”

They stare at each other.

Kanaya is slightly surprised. She had meant to get over her little crush, but she really didn’t expect it to happen so quickly when she had it for so long. After everything that’s happened, she honestly feels very coolly towards Vriska. “I wanted to talk to you about the meeting,” she reminds her.

“Oh yeah. What’s it about?”

“Well. That’s what I wanted to talk to you about.” She’s not really sure how to do. This. She’s starting to suspect Karkat may just be much better at wrangling people than she is. Looking back, she’s not really sure she ever knew how Vriska felt, let alone how she was meant to do anything about that.

“Basically Karkat is going to announce something at the meeting and I need to make sure you’re ‘cool’ before he does. So that you don’t say something Vriska-y.”

Vriska frowns. “Rude.”

She continues. “So, I will remind you of a few things. The first is that I apparently don’t stay dead. Maybe even less than a Godtier does. The second is that I care about Karkat and I will kill anybody who tries to hurt him. The third is that you actually don’t hate Karkat and you would probably feel very bad about it if you killed him. Do you think those things are all true things?”

Vriska considers. “Yeah,” she admits. “As annoying as he is, Karkat is kinda funny.”

It’s probably the closest she can get to saying she cares, Kanaya thinks, uncharitably and uncharacteristically. “And the other parts?”

“Jegus, Maryam, sure, you’re very scary.”

She steps towards Vriska a little bit, crowding her personal space a little. Vriska, amazingly, shies back. It’s not her job to manage Vriska anymore, and she gets a little satisfaction at the fact that when she puts her foot down, Vriska will back down. “I am serious. If you hurt him, I would think nothing of killing you.”

That last part’s probably not true, but she’s just gotten over a rather large and embarrassingly long-term crush, so we should probably cut Kanaya some slack, here. She’d feel at least a little bad about it.

It has the intended effect, anyway. Vriska nods numbly. “Okay,” she says, trying her best not to piss Kanaya off any more than she already clearly has, somehow.

Kanaya steps back, nodding briskly. “Right. That all said, I suppose the only other thing you need to know is that Karkat is a candy-red-blooded mutant.”

“What?”

--

“I’m making this short because honestly fuck all of you,” Karkat says, by way of opening. Terezi facepalms because that’s definitely not the opening they drafted up. But, well, you only get to say this sort of thing once, so he might as well fuck it up, right? “I have something to tell you all.” He breathes out to calm himself down. The old instinct is screaming at him to say, actually, nevermind, it’s nothing. Fuck off and thanks. But he’s already had Vriska and Eridan told. It might actually be more dangerous if he didn’t say it now.

And besides, it should be easy. All he has to say is “my blood is bright red and I’m a mutant” and that’s pretty much all that needs to be said.

“Oh,” Aradia says.

…He said that out loud, didn’t he? Huh. Well, looks like he was right. Easy peasy. “Yeah,” he says, trying to look unbothered. Blood powers may be the only thing preventing him from having a heart attack. Dave told him squeakbeasts have a heartrate of, what, six hundred beats per minute? Yeah, he must be hitting that.

“…Surprising,” Aradia says, but then she shrugs. “But I don’t think it’s an issue for me!”

He has to keep himself from slumping in relief.

He nods at her, and glances at the rest of them. Kanaya’s holding back, and he knows she has some short reassuring spiel lined up, but she’s waiting to see if anybody else has anything to say, first. And to be honest, so is Karkat. Vriska and Eridan, prewarned, don’t say anything. He glances at the humans, and they seem like they’re trying to work out what his reveal even really means. Yeah, in hindsight, he should’ve tried clearing that up a bit better.

“Sollux?” He asks.

“yeah?”

Karkat shrugs vaguely. “Were you… fucking listening?”

Sollux grins. “my reaction would’ve been bigger if i was still obsessed with red and blue, to be honest. cmon KK i thought we were friends, how could you deprive me of that.” Aradia elbows him in the side, giving Karkat a wince of apology.

But Karkat’s known him long enough to know what Sollux is saying. I don’t care. We’re still friends. Don’t worry.

“Yeah, well,” he says. Thanks. “Fuck you very much,” he adds.

Kanaya clears her throat. “I’m very proud of you for deciding to share this. I think I speak for everybody when I say we don’t think any the less of you and we still regard you as our leader.” She doesn’t glance to Eridan or Vriska, but they make noises of general agreement on cue, which is good. Something irks Karkat about that reassurance that nobody thinks less of you, because let’s be honest, he didn’t think the group opinion of him was sky high to begin with, but most of him is just glad everybody’s at least stating they don’t want him dead because of this.

“Thanks, Kanaya.” Wow, he really stacked the deck on this one. The only real unknowns were the humans and Sollux and Aradia. And speaking of.

“Yeah, uh. Can’t say I get any of this shit,” Dave pipes up. “Since, y’know, humans all have the same blood as you anyway. But it’s cool that you’re all not murdering each other about it. And kinda cool you’ve got blood like ours I guess. Blood brothers from alien mothers,” he says, which Karkat assumes is a deeply meaningful statement in human society that Dave has no doubt absolutely fucking butchered.

“I think what Dave means to say is we’re glad to hear you trust us with this,” Rose clarifies. She frowns. “I think,” she stresses.

“Your ringing endorsement has been noted,” Karkat says, and Dave snickers.

The Pulse is going almost all one way, which is doing wonders for his cortisol levels. Nobody’s about to interrupt to throw a fit, nobody feels angry or even disgusted.

(He’d been sure that one would be potent enough to choke him to death.)

Really, the most negative emotion anybody’s feeling is uncomfortable, and that’s mostly his.

Six sweeps. Six sweeps of hiding it and now every troll in the universe knows. And to a certain extent, none of them really care. He could laugh. He could cry. Honestly, he could fucking yell at somebody. He’s doing the thing that was supposed to kill him, and nobody’s lifting a finger, and he can’t even feel anxious anticipation about it, because his stupid blood powers make him next to impossible to emotionally sneak attack. He’s just done the biggest thing of his whole fucking life and everybody’s taking it as if he’s announced who he’s dating. That’s great Karkat, whatever makes you happy.

And he…

Fuck.

Fuck it. Gift hoofbeasts. He’s ready to chalk it up as a success. “Yeah. So. That’s about it, actually. My blood’s red and nobody gives a shit, hooray. Any questions?”

Dave raises his hand slowly when nobody else offers anything. “Uh. I know you guys have some weird blood order thing, but do we have to give a shit about that?” He asks, gesturing between himself and Rose. Rose discreetly puts her head in her hand.

“I mean, do we give a shit about it?” Terezi pipes up. “I certainly don’t. Delicious as you all may be.” He notes the squirming discomfort suddenly in the Pulse coming from Maryam after that statement and folds the questions down for later. But he guesses Terezi’s been hanging back for this moment specifically. Because it’s a good question.

And honestly, Karkat doesn’t know. Let’s see…

Their two highbloods only shrug when Karkat glances at them. Kanaya’s explicitly said she couldn't give a shit. Aradia never acted like she cared and Sollux really never cared. Maybe some of them are harbouring some insane irredentism he hasn't noticed and it'll surface in a year, but right now, it's not rearing its head.

Good enough for now.

“I can’t speak for everybody, but I don’t intend to step down just because you know my blood is fucked up. And I'm not going to treat the other six people in our group differently because of their blood colour. That sounds fucking stupid. Somebody can launch a coup if they really give that much of a fuck. Does that answer your question?”

Dave shrugs. “Probably. Can I launch a coup?”

Karkat shrugs. “Probably,” he echoes.

Dave grins. “Haha. Nice.”

Chapter Text

The common area is reasonably full right now. Terezi is sitting on the floor and ‘training’ Sollux to see by playing slapsies. By the grumbling noises, he isn’t doing very well. Rose and Kanaya are pressed together on a sofa, reading. Aradia and Dave are examining a few jars with a content that Karkat doesn’t want to think about.

Seven people. Literally everybody except the Mayor and the two… the two of them.

Karkat keeps catching himself expecting more people. It’s a sparsely refurnished computer room meant for twelve, of course it feels like there’s people missing. And there actually is, more to the point.

But Eridan doesn’t want to show up if Kanaya’s there, even though he’s been dancing around saying that to Karkat directly, and Vriska doesn’t seem to want to leave her room full stop.

…He may need to do something about that.

He shoots Eridan a message.

It almost makes him smile. Karkat actually gets distracted scrolling up and seeing dozens of conversations beginning with some rearranging of those two phrases. So far, so normal.

He gets distracted enough that Eridan sends him another message.

Karkat leans deeper into the swivel chair, putting his legs up against the computer table running along the edge of the room, and scowls in disbelief at his palmhusk. He wishes there was a wall he could smack his head into that allowed him to still see his huskscreen at the same time, for efficiency’s sake.

Karkat stares at the screen and tries to think of something to say.

He can feel the frayed edges of their friendship. Surprisingly, not snapped, but. Everything’s different, now. There’s a big fucking sword hanging over it all, too, in the form of a question.

Does he even want to still be friends with Eridan?

It’s a legitimate question. They’re spending over a sweep on the same meteor and then they need to fight an unkillable demon together, but they could just leave it tepidly polite.

He closes his eyes. The common area is full of other people he could be talking to. He’d have gone over to bug Dave already if he hadn’t been showing dead things to Aradia. He could go bug Kanaya about something. He had options.

He could just tell Eridan to fuck off. It’s not like he’s putting in the same amount of effort to get Vriska back into the group.

…But him and Vriska had never talked more than occasionally. And Terezi was trying (however unsuccessfully) to do exactly that as well. And unlike Eridan, it isn’t like anybody is still around to remember Vriska killing them.

Fuck. Yeah. Except Aradia.

But even then, she seemed cool with Vriska now, for whatever reason. Bygones be bygones or whatever. He honestly doesn’t understand that, but he’s certainly not complaining. He’s even starting to think it might be a better way to get Vriska out of her shell than Terezi trying to catch her outside her room.

His thoughts circle back to Eridan. He could just tell the guy he’s a piece of shit (which is true) and to fuck off.

The only problem Karkat sees with that plan is that he might. Eridan might actually go off into some dark corner of the Meteor and spend three ‘years’ as a fucking cryptid nobody sees except in the distance. He might actually fuck off, and then their hardest or second hardest hitter would be out of sight when the time came. Would he still want to be on their side in three years? Or would he have convinced himself back into his fucking ‘serve Jack’ bullshit again? They’d have to kill him. Karkat imagines himself being the one holding the sickle.

But you couldn’t even let Terezi kill Gamzee. What makes you think you can do it?

He grits his teeth.

Or what if he didn’t. If he didn’t even bother with the fading into the background, and just left. Jumped into a dreambubble and left forever. Left them alone.

Abandoned them.

And then there’d be eight on the meteor. Not nine.

And Karkat doesn’t want that.

Just like that, the right answer is obvious.

He stares at his phone, and then carefully taps out his reply a letter at a time.

Karkat nods to himself and makes to leave the room. Kanaya gives him a questioning glance as he leaves, like she knows, and he gives her a reassuring smile. Dave waves and he flips him off.

He’s just made his way outside the common area when Eridan messages him again.

Chapter Text

Karkat physically leans as he threads the corner, tugging his controller up and to the right, enough that it obscures a bit of the screen. “COME ON,” he screeches. “PLEEEEEASE.”

Dave is a crisp and peaceful meadow in the Force. He is the Boddhisatva of the Mario Kart game; attachment means nothing to him, for he has achieved inner emptiness. He’s zen, he’s cool as a cucumber, he’s in the zone. The zen zone. He’s climbing towards first place steadily, and his victory is assured. And then Karkat knocks into his shoulder accidentally, and he has to stop himself from leaning into it to bump him back, which distracts him just enough that he fucks the shortcut up. His face scrunches in annoyance.

Goddamn, dude, what the fuck happened to the zen zone.

“This is bullshit,” he says as he gets nailed by a green shell.

Karkat doesn’t bother taking his eyes off the game for an instant ashe streaks past Dave’s struggling cart. “How fucking dare you doubt my gaming abilities. This is pure skill.”

The only sound for the next thirty seconds is Karkat mashing buttons so hard that Dave’s actually worrying whether he has enough grist to last the whole journey if Karkles abuses his controllers this bad. And then they’re on the last straightaway before the turn and the finish line, with Karkat in fourth and Dave in sixth.

“We’re fucked,” Karkat growls.

Dave narrows his eyes. “Not yet.”

Item box. Red shell for Karkat. A second later, Dave’s item cycles and they both grin as he pulls the blue shell.

“Fuck yes, Strider. Fuck yes.”

“Tell me when.”

“Hold. Okayyy… Now.”

Dave throws the blue shell. It streaks down the course, hunting first. It explodes, throwing first and second into the air. Third place takes the lead, and Karkat—

Karkat cackles as he slips into second place just metres before the finish line. “YYYYYYYYYYYYYESSSSSSSSSS,” he screams. Somewhere far behind them, the Rogue Queens’ ears probably prick in irritation as he produces frequencies which melt candlewax. It’s possibly the most excited anybody’s ever been about second place.

Dave finishes a few seconds later with a respectable fourth. “Nice,” he says.

“Did you see me take that fucking turn, Strider?” He demands, grinning at the human.s

Dave nods seriously. “Very impressive.” An expert could maybe tell Dave is trying desperately to keep a smile from breaking across his face. But he’s pretty sure Karkat can’t tell. Dave Strider is as cool as a cucumber going skinny dipping in Finland.

“What did you call this thing, again?” Karkat asks as the scores trickle across the screen to show Dave and Karkat neck and neck.

He shrugs and tries to relax as he gets into the last race. “It’s a Wii. Two I’s.”

“He’s lying,” Rose says from the other corner of the computer room, head resting on Kanaya’s shoulder on the sofa and not looking up from her book. Honestly, he’d forgotten either of them were even there. “it’s Piiss. Also two I’s.”

Dave twists to stare at Rose in muted horror. She winks at him. He looks back at Karkat, but words to salvage the situation refuse to appear.

Karkat snorts, not taking his eyes off the screen as he queues up the next game. “Honestly, Dave, if you’re going to lie, at least make it fucking convincing.”

Dave purses his lips. “Sure. You got me.”

They start the next race.

Karkat’s eyes flicker to the box. Dave notices the smile he tries to hide.

(Karkat fucking trounces him.)

--

Two weeks later.

“Karkat,” Rose says. Karkat glances up from his book, tilting his head. “What are your intentions with my brother?”

“This is the eighth time you’ve asked him that,” Dave mumbles from his position stretched across Karkat’s lap on the sofa and drawing idly on his tablet. “He wants my dowry cows.”

Karkat tries to parse… any of that. Neither of those were turns of phrase on Alternia. “…What?”

The two humans are silent for a moment. “I’m going to tell him,” Rose says after a second.

Dave scrambles up. “Hey. No. No, hey, don’t do that. Karkat cover your ears, no stop, Rose-”

--

“And Bon Appetit,” Dave says, and there’s a clink of something being set on the table.

Sollux sniffs the dish that’s been placed on front of him. “and this is…”

“Just a little slice of Texan cuisine. Well. Italian cuisine. But I’ve had it before. In, uh. Texas. It’s human cuisine.”

“Dave just shrugged modestly,” Eridan says, which causes Sollux to grin. Karkat facepalms, which nobody bothers narrating because Karkat contrives to make facial expression audible, even when there isn’t percussion involved.

Karkat is not a very quiet person.

“I’ll make enough for everybody next time, but I want to see if trolls like it. Karkat just keeps asking if I’m trying to poison him.”

“You keep saying yes,” Karkat replies, failing utterly at hiding the fond edge to his irritation.

“Yeah, well, I don’t know if it’s edible for trolls. You’ve described the most fucked up shit from Troll planet.”

“Alternia,” Eridan and Karkat correct simultaneously.

“Potato tomato.”

Sollux sniffs it again. It’s flavours he vaguely recognises, but it’s definitely nothing he’s ever had before. He’s only getting a vague idea of what it smells like and what the room around him looks like, which isn’t surprising when he’s forcing his olfactory centres to work (heh) double duty and he’s not that good at the whole seeing-by-smelling thing yet. He traces his fingers over the tabletop until he finds the plate, and then pokes the food. It’s a bit squishy, and at least that is familiar. “What is it?”

“Lasagne. It’s… Uh. Hm.” Dave trails off. “Okay, so I guess… You know pasta?”

“What?” Eridan asks.

“Okay, uh. It’s food.”

There’s a brief silence. Sollux guesses Karkat and Eridan are exchanging looks. (By the sound of Eridan’s snort, he also guesses they try to exchange looks with him, and then realise their mistake). “That certainly is… a description.”

Sollux pats the table and picks up the foodtrident and hesitates with it over the meal. “how do I…”

There’s a scraping noise as Eridan scoots his chair to beside Sollux. “I think you need to cut it?” There’s a brief pause. “Okay, Dave’s giving me the nod.”

“With the trident?”

“There’s a knife as well. Left side,” he adds, as Sollux puts out a hand.

He traces his fingers over the wooden table surface until they hit a metallic object. “thanks ED.”

“Any time. The knife goes in the right hand and the fork in the left, technically.”

He switches them around, rolling his eyes as he does. “does that make the food taste better?”

“Nah, just etiquette shit. I think it’s somethin’ about having the knife in your non-dominant hand for big banquets and stuff. Less threatening or something.”

Sollux tilts his head. “aren’t most trolls right-handed?”

