Chapter Text
> Be Rose
You have not been sleeping well. There are many reasons for this, all of them good ones, and the list has remained an unaltered constant in your life for quite some time. You are used to your problems, to all of your problems, and the routine they give you is as comfortable an opiate to you as any available to hand.
With one exception.
Your hand at this moment rests upon this exception, upon her bare-skinned gray shoulder. After fifteen years of marriage, she is no longer woken by your nightmares. She does not, indeed, wake now at your touch, but her fingers find yours, interlacing with them, her coarse, rough-hewn chitinous nails sliding past your own unpainted, obsessively bitten set. Her thumb traces a slow oval on your skin, and lightly tugs you toward her even as she rolls onto her side, showing you her graceful, muscular back, pulled taut as her shoulders tighten inward. The tiny sound that emits from her throat is a guttural music two universes distant from this one, a music at once pleasant and horrible to your alien ears.
She does not hate you anymore.
You have known for months.
And it feels like dying.
> Be Dave
Painting the strife chamber orange hadn’t actually been Dirk’s idea, it’d been yours. The chamber had been gray to start with, in fact the whole bunker had been gray to start with. The hastily alchemized Alternian carpenter droids would only build in gray no matter what materials Roxy rogued out of the void for them to work with. Gray on gray on gray on gray.
Karkat had loved it, and he told everyone to leave it alone, it was perfect, it didn’t need any color, please no one touch it, humans could learn something from troll interior design sensibilities, and then over the course of a week Miss Mistoffelees ran around with a paintbrush and turned the entire bunker into a Jackson Pollock exhibit. Well, actually no, she turned it into a someone-good-at-art exhibit. She was really good actually, cool patterns and designs and great color choice. You think. You do not know shit about art as a matter of personal pride, but she sure did. Karkat obviously agreed, because he only yelled the normal amount, and, notably, didn’t try to make her change it back, not even all the little diamonds and hearts on y’all’s door frame.
These days he always unconsciously runs his hand across them on his way in or out of the room. He doesn’t think you’ve noticed.
She hadn’t been sure what color to paint the strife chamber, is the point. You told her orange, she asked why, you told her Dirk would probably like it, and that’s how you learned what a big brain Nepeta had when it came to people, and especially when it came to what people mean to people.
See, most of the rooms in the bunker are small. All the quarters are small: the infirmary, command center, the little gym with the actual weights and machines and shit, all pretty small, there ain’t that many of you so y’all don’t need that much space, but the strife chamber is . . . bigger. The strife chamber is by far the biggest room in the bunker, like, big, like, indoor skate park big, in fact, part of it is an indoor skate park. Parkour is a significant part of what y’all do, and Latch would probably go nuts (more nuts) without somewhere to practice her mad skillz. Big strife chamber, big, padded, of course, to help prevent accidents, with all obstacles and shit and the mini skate park and a gun range and a kind of balcony thing that Dirk can observe everyone from. Big.
It’s also hideous to the fucking eye now, because she did cover everything in orange, and then she added teal accents to the skate park, olive near her favorite scratching post, and when Rose started coming she added sinister little adorable tentaclebeasts in violet near the sparring mats with like, spades for eyes. Your favorite, and least favorite, but mostly favorite thing about the room is the wall, the big, big wall behind Dirk’s balcony where she swirled his orange with your red in a huge circular disk. Almost like a . . . sun, okay, you’re looking at it right now and it’s the sun over Houston. You and your big bro’s sun. How the fuck did she know about that?
Fucking Miss Mistoffelees. She knew goddamn everything. You wish you’d got to know her better.
You wonder, not for the first time, who kept it going after she died. Who added shades of green to the targets in the gun range when Jade and Jake began practicing together, who hid a shit ton of tiny little pink cats for Roxy to find after she joined the daily training sessions. So far she’s found 187 of the damn things your head slams into the padded wall.
So hard you didn’t even feel it. That’s weird.
LATULA: d4v3!!!! sh1t! 1m so fuck1n sorry!!!!
Paint chips float sideways to the ground.
LATULA: oh fuck, d4ve...
LATULA: sh1t
LATULA: d1rk? 1 th1nk 1...fuck, y34h 1 d1d
That’s so weird why would they do that.
DIRK: Oh, hell...
LATULA: 1m so fuck1n sorry d4v3...