“Most violets are left-handed. I wasn’t, but I guess I have to be now. Besides, aren’t you ambidextrous?”

He nods. “…how did you know?”

“Educated guess.”

There’s a two-second silence.

“hey ED?”

“Yeah?”

“fuck you.”

Dave snickers and Karkat rolls his eyes.

“Hey Sol?”

“yeah?” he replies, already smiling.

“Ditto.”

“I think I preferred it when you were fighting,” Karkat mutters.

“Give it time,” Dave says.

“okay. let’s get this shitshow on the road. tell me where i need to cut.”

“That went well,” Karkat says as they walk away from the food preparation block.

“Yeah, they seemed to like the lasagne,” Dave replies. He’s walking like an idiot, moving like he’s dancing across a club floor to the bar, but the effect is more ballroom waltz than anything else- because Dave is an idiot. Karkat swats him whenever he dips back into his range. He dodges effortlessly. “Dodged,” he says, to be an asshole.

“You know that’s not what I meant.”

“I know, but you think they’re flushes for each other or whatever.”

“Flushed, Dave.”

“Tomato potato.” The Godtier translation informs him helpfully that he pronounced both of those words wrong, this time.

“Do they not look flushed to you?” Karkat asks.

“I don’t know, man, I just wanted to know what they thought of the food.” Half a second later, he adds, “I do kinda see it, though.”

“Right!?” Karkat explodes.

“I mean, I don’t know what it was on your weird four-charts, but playing ‘help me cut up my food for me’ with each other is not normal friend behaviour, right?”

 “Yeah!” He falters. “Well, okay, I guess neither of them could do it by themselves.”

“True. Could be totally normal friend stuff. We know all about that.”

“Yeah.”

“Now, say if we were watching a romcom and you started just feeding me popcorn to get me to shut up, then-”

Karkat’s heart does some complex little flips, and he sputters over the end of Dave’s sentence. “We are never talking about that, Strider,” he says.

“Who’s talking about it?” Dave replies. “Talking about what? I’m just throwing out hypotheticals.”

He hits a higher tempo of some inner song and starts humming as he moves in fast forward for a few steps. Safely hidden behind his back, Karkat smiles.

--

She hasn’t been out since going to Kanaya’s before Karkat’s announcement, and to be honest, given how scary Kanaya was, the experience didn’t exactly make her love suddenly hearing from people out of the blue.

So, when Vriska looks up in surprise, her first thought is, I imagined that, right?

But she didn’t. The knock at the door comes again.

“Vriska?” Aradia calls through the door. “You in?”

Vriska doesn’t respond for a moment. She thinks about saying no. “Give me a minute,” she calls back.

She stands up and walks up to the door. She stares at it for a minute. The grey metal stares back at her. Then, she opens it.

Aradia smiles at her. “Hey!” she says.

“Hi,” Vriska replies cautiously.

“Wanna play video games?” Aradia asks.

Vriska blinks. She can’t have heard that right. Her first deliberate friendmurder, the troll she killed using her own boyfriend is asking her to…

“…Play video games?”

“Sure!”

“I, uh.” She isn’t sure how to respond to that. “That sounds…” She considers her options. “I’d love to, but I’m… not feeling well. I don’t think I’d be up for heading down to the computers. Too, uh… bright.” She gestures at the low light in the room and then at the fluorescent lights of the hallway.

“Oh, that’s not a problem,” Aradia says.

And uncaptchalogues a bundle of technology and wires.

She looks expectantly at Vriska over the threshold.

She looks at her. Aradia seems serious. And Vriska’s too tired, and a little confused, to think of an alternative excuse. “Then, uh. Come in, I guess.”

“Thanks!”

--

Vriska groans as a train of coins get stolen from her character. “Bullshit!” She boos, as Mario poses in triumph at her loss. “He took my star last turn as well,” she grumbles, because if anybody can hold a grudge against a computer programme, it’s Vriska Serket.

Aradia laughs. “Maybe we shouldn’t have set the AI to master.”

“I might as well win against worthy opponents,” she retorts. It’s her turn now.

“Are you so sure you’re going to win?” Aradia asks. “Mario is in the lead.” She doesn’t mention that she’s just a few coins behind him. “And you’re not exactly near the star.”

Vriska rolls her eyes. “Watch this,” she says. She picks her triple dice item. “Call a number.”

“Six.”

She hits the dice block. It’s a six. “Again.”

“Five.”

She hits the dice. Five.

“Ten?” Aradia suggests.

“Oh, fuck you,” Vriska huffs. “I’m not magic. I’ll do a six.” She hits it. Another six.

“Well, I don’t know how much that’ll help you.”

“It gets me to the star, doesn’t it?” Shy Guy waddles the seventeen spaces, right to the star-giving toad.

“Yeah, buuut-” Aradia says, drawing it out until Vriska arrives at Toadette. “-You don’t have enough coins anymore,” she finishes, just as the dialogue box pops up.

Vriska opens her mouth in horror. “You tricked me!” She accuses, which makes Aradia cackle. “You made me roll high to waste the item, didn’t you?”

“Maybe,” Aradia replies. “All’s fair in Mario Party!”

“Low blow, Megido. Exploiting my ego to beat me.” As soon as the words leave her mouth, she feels the pit in her stomach she’d been ignoring open right back up. Smooth, Serket. Bring her attention to THAT, why don’t you?

Aradia doesn’t seem to mind, she just rolls her eyes with a grin. “You can literally just cheat, I have to take my advantages where I can get them.” It’s her turn now, and she selects her dice block. “But you’re not the only one can cheat.” She bobs her head in time with the random spin of the dice block for a few seconds, and then shakes the remote. It’s a ten. “Hell yeah!”

It’s so surprising Vriska momentarily forgets what she was just thinking. “How did you get a ten?” she demands.

“Donkey Kong’s custom dice block.”

“You could have told me about that!”

“Yeah, but I’m trying to win, here!”

--

“So,” Aradia says when they’re about to start another game, hyper-casually.

“So,” Vriska agrees awkwardly, fiddling with the controller. She knew there had to be some ulterior motive to Megido coming to visit her. What, did she think her second victim would just show up to play videogames with her? Just get it over with.

“So, uh. Karkat’s announcement, huh?” Aradia says.

“Yeah. He certainly did. Announce that.”

Aradia blinks. “Oh, come on,” she says with a huff.

“What?” Vriska asks, thrown.

“I was floored! But everybody else barely reacted! I mean, for the humans, that makes sense, and Terezi and Kanaya already knew, but it felt like Sollux and I were the only ones taken by surprise! And when we talked about it, even Sollux just said—” She puts on an honestly pretty spot-on impression of Sollux’s voice, “—AA it’s KK. he’s a massive weirdo. his blood would need to be polka-dots for it to be as weird as he is. and until TZ teaches me how to see by licking, this could all be a huge prank on me.” She throws up her hands. “Nobody wants to gossip about it with me.”

Vriska opens her mouth, frowning, but… No, of course, Karkat didn’t need to get somebody to go and have a talk with Aradia (or Sollux) beforehand.

Still. At least she’s clearly not interrogating her for somebody else. Aradia’s just out of the loop. “Is Karkat going to have to fend off two blind people begging him to let them lick him?” She asks. Aradia laughs.

“I’ll try to keep Sollux in line. Maybe you can do the same for Terezi.” She winks.

“Huh?” She hasn’t talked to Terezi in a while. Only a few words since she stabbed Vriska. Which, admittedly, Vriska has come around on. It was honestly kinda badass of her. But still, Terezi’s hardly going to listen to her about who to lick. “What do you mean?”

Aradia shrugs. “Oh, nothing. Maybe I red too much into something.”

Ah. Other people noticing her crush. You’re not as subtle as you think you are, Serket, she tells herself and tries not to blush. She changes the subject. “Kanaya told me before the meeting,” she admits. And somebody- maybe Terezi- probably told Eridan, as well, she guesses. “She wanted to make sure I wouldn’t freak out and say something rude.”

Aradia raises her eyebrows. “Huh. I guess you did look a little… prewarned.” She frowns. “Why didn’t somebody tell me?”

“You wouldn’t have said something rude. Hell, you didn’t.”

“Well, I would’ve if I knew it meant I’d get more gossip!” She grumbles, and Vriska laughs a little uncertainly. “What did Kanaya say?”

Vriska winces. “We, uh. We talked about the hemocaste. She made it clear she wasn’t a fan.”

“Can’t say I am, either,” Aradia admits. “I mean, even before the whole robot thing. If I’m being honest, the only people still alive who would even benefit from it would be you and Eridan.”

“That’s pretty much what Kanaya said.”

“Well, hey, you didn’t say anything at the meeting, but how do you feel about it?” Vriska shifts uncomfortably. Aradia, realising the question veered a little pale, corrects. “I mean, you must have some thoughts about the hemocaste.”

“Not as many as Equius does- uh, did.”

Aradia rolls her eyes. “That would be difficult.” She’s winding aimlessly through the lobby with her controller, the game more or less forgotten except as visual background. “What’s your opinion?”

“I…”

What’s she supposed to say? Yes I love the hemocaste? She doesn’t care that much about it, in all honesty. She just never really thinks about it.

She guesses that’s the point. She never thought about it. But Karkat had to, pretty much all the time. No wonder he always avoided Nepeta like the plague- girl couldn't keep her mouth shut, and Equius probably would've killed him for being in the same troll zip code as Nepeta while mutant.

She shrugs. “It doesn’t matter anymore. Like Karkat says, we’re free to throw a coup, but why? What are we going to do, turn the meteor around?”

“I guess not.”

“Yeah. So, Karkat's still our leader. Regardless of whatever Dave's doing.”

Aradia laughs. “I suppose. So no... lingering hemocaste sentiments, then?”

“It’s good for Karkat that it doesn’t exist anymore,” she says shortly. “And I don’t really care.”

Aradia rolls this around her brain for a minute. “I guess that’s as good a view as any.” She hesitates, fiddling with the controller. “…Wanna play another game?”

Vriska's shoulders relax just a fraction. At least it was a short interrogation. “…Sure.”

--

By the time they wrap up the games, Vriska looks a little more upbeat. It’s not going to last, because that’s not how it works, but she can hope.

Weird, that. Her, of all people, hoping that Vriska, of all people, gets better.

She makes Vriska keep the console in her room- maybe she’ll ask Aradia over next time, instead of Aradia having to barge her way in.

And then with a quick “See you, Megido” to leave her away, she slips into the corridor and pulls out her phone.

As expected, she’s got a message from Karkat.

There’s a pause on the other side.

She puts away her phone. Maybe next time she’ll make Vriska string up some fairy lights in her room. Or invite Terezi and Kanaya, make a girls’ night of it.

She doesn’t believe for a second that Vriska’s caught something like she said to begin with (if Godtiers even can get ill). But she’s catching something. And a dark room with just the light of a screen probably isn’t helping.

Today was still quite awkward, and probably getting to the level of being actual friends will take longer, even if getting Vriska out of her room is quick. But she’s got time.

She’s Maid of the stuff!

Chapter Text

Dave’s inventory is massive now, courtesy of the other Dave. Seriously, it’s been over two months and he’s still not sure where everything is. He’s rooting around in it for a whetstone he knows he must have captchalogued at some point for sharpening the sick welsh sword when he finds it.

It’s a folded-up note with the word 'DAVE' written on the front in his handwriting.

“…Huh.”

He unfolds it and starts reading.

He stares at the note for a while.

Dave must be out there, somewhere. Spriting it up with Jade and John. He’s kinda glad. Those dorks need somebody cool around to keep them in line.

He turns the page over and smirks. It's a long list of captcha codes.

Chapter Text

Rose’s hands move deftly and securely, wrapping the wool around the knitting needle and twisting to bring it around into the wider construction. The gentle clicking of the needles against one another is the only noise for a few moments.

“Did you ever knit?” Rose asks, not taking her eyes off the task.

Kanaya tries to wrench her gaze away from Rose’s face, but she is having entirely unexpected difficulties with that. “A little,” she admits. “I mostly did needlework, though I did make the occasional item of knitwear. A jumper for Karkat. A- scarf.”

“You made Karkat a jumper?” Rose asks, lips tugging into a smile.

“Not that he ever wears it,” she huffs. “Or, he used to, in the winter seasons, but his Land was quite warm, and other than that, he appears to run hot enough not to need it.”

“I think I could get him to wear the jumper if you would like that.”

Kanaya smiles. “That’s a very sweet offer. How would you manage that, though?”

Rose resolves to get Dave to explain the true meaning of Christmas (as Dave understands it, anyway) to Karkat. She’s pretty sure that would do it. “I have my methods.”

And if it doesn’t, she could probably just tell Karkat that Kanaya would like it if he did. Her impression of him so far has been that he has a heart of gold hidden somewhere deep behind all his hearts of other heavy metals.

“Intriguing.”

The common area returns to the sound of needles clicking rhythmically.

--

“Whaddaya think?” Dave says, walking back in and striking a casual pose to showcase the outfit.

His audience gives him a blank look. He could’ve seen this coming he supposes.

“Dave,” Terezi says. “You know who you asked to rate your outfits, right?”

“Yeah. Whoever was in the common area.”

She raises an eyebrow and Sollux snickers. He feels like she’s trying to make it his fault 50% of his audience is blind. “Do you want to be licked?”

“What? No, don’t joke about that.”

“It’s okay if you want to be licked, Dave,” she continues, grinning. “It would be good for Sollux’s training!” Sollux snickers but doesn’t lunge for Dave’s delicious suit. (Yet.)

“Licking isn’t ironic,” he says. He takes a step back for safety.

The Mayor waves his hands urgently.

“Yeah buddy?”

He makes another waving motion.

“Thanks buddy. Aradia, any thoughts?”

She tries, she really does. He’s a fellow time player! She wants to compliment him on the outfit somehow. But the pause lengthens until he exhales in exasperation, and she shrugs self-consciously. “…I usually dressed practically. Sorry, Dave.”

Dave shakes his head. “You’re all useless. I’m asking Karkat.”

Sollux rolls his eyes and discreetly wires Terezi twenty boonbucks.

They watch him leave.

“…Remind me why you bet against a Seer of Mind?” Aradia asks.

Sollux throws his arms up in surrender as Terezi snickers. “I don’t know, okay?”

--

“What about you? Did you ever knit anything for your friends?”

Rose shrugs. “Some little things, mostly for Jade and John. I think I made them both bobble hats.”

“Nothing for Dave?”

She shakes her head: “I never got the impression Texas got cold enough for him to ever get much benefit from knitwear.”

Kanaya pauses at that. “In other words,” she says, slowly, “you were in a similar boat with Dave as I was to Karkat.”

The needles still for a second, before Rose smiles and resumes. “I suppose that is true.”

Kanaya glances at the shape slowly resolving out of the ends of the needles. “Would this, by any chance, be a jumper?”

--

Sollux scrunches his face up as if he’s squinting at something far away and takes a few deep breaths. He’s getting grey surrounding them (the walls of the room), a black-and-grey blob on front of him (TZ), and a few bright colours as indistinct shapes laid out on front of her.

“Are those blocks?” He asks.

“Flashcards,” TZ replies. “You’ve gotten good at smelling when there is something or isn’t. I want to see if you can start telling colours apart.”

“huh. You’ve thought the shit out of this.”

“Of course!” She replies, mock-affronted. “I am a mighty dragon lusus and you are my little wiggler. I’m going to teach you the basics of how not to be a little baby idiot, and that includes knowing how to tell colours apart.”

“Harsh. what if I’m colourblind?”

“Then I’ll leave you to die from the elements just like a real mighty dragon lusus would.”

They both pause to consider that.

“hey TZ?”

“Yeah?”

“you ever get the feeling alternia just sucked shit?” Sollux asks. His dad was chained to the top of his hivestem and TZ’s mom was an egg.

“More and more,” she admits. “But let’s stop thinking about our lame dead culture. Learning to smell colours is more exciting.” He sniffs and he thinks she’s holding up a card. It’s…

Eh. “it looks bright?” He hazards.

“Candy red. I guess it is pretty bright.” He sniffs again, and catches just a flash of what might be the next card, down where he thinks her stomach is, so he sniffs again. The image from his nostrils, as fuzzy and uncertain and not-really-there as it is, changes and now the flash of what she’s telling him is colour is held up at about head-height.

“darker. A bit more saturated, maybe.”

“…Cobalt. Hm. I wonder if that counts.”

He shrugs and gives his best answer as she raises another one, and another, and another.

Eventually he starts guessing actual colours.

“Pink.” “Green. But it’s a pretty bright green, so that’s progress!”

“orange.” “Blue.”

“Red?” “Red! What kind?” “dark?” “Darker than Aradia or lighter?” “just fucking give me the point already.”

“maybe… no. I don’t know. kinda like bright but not. i want to say yellow, but not quite. or like. more than just bright? is… wait.” *snerk* “TZ. is this fucking polka-dots?” “Ahahahaha” “oh wow go fuck yourself.”

“blue. like navy blue.” “Yes!”

Sollux hears the door open, KK swear reflexively (sweet fuckgrubbing god, it’s dark in here), the lightswitch click, and then KK swear in surprise (shitting fuckhell) and- trip over something? Sollux grins. “What the fuck are you two doing sitting around in the dark?” He asks.

“hey KK,” Sollux says, probably unnecessarily. KK huffs in response.

“Are you clutching your chest, you wiggler?” TZ asks, as much for his benefit as to make fun of KK.

“You surprised me. Why the fuck are you two sitting silently in the dark?”

“Is it dark, Karkat? I hadn’t noticed! Sollux, why didn’t you say anything?”

He snickers.

“Alright, yeah, fine. Whatever you creeps. Do you want me to fuck off to allow you two to fondle each other in the dark some more like blind perverts?”

“Yes!” TZ says automatically. “Unless you’re jealous? Do you want to join us, Karkat?”

“I’m not blind, you moron, sorry.”

TZ gasps. “I had no idea. I’m so sorry to hear that. But you could always close your eyes.”

KK rolls his eyes. “Yeah, yeah. Anything I can do to help?”

He’s been doing this a lot, Sollux notices. Trying to help. Getting involved, but not being a (total) asshole about it.

He’s pretty sure it would unnerve him, except that as much as it’s a change for KK to be earnestly helpful (instead of acerbic and covertly helpful and then be enough of an asshole that he ends up asking Sollux if they’re still cool later, as if they ever aren’t), Sollux feels pretty changed himself. If you’d told him a few perigees ago that he’d end up kinda befriending ED like he has, he’d probably have laughed at you and then telekinetically chucked you into the atmosphere.

“you can stop rolling your eyes at me,” Sollux suggests.

“How the fuck would you be able to tell if I did?”

“Wow, how about instead of underestimating the perspicacity of th—”

“Wait. Does this mean it’s working?” KK asks.

“nah that was an educated guess.” And he takes another guess that KK is scowling at him and opening his mouth to make a retort on the level of ‘fuck you.’

Either his guess was wrong or TZ just bowls over him: “But yes, it is. He’s making good progress!” He hears her rustle a bit; she’s probably showing KK the cards. “He’s getting good at picking colours apart.”

“Oh.” KK sounds… surprised. “That’s. Good.”

“hell yeah it’s good,” Sollux holds his fist out, and KK walks over and bumps it.

His voice shifts down with a rustle; he’s sitting on the floor with them now. “How good will you be by the end of the journey?” KK asks.

He shrugs, and TZ answers. “Dragonmom taught me all I needed over a couple perigees, but she was able to psychically link with me. But he’s a quick learner and he has his psionics.” She leans over and punches his shoulder lightly. “He’ll get the hang of it.”

“Good. Yeah, good. Anything I can do to help?” He asks again.

“I’ll make some copies of the flashcards.”

--

The needles slow to a stop, and Kanaya looks up from her own work at the silence. Rose glances her way.

“You wouldn’t happen to need any knitted goods, would you?” Rose asks.

Kanaya startles. “I. Um.”

She could swear Rose is grinning, somewhere behind that smooth slight-smile. “I um not sure what that means,” she quips.

(Really, if Rose wants Kanaya to respond coherently, she shouldn’t keep doing- that.)

“That sounds like a large time commitment.”

Rose shrugs. “It’s not my area of expertise, but I believe the time will pass anyway.”

Well then. “In that case, I would be incredibly grateful if you decided to make me something,” Kanaya responds.

“What would you like? I imagine a bobblehat isn’t quite your style?”

Kanaya tries for witty. “I think it is certainly John and Jade’s.” She’s not sure if that counts. It gets a laugh anyway. “That close to a barbed horn, it probably wouldn’t work.”

“Something else, then. A scarf? I always appreciated how easy they were compared with other knitted clothing.”

“…No.”

Rose accepts that without comment. “A cardigan, then.”

Kanaya tries to imagine herself in a cardigan. There are certainly ways to make it work.

“A cardigan sounds lovely. That’s very kind of you.”

“Don’t thank me. I’m just looking for an excuse to keep knitting.”

--

--

Kanaya thinks about the things she’s made, and it occurs to her that almost every single one has been involved in the happenings of at least one murder attempt. Eridan’s scarf, Vriska’s FLARP outfits, and even Terezi’s FLARP outfit. Maybe she shouldn’t make people outfits anymore. She’s not so superstitious as to think the outfits cause the murders, but she still doesn’t like it. Doesn’t like the idea of how much everything around her seems to end up soaked in blood.

On the other hand.

(She glances covertly at Rose, her posture perfect even while knitting on the sofa, and tries to take in as much as she can see of Rose’s face from the side, without making it obvious what she’s doing. Her godtier robe is golden-yellow and it catches in her eye, complementing the violet of her iris. It makes her look very, very pretty.)

…On the other hand, maybe her luck is turning.

“Would you like me to make you something to wear?”

Rose pauses. “I would like nothing more,” she says, in a way which makes Kanaya think there’s probably something else coming. A note of wry frustration bleeds into her voice. “But the problem is, these godtier pyjamas are just too damned adequate.”

Kanaya raises an eyebrow. “Ah. That really is a problem.”

“It stays warm, it stays cool, it doesn’t get dirty. You see my predicament.”

“I do.” She hesitates. “I suppose then that the main enticement for Dave to wear the sweater you’re making him is… irony?”

Rose snorts. “If it’s stupid and it works…”

“Then perhaps I can make you a new outfit.”

She twists in place. “Are you saying that my godtier pyjamas don’t make me look good?”

“Let’s say it’s that I think you would look even better with variety.”

Rose’s eyes widen just a little at that, and Kanaya thinks she’s actually thrown her for a loop. She hopes in a good way. “Oh.” And then she smiles again. “Well then, I would be delighted.”

Chapter Text

Somebody is banging on Vriska's door. It's not ridiculously early, but it's still early enough that it sounds like somebody doesn't give a shit if she's still alseep or not.

Okay, she is up, but it's not like they know that!

"Coming," she yells, and the banging subsides.

She opens it to find a grinning Terezi.

Vriska searches for something to say. “…Hi?”

“Hi!”

And then she kind of just. stares at Terezi for a minute.

“Can I come in…?” Terezi prompts her with a twisting grin after a long few seconds. She's happy about something.

“Oh. Oh yeah, come in.”

“Thanks.”

Terezi steps in, and Vriska waves a hand. “Sorry for the mess.”

“Hey, my hiveblock is still a mess,” she snickers. “We did the walls, but we kinda didn’t end up painting the ceiling. Karkat’s still grumbling about it, Kanaya has decided that decorating the common area with Rose is more interesting than my block's interior design, and Dave keeps telling us about some human thing where you paint naked people on it.”

“Wow. I guess Equius got a chance to live on through the Human universe after all.” Vriska leans against the wall and grins. “Hasn’t it been like a perigee since you started the painting?”

“Longer,” Terezi replies, rolling her eyes. “So, now there’s just a ladder in my room and it’s been there so long I’ve covered it in scalemates. It unnerves Karkat, which is an added benefit.”

“Well, if you want help getting the ceiling done, I guess…” she trails off, and frowns.

“What?”

“Is that why you’re here? Drafting me like a workhorse!”

“Maybeee,” she says.

“Sneaky.”

“Come onnnn,” Terezi wheedles. “You’re one of only two people who can fly. You’re perfect for it.”

“Sollux can float.”

“Sollux can’t paint a ceiling.”

“Touché.”

“So you’ll do it?” Vriska huffs and nods. “Great! But that’s not actually what I came to ask about, though.”

Uh-oh. That sounds serious.

Vriska tries to keep her cool. “Uh. What did you come to ask about?” Terezi takes a step closer. She resists the urge to step back a little.

“…I like you,” Terezi admits.

Vriska blinks and processes that. That is…

Kinda a huge relief?

“Well don’t say it like that,” she says, slightly affronted. It’s a weird thing to say, sure (what else is new with Terezi?), but she’s just glad she isn’t about to be accused of a crime or something.

Terezi opens her mouth, but then closes it again, face scrunching up in confusion. “What?”

“All serious. I don’t know, like it’s a terminal illness!”

She stares at her. “…You get what I’m saying, right?”

“Yeah, you like me. For some reason. I like you too, Pyrope!” She’s so relieved that nothing’s wrong that she laughs. “The feeling’s mutual. Looks like we’re both screwed, huh?”

The pair stare at each other for a moment. Terezi’s blushing.

“…You’re not hearing me.” Terezi shifts her stance a little, folding her arms awkwardly. And that's actually pretty weird for Terezi. “I… really like you.”

Eight hints which had been banging insistently at the back of her mind for attention suddenly flood in at once. Terezi’s blushing. “Oh.” Ohhhhhhhh. “Really?”

“Really, yeah. I’m flushed for you.” She looks very embarrassed.

It. That would be.

Huh.

“Vriska?”

“Yeah?”

“Please say something. You’ve been staring at me for thirty seconds.”

“Uh. Yes.”

“Yes?”

“Yes.” She blinks. “I mean. Me too.”

Terezi smiles. Something tells Vriska that Terezi already knew that, but she looks very happy to hear it out loud. “Awesome. That’s good.”

“You’re not just saying this to make me paint your ceiling, are you?” She asks, suddenly.

“What?”

“What?”

Terezi actually laughs at her. “Vriska. I know you’re not the detective here but please think.”

“Huh?” She says, while she thinks: Huh?

Yeah, she’s thinking that a lot right now, but can you blame her?

“I was inviting you back to my room to hang out.”

Ohhhhhhhh.

“Oh, yeah.” She smiles weakly. “Sneaky.” Terezi snorts.

They stare at each other again. This…

Her smile turns into a grin.

She feels like she’s meant to say something or do something next, but she’s really blanking on what it is. And honestly, she's fine to just keep staring at Terezi for a bit longer. It's pretty nice actually! But still- like, isn’t there a bit after this? Do I kiss her, or…?

Oh. Yeah, that would work. She likes the sound of that plan.

She leans towards Terezi, and Terezi’s eyes widen, and she leans forward as well. Vriska has to lean down to properly kiss Terezi. The moment stretches, and she sees Terezi’s mouth curl into a grin as they get close enough to-

Clack.

Vriska startles backwards in surprise as their glasses tap against each other. “Oh,” she says, intelligently. “Uh.” Wow, she’s really knocking it out of the park today, isn’t she?

Terezi pulls hers off and captchalogues them. She takes Vriska’s off her face next (and Vriska winces as she puts her fingers on the actual lens. She guesses Terezi doesn’t have to deal with smudged glasses), and hands them to her. “Do you wanna try that again?”

Vriska smiles at her. “Yeah. I think I do.”

Chapter Text

Vriska rereads the conversation, smiling to herself. Girl’s not great at hiding things, huh?

…And then she sits up, frowning a little bit. She rereads it again.

Wait.

She grins. She cackles. Oh, this is too rich.

Kanaya’s not acting coy to cover up a relationship. This isn’t a cute couple-y thing Rose is doing with Kanaya. They're not hiding a relationship. Kanaya is hiding a crush. Which means Rose is flirting.

Badly!!!!!!!!

And neither of them realises!

Oh, this is too good.

She needs to tell somebody this immediately.

Karkat mashes the backspace key with a huff, and then decides to just tell the truth.

Karkat thanks whatever asshole Gods made his universe that Vriska is the most oblivious troll on the meteor. For a schemer, she’s really not a details woman.

He clicks back into the chat to see what Sollux has been saying while the two of them have been having their sidebar. He's sure it will be constructive and helpeful.

He smacks his palms into his head.

He winces.

Chapter Text

Dave and Karkat are not watching Twilight.

This is due to a principle Dave calls ‘it’s so bad it’s good,’ but Karkat has already called him full of more shit than the meteor is dusty corridors and said that wasn’t a thing on Alternia. (Dave’s checked with the other trolls. Spoiler: it is.) Even so, Karkat cannot stop gibbering about how the quadrantal dynamics would work if this was a Troll film.

(“I mean, it’s pretty clear that this is a classic plot where the highblooded character realises their life is too dangerous for their lowblood matesprit and attempts to kick them out—”)

The husktop is still playing the movie, Karkat won’t shut up, and to be clear: they are not watching Twilight. It’s much worse than that.

Dave and Karkat are watching New Moon.

“How,” Karkat wonders aloud, over whatshisfuckingface’s dialogue, “did you convince me to watch the sequel to this rubbish.”

“You said you needed to know how this turned out,” Dave points out.

“I said,” Karkat corrects, “that I had no fucking clue how somebody could get a sequel greenlit for a movie that shit. The only person displaying the smallest amount of talent is the actress for Bella, but it’s ruined by every other aspect.”

“C’mon, some of it was good. The baseball scene had some banging music.”

 Karkat rolls his eyes. “Human music,” he says dismissively, but there’s a smile somewhere hidden behind all the scowling, Dave’s pretty sure, and it hovers somewhere near his lips as he launches into another dissection of the faux-quadrant dynamics of human media. (“It’s fucking bizarre that you say humans don’t have auspisticism when you have shit like this happening and it’s plain as day,” apparently.)

It’s only when Karkat glances his way mid-tirade than Dave realises he’s been staring at Karkat’s face the whole time as he’s been throwing little comments to fuel Karkat’s rant.

Welp. Thank irony for sunglasses.

Karkat frowns. “What?”

And it’s only a second later that he realises he’s been trying to pin the smile to Karkat’s mouth with all the stupid jokes he can make for the last three minutes.

Say something, Dave’s brain supplies, helpfully.

“Do you actually hate this movie? Or the first one?”

“Of course I do.” He counts off on his fingers. “It’s practically in greyscale the whole time. The characters are written so dramatically even though they’ve clearly got the direction of ‘pretend to be as bland as you fucking can,’ and the worldbuilding is about as deep as a—”

“Oh shit, dude,” Dave says, interrupting him entirely, and he leans over to mush the uncomfortably organic spacebar. (‘Wide letterspace button’ in Troll language.)

(Okay, he made that up but still it’s gonna be some bullshit like that right.)

“What the fuck are you doing?” Karkat asks.

“Dude, you hate it. I’m not gonna make my best alien bro watch something he hates. Shit would be downright unconscionable.”

“Well-” Karkat begins, hands raising as if he wants to be the voice of reason here.

“I mean, you said it. The characters are flatter than the floor, the plot’s stupid, the whole thing’s stupid. Of course you hate it. You’ve got good taste, so it’s not like you’d enjoy a movie that’s this shit. Nah dude, let’s put something else on.”

“We can’t just stop in the middle of-”

“I got you, don’t even worry. We don’t have to watch this shit.” He moves the cursor to close out of the window.

“What? No!” Karkat smacks his hands away. “Don’t touch my keyboard you fucking weirdo.”

He smacks Karkat’s hands in retaliation and tries again. “Dude, I’m doing you a favour. Doing all that Knight shit, looking out for my bro.”

Karkat shoves him with his shoulder to body-block him from the keyboard. “No, you’re not! You’re trying to end the movie early!”

Dave leans forward to try to overwhelm Karkat and get at the keyboard. “Yes.”

Karkat buckles, but he manages to just about keep Dave’s fingers off the keys by shoving them away. “No.”

“Yes.”

“No!!”

Dave lets himself get pushed back and puts his hands up in surrender. “Alright, fine, what gives?” He asks innocently.

“What gives is I want to keep watching the movie!”

“Huh,” Dave says. “I thought you said it was shitty.”

“W- I’m- it is, but I want to watch it you asshole.” Karkat’s so thrown it makes him stammer, that’s awesome.

“Huh. But if it’s bad, then—”

He rolls his eyes and there’s the smile, fuck yes, just for a moment. “Oh, fuck off you idiot. It’s bad but it’s enjoyable. I’m enjoying tearing it into tiny chunks.”

“Hey, I’m enjoying you doing it,” Dave says before he can think, and woah, where’d that come from. “But how could a bad movie be enjoyable?”

Karkat snorts, “It’s probably so bad i-” he begins but catches himself.

“Huh? So bad it’s…?” He tries to twist away as Karkat punches him in the shoulder and snickers.

“You asshat. Forget I said anything.”

Dave clicks his tongue sceptically. “Hm. Sure.”

Karkat gives him the most acerbic off look Dave thinks he’s ever seen, and then jabs the spacebar so hard Dave’s surprised it doesn’t break.

There’s absolute silence while the movie plays for almost thirty seconds. It lasts so long Dave’s actually a bit worried he’s genuinely pissed Karkat off. Or that he’s done some weird troll hateflirty thing.

Aw shit he totally did, didn’t he. He was just making fun of him. That’s not what he’s trying to do. He doesn’t know what he is trying to do, but it ain’t that.

He’s about to open his mouth to apologise when Karkat speaks.

“The music,” Karkat says, with extreme reluctance, “was okay.”

Dave actually breaks into a full smile. “Fuck yes. Fuck yeah, dude.”

Karkat shakes his head, fighting the smile threatening to break out of his face. “But just okay. If that’s the best human music has to offer, it’s pretty unimpressive.”

“Oh, we have way better stuff than that, dude.”

Karkat snorts. “I’ll believe it when I hear it.” Dave sits up and presses the spacebar again, getting a sound of annoyance from Karkat in the process. “What?”

“Nah, we’re doing this.”

“Doing what?”

He stands up and grabs Karkat's hand to pull him upright. “I’m showing you human music, come on, we're going to the turntables. We’re making this shit take place. You’re gonna love it.”

Karkat resists, pulling back hard enough that the sofa scrapes an inch across the floor. “Dave, we’re in the middle of the fucking movie.”

“Yeah, but it’s a shit movie.”

“I-” Karkat begins. He does want to hear what Dave considers to be good music, but. “Can it not wait? It’s pretty late, I wanna finish up the movie today.” And then he scowls. “I do not want Lalonde to see us watching this fucking movie of all things.”