DIRK: Don’t be. This is what he gets.
What’s Latch sorry about? What’s Dirk mad about? Oh, is that Jade?
JADE: what’s going on??? oh. oh, dave...
LATULA: y34h...1ts my b4d, sh1t...
DIRK: No it’s not. It’s Dave’s bad.
Haha what? Dirk crouches, and you can almost see his eyes under his shades from this angle, wild.
DIRK: This is what fucking happens.
Why’s he
sideways?
Why’s every
body
sidewa
> Be Dave
Your name is Dave Strider.
A fist blasts you across the jaw, and you hit the floor.
JADE: dirk stop it!!
DIRK: He has to learn somehow, Jade!
JADE: he has to learn??? are you serious right now???
JAKE: Slightly problematic way of putting that dirk i must say.
DIRK: Jake, I don’t give a god damn!
Why is everyone staring at you?
DAVE: wtf happened why yall yelling
DIRK: I’ll show you what happened!
He lunges toward you, and Jake tries to hold him back. Fails to hold him back. Jade points a finger at him with a flash of fangs.
JADE: i dont wanna hurt you dirk!! but if you-
Dirk Strider falls on his ass. A small hand wrapped in navy blue flails around like a windsock, stiffly flexes delicate fingers to fight the pain of the impact.
ROXY: leave him.
ROXY: alone.
ROXY: you stupid jerk.
The fuck did Roxy come from?
ROXY: he just died.
Oh.
Ohhhhh.
Blood trickles from Dirk’s mouth. He doesn’t wipe it away.
DIRK: It’s the third time this month.
ROXY: take a shower dirk
DIRK: It’s the third time, Roxy!
She stomps toward him, snatches his shades right off his face, snaps them in half, presses them into his hands.
ROXY: take a fukken shower dirk!
He stands there, glaring at her, at you, those eyes now hitting you full on.
ROXY: i’ll talk to him
God, he looks tired.
ROXY: ill b mean dun worry
So tired.
ROXY: you go way. take shower. i talk 2 dave.
His eyes tear away from yours with an almost audible rip, and like an automaton he turns and exits the strife chamber.
LATULA: d4ve 1m so fuck1n sorry m4n 1t w4s my f4ult
ROXY: shut up latch ur dumb
DAVE: latch it its fine accidents happen
ROXY: ur dumb too shut up
DAVE: roxy wtf
She snatches your glasses off your face.
DAVE: fuckin
DAVE: john gave me those holy shit
ROXY: stfu
ROXY: imma say this one (1) time bc i dun like bein mean but i promised dirk
ROXY: dave
ROXY: latch just broke ur neck and u died
LATULA: 1m sorry-H3Y!!!!
ROXY: lookie there another glasses 4 my collection
LATULA: your3 gonn4 sm34r 3m
ROXY: stfu2
ROXY: dave u fucked up
ROXY: not payin attention
ROXY: latch called for a fraymotif
ROXY: u didn hear bc off in lala land
ROXY: bein dumb
ROXY: dirky boys a prick
ROXY: but hes right
ROXY: third time this month
ROXY: get ur fukken shit together
ROXY: jegus FUKKEN christmas
ROXY: okay thats mean roxy over time 4 nice roxy
Roxy shudders, then plops your shades onto Latch’s face and her shades onto your face in one sighing, stiff-armed motion.
ROXY: dave i dun want nothin to happen 2 ya
ROXY: love ya
ROXY:
ROXY: ok outie
She hugs you, hesitates, hugs Latch, and a full glass is in her hand before she even turns to leave.
> Be Latula
The thing is, it was your fault. You’re trying to explain that to the stupid fuckpan as you walk. It’s not going very well.
DAVE: no like i get it youre like my big sister in law and you have to protect me or whatever
LATULA: th4ts
LATULA: um
LATULA: wh4ts a s1st3r 1n *l4w*
DAVE: hahaha okay
DAVE: you know how rose is my sister
LATULA: fuck1n v4gu3ly????
DAVE: right so because you married rose youre my sister in law
DAVE: it means like
DAVE: actually i dunno what it means
DAVE: it means you either hate me or youre my ride or die depending on what movie
DAVE: fuck now im thinkin bout john again
DAVE: but yeah like you think you need to protect me cuz older
LATULA: 1 d1dnt l1k3 know th4t though
DAVE: yeah you didnt know that so that aint why so yeah i dont get it
DAVE: you dont have to protect me btw
DAVE: thats like a if you want thing
DAVE: again depends on what movie
LATULA: 1
LATULA: 1ts not l1k3 1 w4nt to? l1k3 1 do w4nt to but 4lso 1 h4v3 to? wh1ch m4k3s m3 w4nt to?