Dave snorts. “She’s probably holed up with Kanaya somewhere watching the whole series.”

“She isn’t, because Kanaya is definitely holed up in her room and overthinking Rose leaning against her during the movie. And she is one hundred percent justifying it as ‘just human shit,’ Dave. I wonder what gave her that impression.”

Dave shifts, and Karkat thinks his Blood powers should definitely give him some hint as to whether Dave’s blushing, but nope. As furious at it makes Karkat, Dave’s poker face holds. “In my defence? That movie was hella boring, I needed somebody to fall asleep on.”

“I’m going to remind you that from the angle you were at, I could see your eyes were open the whole time, and let you try again.”

Dave frowns. “…why were you staring at my eyes for the whole movie?”

“Because you laid down in my lap in the middle of the communal movie night?” Karkat replies.

Dave… clearly doesn’t have a response to that lined up. “Well. Shit. I guess you’ve got a point.”

They both sit there awkwardly, because honestly what the hell do you even say to that, until Karkat turns back and hammers the spacebar to unpause the movie. “We can do the music tomorrow,” he says, clearing his throat as he does.

“Oh. For sure,” Dave replies, nodding over the dialogue. “It’s a- plan.”

“Yeah,” Karkat says.

Dave shifts a little bit closer. Probably to see the screen better.

Yeahhhh…

Chapter Text

Everybody else is somewhere else. Last he heard, Terezi and Vriska were trying to find some mythical place to store stuff that isn’t ‘on the floor,’ and Dave and Karkat were listening to music in Dave's room. He doesn't know where the Seer and the Psychics are (forming a band with that name for all he knows), but they sure as anything aren't in the common area.

Which means it’s just him curled up in the armchair with his book when he hears the noise of the transportaliser firing, and it’s just him when he looks up and sees Kan stepping off the plate with a bundle of sewing in her arms.

She hesitates as she steps off and they make eye contact briefly. After an awkward moment, he looks down immediately, trying to bury himself in the book again. More than anything else, he’d love to be able to turn invisible. That’d be great.

He hears her mouth open, as if she’s going to say something, but then she doesn’t. He sneaks a peak out of the corner of his eye, and she sits down on the sofa, spreading her sewing out. And then she gets started on it.

He tries not to make any sound and just keep reading, but it’s fucking weird. He feels like he should’ve offered to leave, like he did with Sol, but by the time he thought of it, he’d already kinda given her the silent treatment and she’d set up shop. And anyway. If she wanted him gone, she could say, and he’d leave. But if he just gets up, that seems a bit rude. Like it’s him who doesn’t want to be in the room with her, and honestly how could he have that right?

She sews for a few minutes, trying to ignore him sitting there. She lets the silence sit there. In her head, privately, for her own satisfaction, she says something. She takes him apart. She hasn’t got a chance to do that, yet.

(Metaphorically, at least.)

In her head, she says, you said we were friends. She’d barely believed him, even at the time. Every word he said was a contradiction, and that was the most obvious one.

And he sneers, in her head, and agrees with her, and says, all the great generals made friends with the savages before they wiped them out.

And she replies, you said you wanted to be there when it hatched. You wanted to be there when there was hope for the future.

And he rolls his eyes. But I told you. There was no hope. Decided to roll the dice to spare myself. Nothin’ personal, Kan. I was always gonna kill you. Was only a matter of which doomsday weapon worked. If it hadn’t been a blast through the stomach, it woulda been Jack. His mouth in her mind quirks into a smirk and she almost rips his head off. Cleaner my way. You’re welcome.

And then she says, how could you. How the fuck could you. Kill me. Kill her. Blind him. Doom us.

And he says…

And she doesn’t know what he says. She cannot imagine a single thing he could say to that. The Eridan in her head, the mocking smile and the flippant words and the superiority has nothing to say.

Far too late, she realises she has not been seeing the work on front of her for a full minute. Her blood is quick, and she’s holding the sewing needle like a weapon, like it’s her chainsaw.

(…And his arm had parted neatly there, and up it went in a slow-motion arc, tumbling before it flopped to the ground, and the air tasted awful and fantastic with his blood spraying through it. But she was already moving, driving forward, kicking, and…)

She sets the needle down with great difficulty. She’s filled to the brim with adrenaline.

There’s no fucking laughter in her head, but she is distressingly aware of the sound of Eridan’s breathing. She’d quite like it to shut up. She thinks about how she’d do it.

Think of something else.

She thinks. She tries, immediately fails, not to think of the conversations they had, all his endless whining, all his empty complaining, but her and Karkat still the closest thing he seems to have had to friends. And she thinks—

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

Eridan’s eyes had been skimming over the page for the past five minutes, not taking in a single word, but he still flinches when she speaks.

He clears his throat awkwardly. “Tell you what?”

“Your seizures.”

He puts the book to one side because he’s clearly not reading it anymore, but he doesn’t look up yet either. He thinks about denying it, but, well. Who gives a shit. Kar’s a mutant, Terezi’s been blind since forever, he’s down an arm. Who gives a shit about a measly little fit anymore? Brave new world and all that. “Not the sort of thing you tell about in polite society,” he says. Humourless grin. “How’d you find out?” Because the only other person who knew is.

Well.

“I thought you had just gone into shock when I—” fought you maimed you beat you stopped you “—but then you had one later. In your sleep.”

He winces. “And here I was thinking I’d got away with that one.”

And then she says, “It lasted ten minutes. It looked like it hurt.”

He remembers. He woke up bruised to all hell. It hurt like a bitch, even with the whole arm thing giving him a new perspective on pain. “Glad I had you watching over me, then.”

He must have misstepped there, because she says nothing for a long moment. “There was not much I could do, so I let you ride it out.”

“Ah. Gotcha.”

“How long have you had them?”

“Sweeps. All my life, probably.” He shrugs. “’Sokay usually. Feferi could spot ’em a mile off, and seadwellers are tough.”

“The Heiress to the Empire knew that her right-hand man was an invalid?”

“Wouldn’t call myself invalid. Done my fair share of fighting, haven’t I.” He winces as he says that.

“Still. Imperial policy being what it was…”

“Ha. They weren’t gonna cull me for that. I can still function ninety-nine days out of one hundred. And it was mostly me being stupid. Fact is, we’re seadwellers. Bein’ out for too long’s not good for us. After a few weeks straight airside, it becomes a risk for me. Something dries out- or something or something. Every couple of months, not so big a deal that I can’t function.”

“The amount of time you spend out of the water is… bad for you.” It’s not quite a question, not quite a statement. There’s confusion, there, like she can’t quite work something out.

“As I say, we’re pretty tough. I can ride ’em out. Only a few bruises.” He smiles, though fuck if he understands why because the entire scenario’s fucked. “But in general? Yeah, it doesn’t help. Think I'd probably get them even when I’ve been in the water. Less, though. And obviously safer since I can’t flail as hard.”

“You should be in the water more.”

He shrugs, but he knows he probably won’t, even if he could work out how to fill a room in the meteor with water. “You’re the mediculler.”

Silence flows back in. She breathes deeply. In, out. Trying to calm herself down. It doesn’t work. She tries to keep it strictly medical, but that also falls apart immediately. “Why.”

“Why what?”

“Why would you spend so much time above the water if it was bad for you?”

“What, apart from my singleminded pursuit of genocide?” Which he succeeded at.

“Yes,” she says curtly, trying not to imagine killing him. “Apart from that.”

“I really did have things to do upstairs. Hunting Lusii to keep everybody alive, remember?”

Calm down.

“You could still have lived below water.”

He fiddles with the book beside him. It’s a few seconds before he answers. “Fef could spot ’em a mile off.”

She doesn’t speak for a moment. Kanaya, slowly, puts it together, and calm down goes out the window. “You did it to manipulate her?”

He shakes his head. “No. I- she knew what the deal was with them is all. We knew how to deal with it, y’know?”

“What the fuck does that mean?” Kanaya Maryam’s anger could cut gemstones.

“I was up there to keep an eye on the landdwellers and do my Orphaning. But yeah, I knew it would give me fits." He shrugs, stubborn look in his eye. "And I guess I knew she’d look after me.”

“Just when I think you could not sink any lower,” she whispers. She almost can’t believe it. “How could you do that to her? You piece of-”

“Listen, Kan,” he says, cutting her off, and she all but snarls at the nickname. “Yes. I know. Yeah, risking fits was a terminally fuckin stupid thing to do.”

“So why.”

“Because I needed to.”

“Needed what, needed to manipulate her? Needed to make her have a reason to stay?” You are a monster.

He finally meets her eyes, and he can’t say he’s surprised what he sees in them. He can’t say he doesn’t deserve every inch of it. “I’m gonna take that, because you have a very good reason to hate my fuckin guts.” He clenches his jaw. “But that was the highlight of our relationship. Fuck off telling me off about what you don’t know. I needed to because it was my fucking job.”

He can tell she’s almost speechless with anger, and that’s the only reason he gets the next part out uninterrupted.

Because he’s exchanged maybe six words with Kanaya since (he killed her he killed their whole future he ruined everything), two of them being an “I’m sorry” said way too early that almost had her ripping his fins off, the rest being variations on “okay” when she told him to do something while still in his hospital bed, but he never told anybody this. Not when the pair of them were friendly, not when he felt like death warmed over after the fight, not in any of his chats to Kar or anybody else. He’d sworn Fef to secrecy a thousand times and she, unlike he, had never betrayed that trust. And now she’s dead so all he has left is the memory of the few fucking seconds that don’t make him want to disembowel himself looking back. His fins flick back in anger imagining her trying to take it from him, just a bit of that old Ampora flaring up and saying how dare she. He forgets what he did for a moment. Fuck this broad. Fuck her and her judgement. She doesn’t know.

So he tells her.

“When I’d take a seizure, I’d have to listen to her. She’d bring me down under and take care of me and be very stern, an’ it was nice. For both of us. It was a fucked up and difficult relationship and more often than not I’d ignore her, or she’d do something I told her was a bad fuckin plan.” He shakes his head. “I did it ’cause I actually needed to. And, yeah, I also knew that when I burned out, things would go back to feeling fuckin normal for once. I’d listen to her, and she would listen to me. For a day, shit would feel- right.” He laughs, and it’s bitter. “Maybe she wouldn’t’ve felt so drained by me if that’d been the whole thing.” He says something cruel, needless: “Maybe she just liked your job.”

“So, what, you liked being taken care of?” She is shaking with anger, now. “You liked being looked after? Not your fault, never your fault, of course.” Her fingers know the precise shape of the lipstick, imagines taking the other arm because how dare he.

And he has the audacity to shake his head. “Oh, I know it was my fault. That’s fucked up, I know, but you know what? I liked it because it felt like she actually gave a shit. I didn’t feel like I was being fucking managed.”

“You only felt like that because you didn’t want to hear when you were going too far.” This isn’t medical, it’s personal, and she feels like ripping his throat out. All he needs to do is give her an excuse.

He laughs. “You think that's news? Fef did her level fuckin best, but I wasn’t looking for somebody to tell me when I was going too far, and I certainly never appreciated being told to open up, I’m big enough to admit that. I was a grade-A piece of shit.” And she snarls at the Ampora self-pity hour on full display, but he keeps going even so. “But these seizures? Fucking wiggler shit. Back then, I could barely move, after a bad one. Cool water, a bowl of soup, a slow swim around her hive. Yeah, I fuckin liked that. Was about the only moment on that godforsaken planet where I felt normal.”

“So you used her.” She scatters the sewing to one side and stands up.

“She used me, too. That’s what us highbloods do, right? Come on, tell me you know that’s what we do. She used me every day, too, and I gladly did it. Orphaner fucking Dualscar. Didn’t I say I’ve done my fair share of fighting? She didn’t like the killing lusii, so I had to do it. So that you fucks wouldn’t die.”

“You ruined her. Before you even killed her, you sucked the life out of her and ruined her life. She didn’t deserve it. You, manipulating her emotions.” I thought we were friends and then you killed me. He’s a liar.

But Eridan stands up now, as well, fins pinned down and fist clenched. “You should stick to medicine. You have no fuckin idea about her. You talked to her, what, twice? I’m not blaming her, I shouldn’t’ve fucking killed her, and I was always better at the killing than her- practically fucking begged her to let me take care of the feeding- but you don’t get to come into the one thing that didn’t suck and say we did it wrong. She could’ve walked away at any time!”

“When you were feeding her mother?” She shoots back.

“Oh, as if she didn’t know that I had to keep feeding her eldritch fucking lusus. Yeah, I coulda, but I never would have, and she knew that. That’s why she trusted me to do it!”

“Did she?”

“Of course she did!”

Kanaya steps forward, fists clenched tightly by her side. “How would she know?”

“She-” Eridan starts forward, yelling, but cuts himself down. “She… she must’ve. She knew.”

“She thought you wanted to commit genocide.” She steps forward. “But I suppose you didn’t disappoint on that count, did you?”

He doesn't look like he even heard the last bit. “She- she had to have known. I was the one keepin’ her fuckin lusus quiet. I could’ve begged off work a coupla days, a week, and-”

“Say by claiming to have a fucking seizure?”

“That’s not-”

She steps forwards again and shoves him hard in the chest. He stumbles back. “Not what.” Not fair? If he says fair, to her, she may just lop his head off.

“She was the one telling me to take it easy those days! I had Vris of all people filling in for me.”

She tries to shove him again, but he manages to twist his chest and bring his arm up to deflect the push clumsily. “You never seemed interested in protecting the future of trollkind,” she hisses.

“She didn’t do it because she had to. She did it because she wanted to.”

“How would you know what she wanted?”

“How would you!”

“I can imagine that she did not appreciate being made to look after a murderer.”

He laughs. “You say that like it’s a bad word!”

“Maybe it is!”

“It wasn’t for her! Her future was to try to kill the only other person who could possibly understand her. How the fuck would you know what that’s like? How the fuck would I? You hate me, sure, get that, it’s fair enough as an understatement. You wanna kill me? Go the fuck ahead.” He steps forward, nose to nose, glaring up at her. “Don’t you go thinking that I could stop you, don’t think I’d want to. But you don’t get to take what’s happened between you and me and claim you know what she wanted.”

Kanaya grabs him by the shirt and slams him against the wall. His horns smack against the metal panelling, jarring him, and he grunts in pain—Do it fucking do it you want to you should you’re allowed to somebody’s got to—and she opens her mouth. Maybe she’ll call him a coward. Maybe she’ll hit him. Or just tear his throat out.

Kanaya feels them snap together: she wants to kill him, and she wants him gone. And now she wants him dead. Because he cannot not be a monster. Did you hear what he just said? What he just- confessed to? Yes, she wants him dead, and she would sorely like to be the one to make it happen. She looks in those defiant fucking eyes, that narrowed gaze saying, go on, be as bad as I am. Kill. Let your tantrum have a bodycount, too.

For once, she feels as if she will let him have what he so richly deserves. She opens her mouth to say- something. Goodbye, or you deserve this, or I thought we were friends, or something.

But before she can speak, she hears a sound.

The transportaliser activating. A laugh comes from behind her.

“It was, you saw his face! And things have changed so much from the plan that I just decided that- uh.”

Eridan glances over towards the transportaliser. Vriska turns around to see what Aradia is staring at. Kanaya turns, too, twisting to see the pair of them still on the transportaliser plate.

“Uh. Hi,” Vriska offers. Kanaya sees Vriska’s hand twitch, as if…

But nothing happens.

Aradia shifts uncomfortably. “…Hey. Is everything-”

“’Sokay, you two,” he says, still staring at her, his expression suddenly just tired, unreadable. “Kanaya was just… complimentin’ me on the threadcount of my shirt. She’s getting’ a closer look, is all.”

“Kanaya?” Asks Aradia. She hasn’t moved yet, but that doesn’t mean anything. She sizes up her options.

Kanaya doesn’t move for a moment, and then she releases her grip slowly, with exaggerated care, as if she has to prove she is not a threat. She smooths the creases on the shirt down somewhat, and steps back. “…Yes.”

Vriska's face is blanched as close to white as trolls can get. “I need to-” She begins, and then cuts off when attention shifts onto her. “I- sorry. I can’t. Sorry.” She shoots an apologetic look at- Eridan?- and then reactivates the transportaliser.

Aradia opens her mouth, but before she can say anything, the transportaliser fires, they turn to light, and they’re sent off to some dusty corridor on the meteor.

For a moment, they just stand there, staring at the empty spot where the two Godtiers had briefly been. Then Kanaya glances back at him, gives him a look that- well, he’s still trying to think of a better word than dread by the time it disappears and she's stalking over to her sewing and raking it into her arms. He sees her fingers shake before he turns away in embarrassment.

She only turns back when she’s on the transportaliser. Eridan looks up as he reaches to grab his book.

As decoherence begins, she glances across the room to him.

“I hate you,” she says, a split-second before she disappears.

He sighs and captchalogs the book, walking over to the transportaliser and selecting the last-but-one location. “You and me both,” he murmurs to the empty room.

--

“Vris. Hey, Vris, fuck slow down. Vris.”

Vriska stops abruptly, turning to face him, and he almost runs into her. Her eyes are as wide as saucers. She looks… “I didn’t- I wasn’t-”

Jegus, she looks fucking terrified, he thinks. “Hey, it’s okay,” Eridan says, holding his hand up soothingly and taking a step back so he’s not boxing her in or anything.

“If that was- I’m sorry I didn’t do-”

“You’re fine,” he says, trying his best towards reassuring (though the fact he’d run to catch her and his fins are now doing their best impression of Riverdance flapping up and down may be making that harder than usual). "You're fine."

(And the fact she'd seen Kanaya almost beat the shit out of him- that probably didn’t help).

Vriska steps backwards until her back hits the hard metal wall, and then sucks in a deep breath and starts sliding down to the floor. Her knees slide up to her chest.

Vriska doesn’t speak for a minute. “Was that-”

“Yeah,” he says, so she doesn't have to.

“Oh.”

“If it helps, I don’t think she was going to kill me.”

She turns away from him and tries to believe that. “No thanks to me.” She’s tried, she’d actually tried to summon the dice. To do what? They hadn’t come, of course.

“Hey, it’s okay.”

“Is it? Is it fucking okay?” She asks. “It it- are we okay?”

He shrugs, but it’s starting to feel awkward, standing up when she’s sitting down against the wall. “We’re doing our best, right?”

She chokes out a laugh. “What, we haven’t- killed anybody in a few perigees? Whoop-de-fucking-dee.”

He sits down beside her and doesn’t speak for a second. “I mean. Yeah,” he says at last. “Yeah. I’d say that’s a good start, given we used to do it a lot. Especially since you didn’t try taking over back there with mind control. That’s a win.”

“I haven’t-” Vriska says, but she cuts off. She tucks her head down, running a hand jerkily through her hair as she does.

Eridan frowns, shifts a bit closer. “Haven’t…?”

“I can’t- anymore.” She feels pathetic, movements in staccato and a heartbeat in allegro. She can’t even say it.

 “Oh,” he says. “That’s… are you okay?”

“What do you think?” She asks sarcastically, but he can hear an edge of terror.

“You haven’t used it since the…” He knows what they’ve been calling it so far, but he really wishes there was a better word for it than ‘incident.’ “Incident?” He says eventually.

Well shit, looks like there isn’t one.

“Who the fuck would I use it on?” She spits back, voice cracking. “But I know. I fucking—I know. I know.”

She has a point. Eridan and she have been on their best behaviour. The friendmurderer club’s membership has been mostly content to do whatever Karkat asks them. He thinks he knows what’s going through her head. It’s the same thing going through his. Look at the mess we got into when I tried to take the initiative. Just follow him and hope we’ve hitched our wagon to the right person. Run screaming from confrontation in case you get that urge to do it the easy way. Let him take care of it.

That’s what he’s thinking most of the time, anyway. That, and that even Karkat isn’t made out of third and fourth chances. Those are for the times when he’s scared of himself and keeping himself busy and nodded off mid-sentence with Sollux enough that he pesters Eridan to go to bed already, and he ends up with his heart beating wildly while he drowns in sopor.

Judging by the way her hands are shaking, he isn’t alone in that.

Judging by the way she’s breathing… she thinks she is.

Vriska stares at her hands. She can feel dried blood beneath her nails, even though there’s none there. Why didn’t she feel that before? Why now?

“When did I turn into such a fucking coward?” She whispers. Her crimes run through her head. Tavros. Aradia. I blinded Terezi and made Sollux kill his girlfriend. At least Orchys was an accident. But her ego had gotten them killed as well. And now, for some reason, it feels like she’s been forgiven. Terezi, Aradia, Sollux, the ones who are still alive to forgive her, and they’re being nice to her. But it’s wrong. She can’t be, a few perigees ago she wouldn’t even call them crimes. How could she be forgiven if she hadn’t even asked, hadn’t even wanted to be. She would have said, “For what?” She’s not ready to be forgiven.

But there Aradia was, chatting to her, then helping her when they’d left, and Vriska had to lie, said she was fine because frankly, it was too much. She’d felt like her throat would close if Aradia tried to help her for another second because this is the wrong way around.

It never used to bother her. Now, she feels like she’s dying because she can’t even remember what day of the week it was. That’s the detail she’s focussed on, like it’s symbolic of her shittiness. A better person would have remembered the day she ruined four people’s lives.

“You’re changing. Think we all are. Hope we are, anyway.” He puts his fist out to bump, but she shakes her head and breathes heavily, so he withdraws it and lets his arm rest across his knees. “You having a bit of a panic? Need me to sit here a while?”

“How are you so calm? You almost died.” She doesn’t tell him to leave, though, so he settles down. A fellow murderer- for some reason, it isn’t as panic-inducing as Aradia trying to help was. She doesn’t deserve her help.

Maybe she just hopes he knows what this is like. Maybe she can’t take the pity of somebody who doesn’t know how easy it was to kill after a while, how good it felt, sometimes.

He shrugs. “Dunno. Prince a’ Hope, I guess.” She- laughs, entirely out of surprise. “Guess I caught a lucky break?”

“Don’t call me that, you dork,” she throws back, and it’s crackly, but at least it contained an insult, so it feels more normal.

“Hey, we used to be a thing. I have rights.”

“Barely,” she responds, trying to control her breathing. “Barely together. Kids doing stupid kids stuff.”

“How dare you,” he says mildly, wry smile and a stupid joke like he wasn’t almost just- something. He shrugs. “Beat sittin’ in the hive all day, that’s for sure.”

Vriska forces her mind to focus on Eridan. Don’t think about it. Her hand bunches the fabric of her shirt above the scar that still twinges with pain occasionally. “What happened? You two seemed like you were…” Well, getting along would be a lie. She shrugs, hopes he gets the point.

He seems like he does. “I don’t even know,” he murmurs, rubbing his eyes. “She started talking, so I did too. Medical stuff, at first. I get fits.”

“Like… rolling around on the ground?”

“Bingo. Kan knew, she’d worked it out while I was in her ministrations after the, uh, incident, and then I- I guess I ran my mouth.”

“About the fits?” Surely that couldn’t be what caused- well, that. Then again, what could he have said, to get that kind of response?

And why is she so sure he didn’t start it?

“Stuff about Fef. I don’t know- I’d never talked about it before. Fef would look after me when I was rollin’ around on the ground and stuff. Wasn't a lot of fun, picking through that.” He wipes his eyes discreetly. “She started questioning me, she was asking why I was… above water and shit. I said I needed to, but… I don’t know. I look back on it, and I can’t even tell anymore.” He looks at Vriska, and there’s something a bit pleading in that expression. “Was it ever good, even in those moments? Did she ever feel like I was anything but a fucking millstone ’round her neck?”

Vriska doesn’t answer for a second. Isn’t that just a landmine of a question. How the fuck is she meant to answer that?

Well. Probably honestly.

“I don’t know,” she admits. “Did we ever really talk about that sort of thing? Apart from- well, to be honest, when you would compare it to me and Kanaya-” he winces “-but I… I didn’t talk to her very much about you.” She remembers something, though. “Sometimes she’d ask me to let you win.”

He blinks, and maybe there's a little bit of a smile. “Really?”

“Yeah.” She shrugs, and her hand falls into her lap as she releases it from the deathgrip on her shirt. “I think she thought you needed a pick-me-up.” She never did go easy on him, though. Beating the tar out of him could get Eridan out of a funk, too. Plus, and this seemed like a bigger concern at the time, she wanted to win. She’s pretty sure it was good for him though. “But she was- looking out for you. Trying to make sure you were okay. She cared about you, or whatever.”

He sniffles, but they both pretend it was more like a laugh. “Or whatever.”

He doesn’t speak for a minute.

“Did… did she just stay with me because she believed her idea of culling? Just some fucked idiot who didn’t even have the decency to wait a couple hundred sweeps before developing some highblood dementia?”

She doesn’t answer.

“Did I trick her? The seizures. She’d look after me. Did she have to? Did she want to?”

“I don’t know. I don’t think she talked about that stuff with many other people, and- well…”

“Yeah. I was her moirail. I shoulda asked.”

She forces her brain down that track. It’s a welcome distraction, as awful as that sounds. Focussing on his problems feels better than focussing on hers, anyway. She tries to say something useful. May as fucking well. “I mean, you spent so much time doing all that shit. The doomsday devices, the FLARPing, everything. That stuff wasn’t really about her, except maybe the Orphaning. Do you think you would’ve stopped and taken it easy and not had the seizures, if you hadn’t been dating?” He doesn’t reply. She shrugs, movement still jittery, but her mind at least on something else. “Well, then there’s your answer. It wasn’t a trick. Maybe it was convenient or whatever, but you didn’t fake an illness to make her care for you. Not even you could be quiiiiiiiite as pathetic as that.” Her voice wavers a little as she pulls out the ‘i’ sound because she is far from okay, but he laughs pathetically anyway, so at least they’re in the same place. “It’s not creepy to want to spend time with your moirail.” Although you’ve 800% been a creep in other ways.

“Even in our fucked up moiraillegiance.”

She sighs and shakes her head. “I don’t know. I don’t know, Eridan. Someone else might, though.”

“Wh- oh.”

“Yeah. She seemed pretty close to him before the end.”

He flinches. “Oh.”

“What?”

“Just never thought of it phrased like that. Before the end.”

“Sorry.”

He scoffs, wiping tears away haphazardly. “Hardly your fault.” If he doesn’t like it, he knows exactly who to blame.

“Still. Didn’t mean to put it like that.”

“You’re fine.” He sniffles. “I need to ask a favour.”

She knows what it is. “I- I don’t want to lie to him.” Her heartrate ticks up again, and she forces herself to breathe. It rattles in and out, like she’s suddenly forgotten how or something. Come on, Serket. What the fuck is wrong with me?

“Karkat doesn’t need this. He told me to cut it out. Hey, all of yesterday, we were keeping out of his hair so he could have a normal night with Dave. He’s earned a break from my shit. We- I can deal with it without worrying him for no good reason.”

Told me to cut it out. My shit. She shakes her head. “You… you didn’t start that, Eridan.”

“Didn’t I? Sure, she grabbed me, but- I started this a long time ago.”

“He told you both not to fight,” she points out.

He shakes his head. “Nah. Should’ve known that was a bad subject. Could’ve just ended it at ‘yeah I have fits’ and gotten my prescription or whatever and said no more. I had to run my fucking mouth.”

“No, you—She brought it up. Are you telling me that she needed to know why you were above water?”

He frowns. “What? She was just-”

“-Bringing up a painful subject. I- okay, maybe Kanaya was asking medical questions, but it didn’t look like she was just trying to help. Unless my eyes stopped working suddenly, she was trying to hit you. Not the other way around.”

“Listen, after all the shit I did, I was asking for-”

She cuts right over him. “Fuck that!”

“I just-”

“Eridan,” she cuts over him again. “She cut your arm off. I don’t blame her for that, and honestly, I think it’s made you more bearable as a person-” he lets out a startled laugh in sheer surprise “-but did she have to pin you to the wall like that? Were you going to hurt her?”

“No,” he says, aghast.

“Then she was going to hurt you for your moiraillegiance being a disaster? How the fuck is that okay?” Also, how the fuck is that news, but she doesn’t think both of them having panic attacks simultaneously would be a good thing to do, so she keeps that to herself. “She hasn’t come after me like that, and you’d think if it was about that, I’d be first on her list. It’s not about that.”

Eridan winces, but he says nothing. Maybe he gets it, maybe he doesn’t. But at least he’s not arguing Kanaya should’ve punched him anymore. He just looks kinda… exhausted.

“I…” She sighs. “I won’t tell Karkat. But you should. And maybe Aradia already has.”

Eridan shakes his head and fishes out his phone, opens it to a chat between him and Aradia.

He gives her a watery smile. “Sorry.”

She hides her face in her hands for a moment. “I can’t believe I’m the one saying this after everything, but you should talk to Sollux.”

Eridan shakes his head, hiccupy laugh which makes his gills flutter a little. “Love to know how that convo would start. Hey, guy I blinded. Remember your dead girlfriend? Did she ever talk about me, her shitty ex, before I, her murderer, killed her?”

“I mean… Maybe not that exact wording, but yeah. I think that would just about do it.”

He deflates with a sigh. “Maybe.” And then he shakes his head again. “And fuck you, I didn’t need to lose a fucking limb to be less shitty.”

“Prove it,” she responds automatically, and he laughs.

They stare at the opposite wall in silence. After a minute, Eridan stands, and offers Vriska his hand. She looks at it. It’s shaking. Just a little. She takes it and stands. And then she pulls him into a hug.

It’s a weird hug. She’s bony, he has one arm, and neither of them are used to hugging. They never really did that. He takes a second to relax, and even when he does, it feels awkward, unsure. Vriska breaks it off after a very long ten seconds, sniffs, and avoids his eyes. “Yeah,” she mutters, because what else do you say after hugging your ex-kismesis. She feels bled dry, as exhausted as he looks. But at least she isn’t panicking anymore. She… will take it.

Eridan coughs awkwardly. “Hope you’re, uh. Feeling better.”

“And you,” she replies shortly.

He nods. Then he turns and walks down the corridor. She looks at the wall. She feels like just sliding down it again, resting her head against the metal floor and just taking a minute. But she doesn’t know if she would feel like getting up afterwards. If she’d be able to. So, she doesn’t. She walks in the opposite direction.

Chapter Text

Karkat stares at the screen with two characters typed into the chat window. Dave, for once, isn’t filling the universe with words. His message bar says CG: <3. He taps the delete key twice.

He types the heart. He deletes it. He types it.

He’s not going to lie- he does this for a while.

Karkat buries his face in his hands.

“I am so shit at this,” he says, muffled.

Terezi leans over and reads his screen. “Oh,” she says after a minute. “Yeah, you kinda are.”

Chapter Text

Rose realises she hasn’t made a concerted effort to get to know all of her companions on this journey and in her defence, she is taking steps to address this. And so far, she think it's been remarkably successful.

The post-mortem after the movie night is a good opportunity. Week by week, different people always drop off at different times, so she practically always gets a different suite of people left in the common area to talk to. This week, though, it’s almost a full house.

Karkat, for instance. Seeing him with Dave, the expressions the two make at each other, the traded jokes, two halves from two different conversations, the plausible-deniable reasons they find to keep touching one another, it’s… Cute.

Or Sollux. The only times he isn’t leaning on Aradia is when she’s not there, and then he’s usually sitting closer to Terezi or Karkat or Eridan than Rose would have felt comfortable. (Seeing Dave and Sollux have a slap-fight from either side of Karkat as the vein in his head slowly became worryingly prominent was also cute. Dear god, what’s happened to her? She used to be spooky.) And he’s almost as rude as Karkat, but whereas he seems to view it as a pair of conversational gloves, a second emotional skin, Sollux treats it like a game with a points system. The better the jab, the more points it gets. Only Aradia gets a pass from his ruthless assessment of people’s verbal skill.

(“Your stupid face is what’s stupid!” “nice one AA.”)

Rose is all too familiar with that, and to be honest the first few times they talked, she had not been a fan of his jabs. But it’s clear by now he doesn’t view it as a competition. It’s a game, like catch. He’s not trying to make people drop the ball (and it took her a few frustrating weeks to fully convince herself that the occasional easy throw was not, in itself, a jab at her capability to play the game of catch). He’s just doing it to keep himself amused.

“RS you look like you’re cracking an egg with your mind.”

Smile, raise an eyebrow, scoff as if he’s made a faux pas. It’s fine; he won’t be offended. He knows it isn’t serious. “I’m a god; what’s to say I’m not?”

“Ehehehe, I guess jack shit.”

It’s. Nice. Almost restful.

(The conversation flows on, and she hears it, even contributes, but her mind is elsewhere, because-)

On the other hand, she and Dave have begun recontextualising her entire childhood around the principle that, as Dave put it, dude, did you get irony-blind genes. Apparently, while her mother may have been making jokes throughout her entire childhood, it’s just faintly possible that Rose was meant to be in on them. The W’s, the fridge, the frame. And that…

That’s less restful to consider. She lets herself drift away from the conversation around her, towards those memories, those questions, those…

(She raises an eyebrow so powerfully at Karkat's monologue that he swears at her.)

…She misses her room. Jade will be carrying it and her whole battered, bruised planet to the new session for her, but it’s been long enough now that she doesn’t quite remember where everything was when she left it. She didn’t exactly expect her last time seeing it to be, well. Her last time seeing it. At least for three years.

She misses Jade. She misses John.

She wonders if Jade can shrink herself and others down to visit her land. She hopes that she can’t. Or doesn't.

She hopes nobody sees the cracks running across the landmasses, the craters covering the islands, or the oilslick patches of black, grimdark ink, or counts the gates and notices the discrepancy, or counts the consorts and sees how many more dead ones there are than there should be, or sees the broken temples, or—

She smiles disarmingly at Dave when he glances her way (which, she knows, must be a total giveaway. When has she ever smiled disarmingly unprompted?) until he turns his attention back to Karkat as he, fortuitously, says something insanely stupid which makes Dave’s mouth drop open in surprise.

She really, really hopes John doesn’t decide to snoop and read her works-in-progress, even though she knows that's exactly what he'll do. It strikes her as a massive lapse in judgement that she didn’t put some manner of dark majykkical geas on them to dissuade any snoopers. She must be slipping.

…She hopes him and Jade spend hours laughing over her old writing- calling it pretentious, sombre, unserious, wordy, whatever. Annotating the margins, doodling shitty (in John’s case) drawings of the character descriptions across the covers.