DAVE: yeah that makes so much sense
LATULA: r1ght????
DAVE: no that was human sarcasm
LATULA: oh
LATULA: d4v3 w3 h4v3 fuck1n s4rc4sm >B/
DAVE: yeah but its like complicated troll sarcasm
DAVE: got all different kinds based on like
DAVE: the care bear symbols
DAVE: they had symbols right?
LATULA: lol
You don’t get the reference but it sounded funny. He thinks it was funny.
He’s also deflecting.
You sigh.
LATULA: look dont fuck1n t3ll 4nybody th1s ok?
DAVE: right on
Dammit he is just so honest isn’t he. You kind of wish he wasn’t because then you could back out, but whatever.
LATULA: 1 know wh3n p3opl3 m4k3 m1st4k3s?
LATULA: l1k3 wh3n th3yr3 gonn4 you know
LATULA: fuck up?
LATULA: 4nd 1 c4n stop 1t usu4lly
LATULA: or f1x 1t?
LATULA: l1k3 1 know *how*
LATULA: w1thout 3v3n l1k3 try1ng to 1 just know
LATULA: 4nd 1v3 n3v3r told 4nybody but ros3
LATULA: cuz
LATULA: cuz 4nyth1ng 1 dont stop or f1x 1s you know
LATULA: my f4ult cuz 1
LATULA: should4 don3 th4t
You swallow.
LATULA: hurts. sucks.
And . . . he didn’t even slow his stride while you said that, like it wasn’t some heavy shit. Dave rules. Good legisbrotherator to have or whatever.
DAVE: oh its like a knight thing
Exactly! You didn’t want to say it like that because you felt stupid. Still do.
DAVE: yeah like when i used to still do my knight thing i could do all cool shit with time bein all awesome but i had to live in a big time scribble and it took forever and i saw myself die a lot
DAVE: protect everyone from time but me
DAVE: same diff you cant protect yourself from you know
DAVE: your mistakes
Shit he’s good at this. You’re almost irritated at how fast he did that.
LATULA: 1 n3v3r l1k3, thought 4bout 1t th4t w4y?
DAVE: yeah its a knight thing
DAVE: karkats turboqueer relationship powers work better on other people too
DAVE: its kinda funny
DAVE: hes almost better at helping me be a good husband or whatever than he is at being a good husband
DAVE: its irritating as shit sometimes but he is really really super good at it
DAVE: and it works out cuz i help him be a good husband right back
DAVE: but you know not bloodways just papways
He looks so serene.
DAVE: knights look out for each other
DAVE: three musketeers and shit
LATULA: thr33 musk3t33rs?
DAVE: this old human book its so gay
LATULA: wh4ts g4y m34n 4g41n?
DAVE: god fuckin dammit latch its where you like rose i like karkat and he likes homosexuals oh fucking hell you were doin a bit werent you
LATULA: >B)
DAVE: haha fuck your gay ass
DAVE: anyway yeah all of us are gay so you know three musketeers works
DAVE: all for one
He holds his hand up and you hesitate.
DAVE: latch dont leave me hangin
DAVE: come on all for one and shit
LATULA: so th1s 1s 4n 3x4mpl3 of you m4k1ng 4 m1st4k3
DAVE: oh shit right cuz your high fives suck
LATULA: my h1gh f1v3s rul3!
DAVE: fuck is with them like do trolls always do that is that a troll high five
LATULA: 1ts 4 m3 h1gh f1v3 >B|
DAVE: an elevated frond slap painful edition
LATULA: 1m d4v1d h4ss3lhoff 4t h1gh f1v3s b1tch >:B)
DAVE: haha you fuckin rule for keepin that going
LATULA: k33p1ng wh4t go1ng
DAVE: okay any other questions
You can tell that whatever it is Dave’s protecting with that deflection, it is both about Karkat and funny as shit, so you let him have it. Plus:
LATULA: y34h 4ctually on3?