She wipes a tear away discreetly, glad that her interlocuters at this moment are Karkat or listening to him, or blind. Kanaya (looking somewhere else for just a few seconds, thank god) interjects with quiet amusement, a few words, and Karkat rolls his eyes but concedes a point. Vriska snorts and mutters something to Terezi, who swats her on the arm with a huge smile. Sollux calls them out on it (“TZ and VK are flirting, somebody get the fire extinguisher”) and Aradia wrangles him into silence with a fond grin.

(She supposes it’s not a surprise that ‘fire extinguisher’ is the trolliteral translation for, well, fire extinguisher. She doesn’t have many complaints about living with the trolls, but chief among the few she does have is that she has started to consider words like ‘spacebar’ in a way she hadn’t before- it makes it very hard to write.)

At some point, Kanaya put her arm along the back of the two-seater sofa she and Rose are sharing. Almost, but not quite, like somebody would put an arm around somebody else. Which means it’s almost like being cared about, and she lets herself pretend that’s what it is for a minute.

Karkat glances at her as she makes a murmured comment to Kanaya, rolling his eyes when he sees Kanaya stifling a giggle, and it’s almost enough to make Rose flush. She has her speculation about Karkat’s abilities, so to speak, but in this case, she may just have been very obvious about her reaction to making Kanaya laugh.

She ignores it. She knows, alright? She knows this isn’t cool, ironic, or suave. It’s just… Well, she’s trying to think of a better way to put it than ‘kind of just sad.’ She’s enamoured with Kanaya, even though there isn’t any reason for her to look twice at Rose. Oh, she’s friendly enough, they had that even during her time during the game, but she’s not going to kid herself.

After all, it’s probably a miracle that out of such a small group, Dave and Karkat are both- …gay?

She has no problem with that (obviously), and after all, it’s nearly two thousand and ten. Or would be if humanity still existed. (She should ask Dave how that works). The point is, she isn’t a prude, she’s happy for them, because even if they haven’t taken the step into dating yet, she’s entirely confident they will- probably after Karkat works up the nerve, because Skaia knows Dave never will. But after all, what are the odds that Kanaya could even feel the same way as Rose? And what even would be the odds that she would feel that way, if she could?

Maybe it’s nearly 2010, but she isn’t going to pretend that being gay is the norm. That it’s. Normal.

Yes, yes, she knows. She doesn’t believe that. And she’d never say that to Dave. And Earth is already fading, a memory dopplering away until even after just three months, she faintly disbelieves the idea that there was ever really a time before she knew about aliens and games and universes. And yet.

And yet maybe it’s stickier than she expected. It’s easy for that to be sticky, when Kanaya’s right there and she’s so—

She’s so her. So smart, so funny. So pretty. And Rose is hoping so hard.

Damn. Rose is meant to be spooky. Spooky and aloof. This simply won’t do.

And then Kanaya leans to the side to whisper something to Rose (like Dave and Karkat are doing, like Aradia and Sollux are doing), and her neat little fangs, that sometimes worry her lip when she’s thinking up new outfit designs, are probably only an inch or two from her ear. She says- something. Rose smiles (grins) and tries to say something insightful (make her laugh, for the love of everything, make her laugh), and Kanaya’s neat little smile scrunches into suppressed laughter (success), and she leans back. And she forgets, for a moment, to wonder about whether she's normal or pathetic or whatever, because right now, Rose is just stealing glances at Kanaya and trying not to make it obvious. Funny, how Kanaya can make her feel like that. Make her forget to worry.

She may be getting too distracted.

A deck of cards is produced from somebody’s sylladex, and Dave starts rapping about cards, until Vriska asks if he could possible be any more distracting and he flicks the joker at her with pinpoint precision, managing to get it to stick on the sharp crescent of her horn. Terezi almost falls off her chair, and Vriska’s expression is- well, hilarious. (“…Was that some human thing?” “…Yeah. Totally. You just got owned. That’s what just happened.”)

This many people- she’d always preferred quiet and solitude to crowds, but she’s started to wonder if this is simply an illustration of the difference between crowds and friends, because it’s not nearly as draining as she assumed it would be.

(She wouldn’t want to do it all day every day, of course, but for now and for the moment—yes, she is enjoying it.)

She does realise who isn’t here.

Every time she stays, it seems like Eridan decides to head off early, even on days like this where nobody else does. It’s not difficult for her to draw the common factor, when Dave mentions him sometimes offhandedly and she finds herself with precisely nothing to say about the troll, even after over three months of journey spent apparently together.

She can’t work out what precisely he would take issue with her over- she did ask Karkat if blowing up his computer had really annoyed him this much, because the two seem like friends. He’d given her a strange look before reassuring her that it wasn’t that. He’d been tight-lipped enough about that she was fairly sure it was the ‘incident’ that the trolls more-or-less refused to talk about.

She’s pretty sure she could pester somebody into telling her about that, but… Well.

She isn’t sure she wants to. Yet. And she thinks she can See a better moment to find out.

(Waiting is still intensely frustrating, though.)

Sollux says something which gets a bark of laughter from Terezi, which sets Vriska off, huffing and defending herself, Karkat adjudicating away her defence so crassly it makes Dave snort, and all of it draws a smile out of Rose.

…She supposes she can wait.

Chapter Text

Dave runs into Terezi with a hot pocket shoved in his mouth. He genuinely pauses time for a half-second to recover as the two of them collide.

“Dave!” She says, cheerfully, immediately hooking an arm around his. “Just the person I wanted to see.”

“What the shit,” he says.

“I don’t speak whatever that was,” she replies smoothly, because what he actually said around the hot pocket was hghjat guh huit?

He captchalogues it. “I said, what the shit. Are you blackbagging me?”

“If I knew what that was, I would say yes.”

“Please don’t lick me, I have so much to live for.”

“Oh, don’t be such a baby. Besides, that is not the tongue-lashing I am going to give you.”

He stares at her in pained horror. “Why do trolls make it so easy for me?” He mutters, as Terezi prods and drags him down a corridor of the meteor. “We should really add signs for these corridors,” he adds, as he entirely loses his sense of direction. If only he was the chump of Space, but instead he gets to know to the millisecond how long they’ve been walking for. Which sucks, because it means he knows precisely how much dumbshit walking he’s gonna have to do to get back to civilisation. It makes complaining a very tempting option.

(Karkat has threatened, with universal backing, to kill Aradia and Dave if they don’t stop saying are we there yet. His exact words were “JUST SEE HOW FAR YOU CAN PUSH ME BEFORE I START NEEDING TO TAKE DRASTIC STEPS.” Trolls always make it too easy for him.)

“Not a bad idea!” Terezi says thoughtfully. “These corridors hurt my nose after a whole. Let’s paint them with stripes.”

(He’d said “Yeah, but Karkat, are we there yet?” Fuckin’ owned.)

“Cool,” he says. “Where are you taking me?”

“Somewhere nobody will find your body,” she says, reassuringly. She sniffs and then snorts at him. “Oh, lighten up, I haven’t even started threatening you yet.”

He wonders if he can get away with uncaptchaloguing his hot pocket. If he’s gonna be threatened can he not do it when he’s had fucking lunch?

He wonders if it will pop right back into his mouth, or into his hand. It’s not like he’s had a bunch of chances to captchalogue things he’s been holding in his mouth.

(If it pops into his hand, he wonders if he could captchalogue somebody’s weapon just as it hits his body. If anybody else tried that they’d be the dumbest fuck to ever die stupidly, but he does have time powers.)

She shoves him through a random doorway, and he stumbles in. It’s a smallish room with a flickering light and an interrogation-style metal table and pair of chairs. “Take a seat.”

“This is fucked.”

He sits down and starts typing under the table.

“Finished crying for help?”

“Not yet.”

“Yeah, that fucking failed.” He stows his phone.

“I hope you’re comfortable,” she says, giving him a wicked smile. She scrapes the chair aggravatingly across the ground and sits on it backwards.

“Can’t complain,” he says, because he thinks probably he can’t.

“Excellent. Shall we begin?”

“With what?”

“Let’s start there,” she says. “You and Karkat.”

“Oh. Yeah.”

“Does the defendant have anything to say for himself?”

“Not guilty?”

“There will be time for pleas for mercy later. Let’s establish the facts. Do you or do you not have flushed aspirations towards Shouty McNubbs?”

“I don’t get your troll romance shit,” he complains, because that’s always reliable. “All sorts of bullshit trying to work out whether I’m flirting with him in the black one or the red one or the pale one or the grey one. Did you pre-flicker that light?”

“Yes. So, you are admitting to flirting with him.”

“Fuck.”

“This is very helpful for my investigations. Which one of the quadrants do you want to be flirting with him in?”

“I plead the fifth.”

“The fifth what.”

They stare at each other.

“I’m not saying anything.”

“Hm.” She sounds thoughtful, and that’s probably bad news for his neck vis-à-vis remaining un-noosed. “Well, the court has manners of loosening your tongue, but I think for now we can proceed regardless with an assumed ‘flushed.’”

“Which one’s that in human terms.”

“That’s the heart,” she reminds him.

Oh. “Oh.”

She grins at him. “Your expressions are deliciously terrified.” She laughs. “It’s been way too long since I got to do this!”

“So, what do you want from me?”

“Nothing at all. It’s what I need to give you.”

“Okay?”

“A warning.”

“Right.”

“If you hurt him, you will get to learn exactly what a noose feels like.” He flinches, because ow, and also what the fuck. “And the thing is, a Godtier comes back to life. But what happens if they can’t breathe? Do they die again? What happens if they just keep dying?” She taps her chair thoughtfully. “I wonder.”

“Alright, fucking hell, message received.”

“Excellent. Just remember. He likes you. If this crashes and burns, fine. But if I find out you hurt him, I will have justice.”

“Cool.”

They both stand. Dave tries to get out the door first while some keeping his eye on her as well. He crab-scuttles out, and then the two of them are awkwardly standing in the hallway.

“Uh,” Dave says. “…Which way is back?”

Terezi sniffs all around her. “Um.”

He closes his eyes and sinks to the floor. “Fuck you. Fuck you so hard.”

--

Eridan puts his phone away and holds up the card. “Alright, sorry, done.”

Sollux sniffs the air. “Three. of… diamonds or hearts. I think.”

Eridan smiles, putting down the card. “Yeah, diamonds. You’re getting good at that.”

“It’s all about air currents,” he says. “That and psionics. It’s a… heat-map? I can ‘see’ all around me.”

“Radar?”

“Sure. I can walk and not bump into shit with the psionics now. the smell is just for the fine detail. Colours and stuff.”

“Rezi’s a good teacher, then.”

Sollux rolls his eyes, and then gestures at his side. “what’s the book?”

Eridan glances to the discarded volume. “Pride and Prejudice. A human one.”

“No shit, the title’s not longer than your arm.” Eridan flips him off, and Sollux snickers. “Any good?”

Eridan makes a mildly positive noise, opening it at the beginning. “‘It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife’,” he reads out.

“neat. What’s a wife?”

“From context, I think a type of Matesprit or Kismesis?”

“They’re right, I guess. Otherwise the drones get you.”

Eridan frowns. “I don’t think humans have drones. I asked Rose about it one time and she just sounded… I don’t know, sort of horrified mostly.”

“That’s… weird.”

Eridan shrugs, making a complicated set of movements to bookmark his page. “Must be nice, though. They don’t need them.” He looks up to the ceiling. “But I guess we don’t, either. The drones were a control thing.”

“hunting down mutants?”

“That too, but also just arithmetically. Y’know, you’ve got three billion tealbloods, you can maintain the caste balance by getting however many samples you need per sweep. If there’s only two hundred million purples, no matter the combinations you’re going to end up with more-or-less the same sweep-on-sweep rates. Unless something happens, anyway.”

He doesn’t mention a cute little factoid some Violetblooded adult a thousand sweeps old had sent him one day, out of the blue: a 1.8 percent uptick in the childhood mortality of seadwellers since he started Orphaning. They didn’t give a name, and signed it off with the words Welcome back, Dualscar. He shakes the memory off.

“It means you don’t get nasty surprises when you’ve promised a command to all of my blood colour and then there’s not enough to go around. That’s how civil wars get started.”

“huh. Never thought of that.”

“Yep. There’s a lot goes into statecraft.”

“Guess you’ll need to handle that.” Eridan snorts in disbelief. “Hey, there’s only like ten of us. And that’s counting the humans. rebuilding alternia is going to be tough i guess.”

Eridan shakes his head. “Thought the point is we don’t. Make a new world and all that. Who the fuck in their right mind would set that shit up again?”

Sollux tilts his head. “people like you who benefit from it?”

He smiles. “Would anybody else let me?”

Sollux grins. “heh. no. we’d kick your ass.”

So he shrugs (kinda pointlessly). “You wouldn’t need to. You could just… not listen to me. Even if I was willing to do anything about it, I couldn’t.”

His mind runs through some admittedly gruesome calculations, because he is still a military history buff. If Eq had survived and him and Vris hadn’t gotten so fucked up by the incident, maybe. But Vris and Aradia would be evenly matched, and then you’ve got Kan who proved herself a match for him the last time. Basically, they already had the coup, it just wasn’t about blood. And they lost.

Maybe for the best.

“so you’re not planning on rebuilding the caste system?”

He shrugs again and leans back. “Why bother? I don’t want to be in charge. Never did. Kar’s our leader for the long term.”

Sollux frowns. “What about your natural seadweller superiority?”

“Hah.”

“i’m serious. What happened?”

“…I’ve been thinking about it,” Eridan admits. “But yeah. Where the fuck did it get anybody? Where did it get me? It was meant to be good for me, but who cares about owning a battleship and killing a shitton of aliens.” It seemed obvious at the time why it would be important for them to do that, but now that they’re hurtling through space to go help some humans finish their game, he sort of can’t even believe that worked. “We’ve met them, now, and they’re pretty solid. ’Least, those two are. We spent all that time building an empire and then it disappeared in a puff of ink. Even if we could rebuild it, who would we put at the top, me?” Sollux laughs. “I think Kar’s little announcement pretty much killed the hemocaste, if it wasn’t dead already. Way too much effort to bring it back. Besides, we’re missing a crucial element. We haven’t- got a…” Eridan trails off.

Neither of them says anything for a long moment.

“I miss her,” Sollux says. Eridan winces. “i’m not trying to be a dick. I know you do, too.”

“We didn’t end up on the… best of terms,” he replies.

“Doesn’t mean you can’t miss her.”

Another silence.

“Did she ever- talk about me?”

“I guess. you’d have to be more specific.”

“About, uh. Anything about fits.”

“i don’t… think so?”

“Huh.” He shakes his head. “No, that makes sense. Anything at all about getting sick?”

“oh, fits like- sorry I thought you- yknow what? never mind.”

Eridan falls silent once more. This time it’s confused.

“You thought I was asking if she had commented on my fashion?”

“hey, coming from you, is it a bad guess?”

Eridan huffs. “If you’d just let me-”

“you’re not giving me a makeover!” Sollux replies, cackling. Then he leaned back, tilting his head towards the ceiling. “i think she did. i don’t know, i tried to steer her away from… well, from you.”

Eridan wonders if he’s hurt by that, and he’s kinda surprised to find the answer is still yes, just a little bit. “…Fair. What did she say?”

“Stuff about… she missed when she could help you.”

“…She enjoyed it?”

“she’d mention it sometimes. she missed making you soup.”

He sniffles. “Huh.”

“you missed it too?”

“A little.” He shakes his head. “Okay, a lot. It was nice, yknow? Not bein’ an Orphaner, not bein’ in charge. I’d even stop lecturing her on which spoon it was supposed to be.” That comment feels… a little close to whatever thing they’ve got. Which is fine, he guesses, given that whatever him and Fef were doing, it weren’t really normal moirailling. He’s not going to overanalyse it if they’re both getting along, anyway.

“Yeah. she liked that- being nice, and happy together. It got exhausting for her near the end, but I mean. she had regrets. She felt bad for you.”

“What, for dumping my sorry ass?”

“Yeah, a bit.” He grins a bit. She was insecure about stuff for no reason too, dude.”

“You’re saying it wasn’t just the two of us?”

He grins. “Dick. But more for the way she dumped you. the way she thought of it, she dumped you just before the most stressful week of our lives combined. she kept saying she should’ve had done it earlier, maybe given you time to come to terms with it.”

In the harsh light of the present, the anger, the entitlement he felt during the game tastes bitter. “Not her fault I went psycho about it.”

“No argument here. i think she realised that too, eventually. There would never have been a good time, and you were always going to be pissed. maybe she just didn’t realise how different things would be. You two were moirails for a long time. half of both your lives, even.” Sollux gives Eridan fingerguns.

“I’m rollin’ my eyes, here,” Eridan responds, and Sollux pushes him slightly, grinning.

“I’m great,” Sollux retorts. “but she was so conflicted. She still cared about you, yknow.” He pauses. “I did think-” and then he cuts off. “I guess-”

“What?” Eridan prompts.

“I don’t know. You were both royalty,” he says, shifting into a defensive posture. “It felt like… like it was a fluke i’d landed FF. i think I understood her, but she was an heiress. I didn’t know how to treat her like that.”

It’s probably a good thing he can’t see Eridan’s face (radar notwithstanding), because it’s incredibly bemused. “Sollux, you didn’t land her. She and you hit it off and you liked each other, simple as. Lookin back over the years of shit we all went through? The piles we had where I’d basically lecture her in proper seadweller etiquette or she’d needle me about how hemosupremacy wasn’t cool? I think the last thing she wanted was to be treated like a Queen. Whatever you did, it was the right thing.”

“heh. I guess that makes sense.”

“Fuck the monarchy, she’d probably say.”

Sollux opens his mouth in a perfect circle of mock-shock. “ED! That’s positively treasonous! I’m going to have to report you to- oh.”

Eridan laughs. “To Vris, probably.”

Sollux shudders. “VK as the voice of reason. where is the world headed?”

“Well, we know exactly where this one’s going, if that’s any help.” He shrugs. “Ah piss. I just shrugged.” Sollux snickers.

“You doing okay?” Sollux asks.

“Kinda.”

“you want something to cheer you up?”

“That… would be nice.”

“I happen to know that KK just watched a romcom with a makeover scene.”

A smile fights its way onto Eridan’s face. “Yeah?”

“Maybe he’d be up for one.”

“With our combined powers, we may be able to bully him into it. But I don’t know how to do makeup.”

They sit with this for a second, and then Sollux starts laughing.

“Okay, okay, fine, I do.”

Chapter Text

“Listen, it was a long fucking while ago, okay?”

“Four months,” Dave points out. “It was four months ago.”

“Although, Dave, from your perspective, Karkat typed that to John billions of years ago!”

Karkat points at Aradia. “Yes. Her. Listen to her.”

“Okay, but several billion years still doesn’t absolve you flirting with my best bro.” Dave catches Karkat’s hurt expression. “You are also my best bro. Christ.”

“Alright, nobody asked you to specify.”

“Your bottom lip was wobbling.”

“It was not fucking-” Karkat begins, but Rose calculates that at the current rate, by the end of his sentence he will be in the mid-thousands of decibels.

“I am sorry that bringing up John’s rejection has put you in such an emotionally vulnerable place, Karkat,” she interrupts.

“Oh, you fuck off as well,” he says irritably, but it resets his volume, so it mostly has its intended effect. “It was barely a pitchcrush. I hated him for fucking our victory up, that’s all. It was a brief- thing.”

Terezi snorts. “Brief but intense! You’ve never been that enraged by somebody like that.”

“Except you,” he retorts immediately, and then his eyes widen, and he slaps a hand over his mouth.

Karkat and Terezi sit in mortified silence for a few seconds while the humans exchange a bemused look.

“Uh,” Dave says. “That sounded like a really important moment for you both somehow, or maybe it was fucking stupid, I don’t know, but I don’t really get this, so let’s move on.”

“Great idea,” Rose says, because it seems like Karkat and Terezi aren’t going to. “Actually, let’s go back to the John thing.”

“We just- okay, yes, fine,” Terezi says. She shoots Karkat a look that says We should talk about that later.

He shoots her one back that says, approximately, Kill me so I can get out of this conversation. “The John thing was a brief aberration to my otherwise very high kismetic standards. I got over it quickly.”

“I saw the logs, dude,” Dave interjects. “You got rejected so hard that the only way you were able to face it was to talk to him backwards in time.”

“You could’ve just gone back a while and started trolling him linearly again,” Aradia says.

Karkat narrows his eyes at her. “You were there, you spooky fuck, you could have said that at the time. That’s a time player’s job! Keep everyone on the rails!” She opens her mouth to protest. “Don’t you dare say it needed to happen that way, because I know for a fact that your information came from dead Aradias, and they all went out the window before then.”

Her mouth twists in annoyance. “Okay, fine, you’re right.” She shrugs, and then grins at him. “But you forget Karkat, I was ok with you making that mistake.”

He rolls his eyes with a scoff. “And anyway, what was I meant to do? Egbert rejected me and his reasoning was essentially ‘bluh bluh I don’t like you,’ that’s fucking embarrassing.”

“He doesn’t like dudes,” Dave corrects.

“Ugh, yeah, the ‘homosexual’ thing. The fuck does that even mean.”

Rose and Dave exchange a confused look. “It means… he doesn’t like boys? He likes girls but not boys. He’s a heterosexual.”

Karkat and Aradia exchange an equally confused look. “That’s fucking stupid?”

“I actually have to back Karkat up here, I’ve never heard of anything like that.”

“Well, okay, I have,” Karkat admits, “but even then, it’s rare as shit. If he’d said he wasn’t attracted to aliens, fine, but I have to find the one human who isn’t attracted to guys for whatever reason?”

“It’s actually more common than liking both boys and girls,” Rose points out.

“Oh, that’s weird,” Aradia says. “So, there’s humans who are like ‘hmm, I’d like that person, if they weren’t a guy’? In the same way you’d look at somebody and say, ‘if they were smarter, I’d have a crush on them.’”

“I… suppose so.” Honestly, Rose feels slightly underqualified to talk about human sexuality. Her most up-to-date source on the matter is probably Freud, and she at least knows enough about actual psychology to know that Freud’s theories are not especially highly regarded nowadays. And then a thought occurs to her. “Hang on. You’re saying most trolls swing both ways?”

The trolls look at her, mystified.

“Like boys and girls.”

They exchange a look. She wonders what’s tripping them up- is it the use of ‘like’? She supposes when you have a whole corner of romance dedicated to hate, it’s weird to refer to crushes as ‘liking’ someone. “I… guess? Yes? In the same way that most trolls are pretty equally attracted both tall and short trolls.”

“Oh shit,” Dave says. “You mean you’re not going to bully me for being too tall?”

It’s a clear crack at Karkat’s height (honestly, she’s proud of him, that was a pretty good veiled insult), but somehow he misses it. “Well, if it’s something you’re insecure about, then I’ll take what I can get,” Karkat replies acerbically, and Dave grins. Aradia raises her eyebrows at Rose in disbelief, and she hides a smile.

“That’s fascinating. I thought it would be weird that I like both, since it is for humans, but apparently not.” She kind of forces it out, because as much as she plays the aloof card, this is kind of a big deal for her. Dave glances at her, and she’s sure he’s thinking something like fuck off Rose I’m not coming out in a conversation about sociology. Fair.

“Both what?” Aradia asks.

“Genders.”

“The fuck do you mean, both,” Karkat shoots back.

They stare at each other for a minute.

“…This is an alien thing, isn’t it,” Dave says.

“I think it is,” Aradia returns. She grins at him.

“Well shit, you got me there.”

“One headache at a time,” Karkat interjects. “Well, two, whenever Dave’s in the room.”

“Sick,” Dave says.

“Most humans are limited to just liking one? That’s… heterosexuality?”

Rose can hardly be blamed for the mistake she makes next, because the implications are exciting to her. She says, “yes.” She forgets, trolls don’t know Greek, or that Greek exists, and so don’t actually know what that word means. She fights to keep a grin off her face.

“Again,” Aradia says, “not a thing for us weird aliens!”

“Well,” Karkat says, tearing Rose’s heart out and stomping on it in exactly three words. “Apart from Kanaya.”

The grin, just barely formed, falters. She feels Dave wince to one side of her. The next few sentences come to Rose through a sort of water filter effect.

“You think so?” Aradia says distantly.

“Look at her track record,” Karkat returns, and Aradia grins.

“Hah, I guess so.”

And then Karkat shrugs. “That’s not really any of our business though, I’m just speculating.”

Rose misses about a minute of the conversation, before suddenly excusing herself to the bathroom. She feels Dave looking at her as she leaves, but if she looks back she’s pretty sure people will see her face, and right now she would much rather if nobody saw her face.

She makes a beeline for her room, and the door barely shuts before she feels the tears stinging in her eyes.

The bottle of wine exits her sylladex and enters her hand without even much thought, and she unscrews the top and flicks the cap away as she stares at the wall where she wishes her window was.

“Well,” she says, trying to keep her voice steady. “There goes that hope.”

She raises the bottle to her lips, and drinks.

Chapter Text

Karkat Vantas wakes up at about six, sloughs the sopor off himself, and shleps to the common area for coffee, feeling like a million Caegars in paradox space’s weakest most bargain-bin foreign exchange rate fucking currency.

He goes through the motions (mashes the n-tuple espresso button until it makes him a thermos full of coffee more powerful than God, burns the roof of his mouth with a sip and a grimace, and then adds enough sugar to make a convincing simulacrum of LOLCAT), and plonks himself down on the sofa.

And then he spends the next fifteen minutes staring at nothing in particular, missing the sunset starts to some days, when his insomnia decided “Hey, fucker, I know you only got three hours in there, but unfortunately the sopor stops working at 5am. Enjoy!” and he’d sit up in his food block, most of the windows covered, but one open just enough to let a beam of light slowly stretch its way further and further up the wall, until eventually it faded out, and the fickle lighting of Alternia’s moons asserted itself enough that he had to start uncovering them. He sips at his thermos of nuclear sludge and delicious, delicious caffeine until it’s halfway done, and then necks it.

(God he fucking adores his Blood powers. He was jealous of everybody else’s cool combat shit during the game, but the fact that Blood somehow lets him just say no to arterial issues is so badass. His resting heartrate remains at a flat 110, and he feels fucking zen even as the coffee flushes away all the tiredness.)

There’s a little trail of sugar granules that decided to un-dissolve as the coffee cooled, and he shamelessly tips the thermos upside down and holds it until they fall to their doom as well.

Then he pulls out his husktop and starts drafting his itinerary for the day.

Eridan walks in at about seven, eyes barely opening. “Hey Kar,” he says sleepily, voice still wrapped in a gills-fluttering yawn as he does, leaning his forehead against the machine as he makes it conjure up some other coffee setting (he doesn’t know which; Karkat doesn’t see the need for any other settings, to be honest). “What’s up?”

He shrugs, putting the now totally empty thermos down and waiting for Eridan to move so he can fill it up again. Usually, he’s not stupid enough to subject his body to a double caffeine dose, but he has shit to do. “I’ve got a huge day of fixing shit,” he says.

“yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“Anything I can help with?”

Karkat thinks this over. “Yeah, actually.”

“Just remember, I’m not much use for manual labour.”

“Noted. It’s mostly social shit, because this is a meteor full to the gills with assholes.”

“Hah,” Eridan says, sitting down in the armchair opposite Karkat. He tilts his head in confusion, and Eridan clarifies: “gills.”

Karkat feels the last shred of the day slot into place. Early start, check. Coffee, check. Asshole making pun, check. It’s official; today’s going to be a fucktacular day! “Oh, fuck off.”

“Hope I’m not on your problems list.”

He is.

“Nope,” Karkat lies, because he’s actually pretty sure the Eridan side of the problem doesn’t require discussion. He’s not sure, but… Well, a Seer of Mind and a Knight of Blood putting their heads together, that’s got to be a fairly strong guess, right? The Kanaya side, that’s more delicate, yeah. It’s not time to talk about it yet, though. But in the meantime… “If you’re offering, though, Terezi and Dave mentioned that the meteor’s confusing as shit to travel around. We might want to do something about that.”

“God, that’s the fuckin’ truth,” Eridan says. “I’ve got the journey to the transportaliser here memorised, but that’s about fucking it.” He takes a swig of tea and sets it precariously on the arm of the chair.

“Want to help Terezi paint the corridors, so we know where’s where?” He shoves his husktop off his lap and gets up to make himself yet more apocalypse coffee.

He raises an eyebrow. “Didn’t her last painting gig take perigees?”

“It wasn’t her fault,” he says. And to be fair, it wasn’t even his, either, except indirectly. Every time Karkat painted an area, Dave would unerringly cover it with shittily drawn dicks. The walls were probably an inch thicker than they’d been before with the number of times Karkat went over them. Everybody had more or less given up after a month, until Terezi managed to get Vriska to help her do it. “It doesn’t need to be complicated, though. A strip of paint on the wall leading to any transportalisers, maybe. Symbols on the floor, I don’t care.”

“Sounds like a good idea, actually. ’Course you’d have to work out how to make it obvious which way to follow the paint. Maybe colours could have meanings, too.”

Karkat jams his hand into the door of the thing so it can’t close. “Yes. Do that. I’ve been brute memorising corridors so far, but the meteor is way too fucking huge to do that with every single one. Colour code the shit out of the meteor.”

Eridan offers a stupid seadweller salute as Karkat shuffles back to his seat. “Cool. Anything else you need help with?”

He falls back onto the sofa heavily and shakes his head. “Nothing I can delegate. Although.” He shifts uncomfortably as he remembers the other thing Eridan’s on his list for. “I actually do need to message you later.”

Eridan frowns. “Is it… bad?”

“No.”

They stare at each other.

“Kar, gimme something to go on, shit’s just cruel otherwise.”

“Fuck that. But it isn’t bad.”

“Why not just do it now, then?”

“Because I have a fucking system, Ampora,” he bullshits ruthlessly, “and I’m not letting you jump the list! I’m doing this shit in order of fucktitude, and you’re right at the bottom.”

“Low fucktitude is good?”

“Low is good.”

“Oh. Well, nice. I’ll look forward to it and not be terrified.”

“Yeah.” Karkat takes another sip of coffee. “Seriously, dude, it’s embarrassing shit but it’s not bad, I just—” He cuts off. “You know what? I’m only making this seem like a bigger deal. I’ll shut up.”

Eridan nods gratefully. “Willin’ to let slip what else is on your agenda for today to take my mind off it?” He asks, hopefully.

Karkat rolls his eyes. “Fuck, fine. I need to talk to Rose about something we talked about. I feel like she’s gotten the wrong impression. Or else, humans are way fucking weirder than I thought.”

“Is this romance shit?”

Karkat grins. “When is it ever not?”

Eridan grins back. “We talking about that shit again, then?”

“You’ve made good on your promise to ‘chill’, haven’t you?”

He holds a hand up like he’s pledging something. “I’ve been faithful to my non fucktitude oath.”

Karkat actually laughs. “Good. Honestly? Yeah, I missed it too. And speaking of romance and couples, I need to shoot Aradia and Sollux messages, too.”

“Woah, what’s happening there?”

“Tell you later,” he effortlessly deflects, and Eridan nods, and sips his tea again. Tell you at exactly the same time as I tell you, he thinks. “After that, I’m going to see if Terezi’s free for a little bit of information gathering on Game shit.”

“Let me know if you need a hand with that.”

“If you genuinely want to look through old books for lore nuggets, then sure.”

“Can’t be more annoying than having yet another slapfight with her over the heating. The woman cheats.”

Karkat tries to suppress his smile at that. “Yeah. She does, doesn’t she.”

“Does all that leave you with any room to send Dave a message?” Eridan asks.

Karkat frowns. “Maybe. I think he wants to talk to me anyway, so I’ll see him today either way. Why, do you need me to tell him something?”

“Yeah,” Eridan says, sipping his tea. “Can you say, ‘I am incredibly flushed for you an’ it’s fuckin’ obvious to everybody with eyeballs an’ also to rezi’?”

“You asshole,” Karkat hisses back, and tries not to blush.

“Oh, c’mon, Kar, it’s been a fucking age since we shot the shit about relationships, if you open the gates, I’m gonna charge through ’em while your guard’s down.”

“You’re way past too late, fuckhead. Sollux and Vriska are bullying me into asking him out, and I’ve been putting it off for fucking ages.”

Eridan’s mouth falls open, and Karkat thinks he can hear his swim bladder deflating. “What? Okay, no, I get it if you talked to Sol, you two are bros, but c’mon, Vris? You talked to Vris about this shit before me? I’m hurt Kar, genuinely I am.”

“Oh, get over yourself. They just happened to be talking about it when I got involved.” He sighs. “Besides, she is considerably less of a fucking pain now Terezi and her are matesprits.”

“Would you say gettin’ stabbed cooled her off?”

“Significantly,” Karkat says, vehemently. Eridan grins.

“Anyway, I was hoping at the least for some form of freakout on the theme of how the fuck I know.”

Karkat pinches the bridge of his nose. “I’ll be honest? Neither of us have been particularly subtle.”

“Shit, so he likes you back?”

“Blood shit,” Karkat reminds him.

“That’s pretty fuckin' aces.” His grin turns to a thoughtful expression. “Anybody looking my way?”

“I wouldn’t tell you even if there was,” he shoots back. “And it’s not a fucking romance detector. It’s about connections. Blood is about. Bonds, I guess.”

“Bonds?”

He shrugs. “My guess is the Knight part really laps that shit up. Promises. Expectations, pledges to defend people’s lives. Anything like that. I can’t read the promise, I don’t know what they’re about specifically, but I do get the implications. If Terezi and Vriska were cheating at a game together, I’d see that shit immediately.”

“If,” Eridan muses, so casually and nonconfrontationally it’s like he spontaneously developed word-specific echolalia.

“Hah, yeah. If.”

“Knew I had that Catan game in the bag.”

“Yeah, yeah, you were robbed, shut the fuck up about it,” he says, without any real malice.

“So, when I promised to chill out…”

Karkat locates one of the little strings tying him and Eridan together. It’s a much bigger tie than he was expecting. Must mean a lot to Eridan. “Yep. Right there.” It looks battered, to be honest, like Eridan’s been having trouble with it, but it’s not broken. “I can tell you’ve kept to it, I guess.” Eridan shifts uncomfortably, and a bit of shame flushes up and down the promise.

He doesn’t say anything, though. This blood fuckery is weird enough without him calling people out with it. Whatever made Eridan feel like that, he’ll share it, or he won’t. But the string is still there, so he’s doing his best.

“Alright, but if it’s not a romance detector, how do you know-”

“Eyes,” Karkat says, sourly.

“Fuck, that’s brutal.”