LATULA: wh4t d1d 1 m1ss
LATULA: l1k3 w1th you
LATULA: tod4y wh3n 1
LATULA: l1k3 wh4t m1st4k3?
DAVE: okay latch for fuckin real it is fine you are fine
DAVE: i ain’t mad
DAVE: like i couldnt even feel it
DAVE: and im fine now
LATULA: d4v3 1 w4nn4 know
DAVE: i know you do and imma tell you
DAVE: and it aint even a big deal or nothin
DAVE: but it is a big deal that you know that you and me are cool
You fling your fronds around him.
DAVE: ow
DAVE: fuckin
DAVE: david hasselhoff at hugs too
LATULA: 4nd fuck1ng up
DAVE: that is indeed what that means yeah
LATULA: h3h3
Dave’s a good hugger. Karkat is so lucky.
You do feel way better when you let each other go. Well, you do, anyway. Nothing ever seems to bother Dave at all.
DAVE: but you didnt fuck up i fucked up
DAVE: i just got distracted
DAVE: thinkin about
DAVE: you know nepeta
LATULA: oh l31jon?
DAVE: i know i know jegus fuck its been how long
LATULA: s3v3n sw33ps 1snt th4t long
DAVE: i mean it kinda is
LATULA: no
LATULA: no 1ts not
LATULA: not 4bout p3opl3 you c4r3 4bout
DAVE: aw thats sweet grl
You don’t correct him.
DAVE: whyd you always call her leijon btw
LATULA: cuz sh3 r3m1nd3d m3 of you know
LATULA: my l31jon
DAVE: oh fr
DAVE: i guess i always assumed yall are nothing like our trolls cuz you know
DAVE: you terezi
DAVE: fuckall alike
LATULA: 1 hop3 so
DAVE: yeah lol last i checked you werent a monster latch
LATULA: y34h
LATULA: lol
LATULA: 1
LATULA: 1 th1nk 1 l1k3d n3w l31jon b3tt3r though?
LATULA: sh3 w4s l3ss cr33py th4n m3ul1n w4s
LATULA: or m4yb3 just l3ss 4ll th3 t1m3 h4ng1n out w1th 4 w31rd fuck3r l1k3 kurloz
DAVE: which one was kurloz
LATULA: m4k4r4
DAVE: ahhhh
DAVE: yeah i liked ours and then i did not like ours
LATULA: s4m3?
LATULA: m4n 1ts w31rd l1k3
LATULA: 1 d1dnt know n3wl1n l31jon sup3r w3ll but sh3 l1k3 kn3w m3, you know?
DAVE: yeah
LATULA: sh3 kn3w 3v3rybody
LATULA: k1nd4 l1k3 k4rk4t
DAVE: yeah
LATULA: l1k3 k4rk4t knows how p3opl3 4r3
LATULA: sh3 kn3w *why* p3opl3 4r3 how th3y 4r3?
DAVE: yeah
He nods, bouncing his head to an internal beat as you both keep walking.
LATULA: m4k3s s3ns3 tho
DAVE: hm
LATULA: why 1 d1dnt c4tch 1t
LATULA: gr13fs not 4 m1st4k3
He snorts. Wait was that funny? It was kinda funny. Why was it funny?
DAVE: thats like the nicest possible thing you coulda said just now
DAVE: and its like
DAVE: bullshit
LATULA: >B?
DAVE: nah dont get me wrong i appreciate it but come on latch
DAVE: roxys right
DAVE: dirks right
LATULA: d1rk w4s b31n 4 fuck1n nookhol3
DAVE: lol of course he was
DAVE: he was outta line i know it he knows it too
DAVE: he feels bad about it
DAVE: me and himll talk about it after weve both cooled off
DAVE: we always do
DAVE: but he was mad cuz i fucked up
DAVE: shit like grief and you know your emotions and shit
DAVE: that gets you killed for real out there you know that
LATULA: ...
LATULA: fuck1n v4gu3ly
DAVE: right, sorry
LATULA: n4h th4t w4s sh1tty of m3 1 g3t wh4t you m34n
DAVE: ...you and rose doin okay?
You take off your shades and rub your ganderbulbs. Oh right these are still his shades.
LATULA: do you r34lly w4nn4 know?
He takes off your shades.
DAVE: ...would i be a bad brother in law if i said i do not
The two of you stare at each other as you make the exchange of shades. It is a solemn moment.
LATULA: 1 th1nk 1t d3p3nds on th3 mov13
DAVE: ...heh
LATULA: h4h4h
DAVE: hahahahahaha
LATULA: h3h3h3h3h3h3h3h3h3h3h
DAVE: ahahahahahahahahahaha i love ya latch fuck
LATULA: h33h33h33h33h33h33333 >B)
DAVE: yeah i do not wanna fuckin know just
DAVE: be good to her or
DAVE: bad to her or?
DAVE: whatever the deal is lol fuck
Ow. Shit. You absolutely do not let the sting of that show.
DAVE: latch you okay?
You thought. Fuck, he is way too good at this.
LATULA: h3y d4v3
DAVE: hey what
LATULA: h1gh f1v3
DAVE: haha fuck off
DAVE: oh you wanna kill me in dead or alive 4 instead?
LATULA: god do 1 fuck1n 3v3r
> Be Jake
Line up sights. Inhale. Exhale. Fire. Reload.
JADE: three millimeters left of center.
Line up sights. Inhale. Exhale. Fire. Reload.
JADE: four millimeters up-right of center.
Line up sights. Inhale. Exhale. Fire. Reload.
JADE: bullseye.
Jade smiles, her eyes closed, her legs crossed. She never so much as glances downrange at your target, and your shots never so much as scratch its green paint. Instead, each round makes a crackly green detour to the space between her thumb and forefinger, and joins the others in a complex orbit about her head.
Line up sights. Inhale. Exhale. Fire. Reload.
This exercise the two of you have is one of the, dare you say, joys of your life, of both your lives you do hope. Of course it is. Jade rarely looks so serene as she does here, though today . . . well, her ears, your primary barometer for her emotional state, are bundled into a pair of noise-cancelling earmuffs, as are yours. You are communicating via integrated microphone, and hers is carrying a slight, yes, you’re certain of it, strain in her voice.
JADE: two millimeters up from center. is dirk okay???
JAKE: Is dirk what?
JADE: is he okay is he
JADE: go ahead go again
Line up sights. Inhale. Exhale. Fire. Reload.
JADE: and roxy? and dave? especially-oh, that was...what was it, three and a half centimeters down-right from center? come on, jake...
You tug your collar. Line up sights.
JADE: rrrrrgh!!!
Two clenched fists meet each other in front of her face, her eyes pressed tightly closed, her personal galaxy of spent rounds slamming into each other, forming a clump of wadded-up lead that flows aggressively into itself, a snarl of metal that falls to the floor with a clang.
She whips off her headset; you do likewise. Her knees tuck upwards into her chest as she presses the heels of her hands into her eyes.
JADE: everyones falling apart
As you hasten over to kneel next to her, as she grips your proffered hand fiercely, as her ears flatten against her head, you note that she is not, in fact, being fair. You wonder if you should say this to her, hmmm.
Perhaps when she is done crying.
Yes, that is the proper course of action.
An appropriate amount of time passes.
Then:
JAKE: My last shot wasnt as bad as all that.
Nothing. Wrong tactic? Surely not!
JAKE: Jade you are going to give me a complex.
Nothing again. Abandon ship? Possibly. Then . . . a brief, involuntary smile ah, you’ve got her now, haven’t you!
JAKE: Its just that i already have so many you see.
JADE: heehee
And Bob is very much one’s uncle! She releases her death grip on your hand and dries her eyes on her sleeve, sniffing a very canine sniff. You mimic her posture, hands folded, shoulders slack, head cocked.
JADE: fine okay what.
JAKE: Now i dont wish to disregard your words but it seems likely to me given that display.
JAKE: That healthy reasonable and above all dignified display!
JAKE: That you might be the one who is as you say falling apart?
JADE: hmph
JAKE: Would you like to talk about it?
JADE: no
JAKE: Now i dont wish to disregard
JADE: oh my god shut up fine
You smile. So does she. Splendid. Well, momentarily splendid . . . she hovers a palm over the clump of lead on the floor, and it whirls into the air, turning this way and that, shrinking, growing, sometimes popping in and out of existence as she talks.
JADE: this isnt good enough
JADE: im not good enough
JADE: this level of control i have
JADE: over my powers its
JADE: well its
JADE: not enough
JADE: i got hurt seventeen years ago, jake
JADE: god im almost forty
JADE: or, twenty-five? whatever we stopped aging at?