“It’s just… an extra hint?” No, that’s a shitty way of putting it. “It’s like glancing at somebody’s phone when they’re messaging somebody.” Ugh. Still awful. Karkat rubs his forehead. “It’s all these shitty fucking metaphors and more,” he says dourly.

“And I guess if two people suddenly have like fifty fuckin’ oaths between them that weren’t there yesterday, you’re gonna look closer?”

“Pretty much. If you decided to really look at two people, you could probably make a pretty good guess as to their actual feelings towards each other. But would you ever look at—” He fishes for an example. “—Me and Vriska really closely and try to pick up some fucking romantic subtext? If you even could without gagging.” He shrugs. “You’d have to think it was possible or else you wouldn’t bother.”

“I guess not. But it’s a hint the rest of us mere mortals don’t get, I guess.”

“I’m sure the game gives you a hope radar or something stupid like that. If you gave a shit, I’m sure you could use that for your extra hint.”

He shrugs. “I guess. Well, not like I’m dying to find out.”

“No?”

“Nah. Was kinda a shitty prince of hope, wasn’t I?”

Karkat rolls his eyes. “Well, you never totally lost it until we finished the game. By all rights, none of this should be happening. We should’ve won, ruled the humans’ universe with an iron fist, and been fabulously wealthy assholes for the rest of our lives.”

“Would you have wanted that?” Eridan asks, carefully. “Ruling ’em with an iron fist, I mean.”

Karkat opens his mouth, and then hesitates. “No,” he admits.

“Nah. Me either. Too much like real work.”

Karkat sighs. “When did that happen?”

“Yeah, we’ve always been the two fucks with the most pointless work ethic ever, haven’t we?”

“If it weren’t for our ‘pointless’ work ethics, everybody we know would be dead.”

“Well, fuck, you’ve got me there.”

Karkat sighs. “But you’re right. It’s high time we took it easy.”

“High tide.”

“I’ll kill you.”

“So does that mean you should ask Dave out?”

“Ask him out where?” Karkat asks sardonically. He’s pretty sure he pulls it off, unlike Terezi.

“Dunno. Maybe if we ever seem to crash into a dream bubble you two can explore together.”

Karkat rolls his eyes. “Listen. That wouldn’t be an awful suggestion, except Lalonde tells me we’re not due to hit any bubbles for a while. And it’s totally random, and I don’t really want to commit to asking him out at some random, unforeseen time.”

“That’s fair. But… you are gonna ask him?”

He hesitates. “Yes,” he says eventually. Eventually is probably the operative word, there. He has a feeling that’s going to be a pretty good description of his timing for that conversation.

Eridan grins at him. “Hah, knew it. Wish you luck then.”

“Fuck you very much,” Karkat says, standing up for round three of apocalypse coffee. He jams the thermos under the machine and mashes the button.

“Kar, are you even gonna make it til then? That shit looks like it’s taking a sweep off you every sip.”

“Blood guy,” he says, and jams another thermos under it.

“Holy shit Kar.”

“This one’s for Sollux.” He’s still not going to be sleeping until they land, but he doesn’t feel like there’s any need to concede that point.

“Well, yeah, Sol’s about the only other person with teeth that wouldn’t fall out drinking that shit. ’Cause they already did.” He grins at Karkat, and it does manage to get a reluctantly smaller-than-usual scowl back.

“Can we not bring up Sollux’s teeth,” Karkat pleads.

“Haha, okay, fair.”

“I once threatened to do orthodontic surgery on him with my fist,” he mutters.

Eridan blinks. “Holy shit,” he says again. “I mean, I know we’re not talkin’ about it, but that’s the most indecent black proposal I’ve ever heard.” He’s actually gone slightly violet.

“I know, okay? I fucking know. I think I should just fucking leave, now. Spare myself the psychosexual nightmare of Sollux Captor’s former fucking lisp.”

“Nobody mentioned that shit except you,” Eridan points out.

Karkat tries to blow him up with his mind. “Kill me or yourself. I don’t care which, just let this conversation stop happening.”

“I’ll message Rezi, then,” he says, and for a second Karkat thinks that’s a crack about coinflips, and then he remembers. “Wish you luck with your meteor packed to the rafters with assholes.”

“I appreciate you not saying gills.”

“Well, I wouldn’t while you’re still homisuicidal.”

He captchalogues one of the thermoses (therma?) and raises it in a shitty salute to Eridan. “Right. Once more unto the fucking bullshit.”

“I’m near certain that’s not what the saying is.”

“No?” He shrugs. “Then I’m innovating.”

“Shit, I guess so.”

“See you later,” he says, heading for the transportaliser.

“Yeah, for the ominous thing you’re gonna get me about later.”

“It’s not fucking ominous, it’s— ugh. Whatever. Have a good day. Or don’t.”

“You, too. Or not.”

He lets his middle finger handle the reply for that and steps onto the pad.

Right. Item one: Rose fucking Lalonde.

--

Rose takes another swig from the bottle as she looks up from her phone to stare at the alchemiter. What was she…

Wine glasses. Right.

She giggles to herself. Karkat, being a Seer. She can imagine the whole thing. Less yelly, even more ranty. Judgemenenental.

She hopes people don’t of her as judgementable.

Empty wine bottle && Ceramic mug = Glass mug with stopper

Hm. Closer. She captchalogues it.

Empty wine bottle || Ceramic mug = Thermos

Alright. She. Doesn’t fully follow the logic on that one.

Thermos || Hot water bottle = Heated thermos

Ooh. That looks useful. Hey, Karkat drinks coffee out of a thermos, doesn’t he? She’s pretty sure. And Kanaya, actually. She has a thermos filled with something as well. She would love that!

Hm. Nop, that’s what she’s avoiding. She’s trying to avoid thinking about exactly what Kanaya can and can’t love.

Aw, shit.

She tries a few more combinations. She doesn’t really care about the grist cost—they can recycle it, and Dave’s ‘hella loaded’ (and most of the trolls aren’t particularly grist-poor either, even if Rose herself is), and they could survive pretty much indefinitely. And they only need to survive for three years. Maybe making some new gear along the way. It’s fine. She’s letting herself spend frivolously, becsause it doesn’t actually make a difference.

She grins at the little glass santa that pops out of the alchemiter, holds it up to the light. The sparkles dance over her face and she takes another sip.

Glass santa || Lightbulb = Light-up glass santa

Haha, now hes doing it timself.

She makes fifteen of them, turns all the lights off, and puts them all around the room. Kindly patron saints of sailors (does a meteor count as a vessel? Are Aradia and Sollux sailors? And Eridan’s nautical theemed, isnt he?), repentant thieves (she supposes that’s Vriska), unmarried people (score one for all of them), and barrel-makers (…Karakat?) dot the surfaces all around her, casting twinkly light over everything.

She looks at one of them very carefully. Kindly face. Long beard. Mythic powers of conjuration and enchantment.

Oh, no, don’t cry. Don’t cry, don’t cry, don’t cry. It’s not a wizard. She takes another swig from her bottle. It’s not a wizard it’s not a wizard it’s just a magic old man who delivers presents with the power of Christianity and that’s totally different.

She sniffs.

Wait, that makes him a warlock!

She bursts into tears and holds the little wizard in a tight hug.

--

Well, that didn’t fucking work.

He agonises for a few minutes over whether putting it off til tomorrow was a mistake, and then shakes his head. Whatever Lalonde’s got going on, it’s clearly not the right moment to drop any major fucking revelations on her.

He checks the list. He could get Aradia and Sollux done before lunch, couldn’t he?

--

--

Karkat takes a couple very fucking deep and restful breaths.

He’s calm. He’s calm! He’s so fucking calm, it’s unbelievable, and he’s probably going to die with a heartrate this low, and—

Karkat stirs his soup thoughtfully as Terezi rubs the sleep out of her eyes. “This place is filled with books,” Karkat muses.

She glances at him, scrunches her nose in thought. “Yeah. What’s a cloning station need with books?”

“Yeah.”

They both digest that for a few seconds. Also, the hot pocket and soup, presumably.

“Wonder what’s written in them,” she says.

“If they’re from the game, it’s unlikely to be In Which Love Actually Triumphs Over The Division Of Social Strata By Means Of—”

“Yeah, it won’t be that,” Terezi agrees. He snorts. “If they’re from the game, they’re probably lore books.”

“Yeah. I wonder what they say.”

“Probably something useful.”

They keep eating for another minute.

“To clarify,” she says, after she’s finished her hot pocket, “you’re suggesting we read all these old dusty cloning station books.”

Karkat blows on his soup. “Yeah, that’s about it.”

“Okay, well, it’s gonna have to wait until I do the painty thing with Eridan.”

Karkat waves his spoon at her. “Yeah, there’s no rush. I’ll try to make a start later, but we’ve got years for this shit. Do your thing.”

--

“You two need to stop doing that,” Terezi says, and he shies his husktop screen away from her.

“Stop spying on my private communications.”

“Nope! There is no such thing as data protection regulations between moirails. Honestly, it’s embarrassing.”

“It’s how we talk, fuck off,” Karkat says prompty. Promptly. God, Lalonde’s typoes must be catching. And then he sighs. “But okay, yeah, it’s kind of embarrassing. But honestly, I’m glad he still can get annoyed. There was a while there I thought maybe he’d broken his brain and couldn’t get angry anymore. Which worried me for obvious reasons.”

“What, because you want him to—” Terezi begins, but Karkat shoves his palm into her face to cover her mouth.

“Because I was worried that he’d only forgiven Eridan because of that and he’d randomly flip out and then kill him!” Karkat hisses over her.

She licks his hand, and he pulls it back, wiping it on her shirt. “Oh. Well. That’s actually pretty sensible then.”

“Yeah, see? I thought this through.”

“…And it was one hundred percent that, and not you pitchflirting with him for old times’ sake at all?” She asks, innocently.

He glares at her. “Yes!”

“Alright, alright, jeez.”

“…Maybe not one hundred percent,” he admits.

She grins at him. “98%?”

He attempts halfheartedly to murder her.

--

--

Karkat knocks on Kanaya’s door, and there’s a muffled “come in” from inside.

“Hey,” he says, as he does.

“Hi, Karkat.” She puts down her book. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”

“Technically, to Dave,” he says. “He’s texting me nonstop, so I wanted to go somewhere quiet to relax. Can I hang out here?”

She blinks. “…Of course. Should I bar the door?”

He grins at her. “You know, everybody else thinks you’re not sarcastic,” he says, shaking his head.

She slides her book away. “I don’t think I have the hang of sarcasm,” she admits.

“Then the rest of us are fucking novices,” he retorts.

“Either way, stay as long as you’d like. Do you mind if I sew?”

He shakes his head. “I’m already disturbing you enough, go nuts.”

She picks up a recent piece of work. “Thanks. Take a seat.”

“So, how’s everything going?” He asks, settling into a chair.

“Things have been fairly quiet recently.”

His eyes narrow just slightly. “Good quiet or bad?”

“A bit of both,” she admits. “I’m enjoying the relative lack of bad things happening more than I am some deluge of a lot of good things happening, you could say.”

“That’s true, I guess. Yeah, sitting on a meteor like this, there’s not really anything that can go wrong.”

She conspicuously doesn’t add anything to that comment.

“Feels like it’s been a while since we talked,” he offers. “Sorry about that.”

“It’s hardly your fault, Karkat. You’re still our leader. Even with the little that is happening, you have a lot to do.”

He waves that away. “It’s not that bad.” And then he yawns massively, and she raises an eyebrow at him. He flushes. “Okay, today was a lot, but usually it’s not that bad. Still. If I’m still the leader, then that means I’m in charge of making sure teammates and friends get enough time together to talk. So basically, the longer we go without chatting, the worse at my job I am.”

She chuckles. “I suppose that’s one way to interpret your role. Alright. Far be it from me to make your leadership more difficult.”

He smiles. “Thanks, Kanaya.”

“What do you want to talk about, then?”

He shrugs, tries to act nonchalant. “I mean, there’s the trumpetbeast in the room,” he suggests.

She frowns. “Which is?”

He grimaces. “The humans. And us.”

She closes her eyes. “Hm. You too, I see.”

“You can’t tell me Dave isn’t-” he begins, and then stops himself. “Okay, you can, but nobody else could. And Rose is exactly your type.”

“What. Attractive, brilliant, out of my league, and not even slightly interested?”

“I was going to say dangerous with a shitton of self-doubt hidden behind a façade of emotional aloofness. But sure, you’re a piece of shit, that’s where I was going with that.”

She opens her eyes at looks him dead in the eye. “Karkat,” she says, flatly. “You realise you have also just described yourself.”

“I was never dangerous,” he hisses. “And besides, I’m not a girl, so apparently it never would have worked. Sorry, Maryam. This radioactive mess isn’t your type.”

She laughs. “You’re not a mess, Karkat.”

“Kanaya.”

“You aren’t,” she insists. “You’re very attentive to people’s needs.”

“Yeah, well.” Look how well that turned out, he doesn’t say, because he can take a fucking compliment when he needs to.

“And when you say humans, I assume that means…?”

“That I’m also wildly flushed for Lalonde and we’re going to have to fight to the death over her affections, yes, you nailed it,” he says sourly.

“Really, though, Karkat,” she says, comforting. “Dave seems…”

He blinks. “Was that meant to finish with a compliment?”

“…very cool?” She tries.

“Thanks, Maryam. That was fucking great.”

“I’m sorry, I honestly haven’t spent as much time with him as I maybe should have.”

He snorts. “You should. After all, he’s known Rose a lot longer than you have. Maybe he’ll be able to give you some hints. Even just about how to talk to aliens.”

“Right. Although I suppose at the least, he is the one chasing you for conversation at the moment. Rose has not returned my messages today.”

He winces, thinking of Rose’s weird response. “…I think she may be just going through something weird today. I may have to ask Dave about it, actually. It’s nothing personal, though.”

“It’s still…” she sighs. “Disheartening.”

“I’ll talk to her,” Karkat promises. “Hopefully by tomorrow evening she’ll text you back.”

“That is… suspiciously specific,” she says, frowning.

“It is,” he assures her.

“Oh.”

“I just-” he begins. “Kanaya, you realise you do have a chance with her, right? A really fucking good one. And you clearly like her, and she likes you. So just… go for it.”

She takes this relatively in stride, and he pretends to miss her swallow of nervousness. “Perhaps. Although I’m not convinced it’s in the way that I would prefer.” He’s about to break his own rules (maybe he’ll have to ban himself? No, wait: that’s fucking stupid), but then she glances at him with a raised eyebrow. “The same could be said about you and Dave, I suppose.”

“I-” he begins, and then sags. “Okay, yeah. You got me. Point to Maryam.”

“I think that might be a good excuse to leave that line of discussion.”

He sighs. “You’re smart, Kanaya. You’re really fucking smart, and that’s a good idea. Do you have anything else you want to talk about, or do you just want to sit here and sew in silence while I read fuckoff massive books the game spawned on this facility’s bookshelves?”

She shrugs. “I certainly wouldn’t turn you out while Dave is relentlessly hunting for you around the meteor.”

He’s pretty sure that’s a grin she’s not hiding very well.

“Alright. Fucking great.” He uncaptchalogues a book and it thumps into his hands. “Research time.”

She smiles at him and brings her book back out again. “Research time,” she agrees.

He glances at it. It’s a book he recognises, actually. It got banned for being seditious. The short version of the name is Flushed Encounters with an Alien!

He grins. “Please do not believe whatever you read there about humans.”

“They have a hidden eye on the back of their heads, Karkat. Isn’t that fascinating?”

--

Karkat looks at his itinerary as he stumbles back to his block, glancing up to see Eridan and Terezi bickering down a side corridor as they debate which way to paint the corridor. Eridan spots him, says something to Terezi, waves, and Karkat gives him a one-finger salute.

Let’s see.

He did Aradia, Eridan, and Sollux. He didn’t get around to Vriska. Terezi and Eridan are handling the whole ‘paint the corridor’ thing. Sollux’s caffeine got delivered. Dave pressured him into allowing a human celebration. He talked with Kanaya. He even got a bit of research done.

On the other hand, he still has the Rose thing to do, and from the maybe fifty pages he managed to read, he’s pretty sure the author of these books was chortling with laughter at the thought of the torture somebody who wanted to decipher the mess of puns and poems would have to undergo. He flips them off via power of the mind. He’s pretty sure he wouldn’t have gotten much done in any case, but Kanaya and him making jokes about aliens every fifteen seconds for the whole time probably didn’t help.

Still. There’s always tomorrow.

Even with the amount of caffeine he drank today, as Karkat practically falls through his block door, he’s feeling absolutely exhausted, and it’s barely when most people go to sleep, let alone him. He’s got this weird feeling Aradia and Dave are the only ones really keeping them on a consistent basis, even if Karkat himself pretty much skips every fourth night of sleep.

Still, he’s even looking forward to crawling up in his recuperacoon. Hell, today he might well even manage to get a full six and a half stupid hours of sleep. That would be nice.

He barely makes it to the ’coon, chucking his palmhusk to the side before he topples into it with a small splash.

Chapter Text

Two days ago.

Now.

Karkat’s fingers hesitate about the keyboard. Something tells him that’s…

Human business. Not his.

Yet.

Karkat stares at his screen in satisfaction. Could he have been a little nicer? No, probably not. As previously noted, he's an asshole. But he told her the important bits. Dave will have to be happy with the result.

He frowns. He meant to ask something else, as well. What was it…

Oh. Oh yeah, that.