JADE: ive hit a plateau? with how much i can improve?
JADE: stuff like this, little stuff, simple stuff, even big stuff so long as its...simple, homogenous
JADE: great
JADE: i havent missed a single bullet in years and years and years
JADE: on the level im at, the level my body can manage, im basically perfect
JAKE: And thats extraordinary!
JAKE: I barely understand what my powers even do.
JADE: you
JADE: i mean you gave me hope. you give me, hope, jake.
JAKE: Heh i like to think i do but thats just being myself isnt it.
JAKE: Can’t help it.
JADE: space stuff used to be just me being myself, jake! i have held this planet, the one we are sitting on right now, in the palm of my hand!
JADE: it was the same size as this
She sets the clump of lead in a slow orbit.
JADE: i did that about five minutes after reaching god tier. it was easy. i barely had to think about it. you know how hard it is just to do this? i never had to practice before, i just did stuff!
JAKE: But you have to practice now and you do practice now!
JAKE: Its hard but you are taking the necessary steps and
The clump of lead hits the floor again with a resounding finality.
JADE: its not enough
JADE: jake rose wants me to do something
JADE: its something really important, its a really good thing
JADE: and i dont know if i can
JADE: because im still broken
JAKE: What.
JAKE: Is this thing she wants you to do?
JADE: youll find out
JADE: its
JADE: shes telling everyone about it one by one its big jake
JADE: its big and
JADE: i have to make it smaller
You both stare at nothing much in particular.
JAKE: Do you know who is extremely good at creative and inventive uses of her powers?
JAKE: Roxy.
JADE: i
JAKE: You should talk to her.
JADE: i
JADE: wow youre
JADE: thats a really good idea i
JADE: i feel really bad i kind of
JADE: dont remember shes here a lot of the time
JAKE: She did punch dirk in the face today.
JADE: she did punch dirk in the face today yeah
JAKE: She might have some pointers for you!
JADE: okay yeah
JADE: yeah thanks jake! ill go talk to roxy!!
JADE: i should do that now so
JADE: bye!!!
She floats to her feet and vanishes, leaving behind the clump of lead. It still sits there, in the dent it’s left in the floor. You stare at it.
Hm. Jade was not nearly as enthused by that suggestion as you were hoping she might be. It’s interesting as well, the way she characterized that, what was it, that she often forgets that Roxy is here. Interesting, and untrue.
Sigh.
At least it’ll give you time to talk to Dirk.
Line up sights. Inhale. Exhale. Fire.
The ping of lead bullet against steel target is almost swallowed by the deafening report of the shot. Ow. You forgot to put your earmuffs back on.
Still.
Bullseye.
> Be Latula
ROSE: I’m making you field ops.
LATULA: ...wh4t
ROSE: An operation in the Troll Kingdom is scheduled for six weeks from today. I am assigning you to active duty for this operation. Report to Karkat for a full briefing at convenience.
LATULA: your3 fuck1n jok1ng though
ROSE: Yes, Latula, I frequently joke about personnel matters; you will recall our storied history of mutually enjoyable banter on this topic.
It’s the end of the bunker’s day-cycle (you stopped thinking of it as night-cycle a long time ago), and she actually met you on your way back to your respiteblock, which is very unusual. The lighting never worked right in this particular tunnel, and the distant glows from each end frame your wife’s face in an eerie and unsettling way.
LATULA: ...your3 s3r1ous.
ROSE: It is time that we started being proactive, Latula, time that we made the first move for once, and we are making that move a big one. Big enough that Terezi cannot be allowed even a hint of it before it happens, big enough that it is more important than the survival of this bunker. I am going as well.
Holy shit.
LATULA: holy sh1t?
LATULA: wh4t
LATULA: wh4t 4r3 w3 gonn4 do?
ROSE: As I said, Karkat will brief you. I imagine that he would be very put out if I denied him the opportunity to do so.
You’ve reached your respiteblock, but neither of you is making a move to enter. Rose is, however, making a mistake.
LATULA: just fuck1n t3ll m3 b4b3
The wrong kind of pain flickers across her expression when you call her that. Too simple. No irritation, no annoyance, no indignance, no arousal, just pain.
ROSE: Very well.
Pain and something else and you don’t know what it is. And you have no idea whether this is a mistake.
ROSE: We are going to rescue the Mother Grub.
Your thinkpan snaps in half.
LATULA: wh4t th3 fuck
Its contents slide onto the floor.
LATULA: th4t
LATULA: wh4t
You pick them back up, but they’re all in the wrong order.
LATULA: how
ROSE: Karkat has the specifics.
LATULA: how long h4s th1s b33n 4 th1ng w3 could do
ROSE: It has...always been a thing that we could do; whether it was likely that we would do it successfully was a matter of
LATULA: 4nd th1s just so fuck1n happens
You’re having a really hard time filtering what you say, and a harder time remembering why you want to filter what you say. This used to be so much easier.
LATULA: you p1ck3d now of 4ll
This used to be like breathing.
LATULA: why now
ROSE: It bears reinforcing that this is, again, Karkat’s plan, not mine; I merely approved it.
LATULA: how long h4s h3 b33n com1ng to you w1th th1s? p3r1g33s? sw33ps?
ROSE: He has been massaging the mission plan for, sweeps, yes.
LATULA: fuck1n sw33ps 4nd you w41t unt1l now
ROSE: I waited until the time was
LATULA: unt1l your fuck1n w1f3 st4rt3d fuck1n v4c1ll4t1ng!!!!
She stares at you, a blankness. That was off the mark, or not entirely on it.
ROSE: Not everything is about
LATULA: 1ts 4bout som3th1ng! 3v3ryth1ng 1s 4bout *som3th1ng* w1th you! 1t 4lw4ys 1s, b4b3!
Kanaya.
This is about Kanaya.
Her nose crinkles in that weird way that makes you want to rip it off. You used
to want to rip it off. Used to.
ROSE: Purely as a side effect of the tactical considerations at play here, I thought you might at least be pleased by this.
LATULA: 4nd why th3 fuck 1s th4t on your 4g3nd4 4ll of 4 sudd3n? n3v3r w4s b3for3!
ROSE: Yes it was! I have always cared about you, Latula! A good kismesis should always
LATULA: 4 good k1sm3s1s!!!! dont fuck1n r3p34t sh1t k4rk4t told you l1k3 you und3rst4nd 1t b4b3, you dont know th3 f1rst th1ng 4bout b31n 4 good k1sm3s1s you n3v3r fuck1n d1d!!!!
You immediately feel bad about saying that, because it’s only partially true.
And her ganderbulbs prove that as they burn, now, with the right kind of pain.
Fuck.
ROSE: For someone who claims no longer to be caliginous for me, you’re doing a very good job of pissing me off.
Her words are breathy.
ROSE: And turning me on.
Quiet. Urgent. Her hands are on you, shoving you into the respiteblock. You start to push her off, end up pulling her closer. She rips at your godhood. You . . . slide hers across her skin. She fights you, leans into your touch, makes it rougher.
You are so fucked up.
This is such a mistake.
You make it together.
> Be Roxy
JADE: sorry to waste your time roxy
ROXY: is ok bb sry couldnt help :(
JADE: no thanks for trying!!
ROXY: :)
ROXY: okay gtfo i gotta what time is it
JADE: uh not sure??
ROXY: i got a meeting at not sure
JADE: haha?
ROXY: nah i do tho fr go go
JADE: okay
It is with a polite sort of frustration that Jade takes her crackly green leave. Gah, she looks so sad. You wish you could have made her happier, or helped, at all, but truth be told you’ve been pretty stagnant at your own powers for a bit and a half. There has been something on the tip of your tongue, mind, whatever for about as far back as . . . oh look, more people to disappoint! You can see them coming because of the hidden cameras in the tunnel leading to your room. You installed them so you know how drunk to be depending on who’s coming to see you.
KARKAT: I DON’T GET WHAT THE BIG DEAL IS, LATCH.
LATULA: th3 b1g d34l 1s 1ts fuck1n w31rd, k4rk4t
KARKAT: HOW? HOW IS IT WEIRD TO TALK TO ROXY? YOU GET ALONG GREAT WITH DIRK, AND HE’S YOUR LUSUSLACERATOR TOO.
LATULA: 1t d3p3nds on th3 mov13
KARKAT: WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU? WHAT MOVIE?
LATULA: fuck1n!!!!
Very drunk, then. You turn up the gain as Latch drops her voice to a whisper. And take a drink.
LATULA: fuck1n wh3r31n 4 r34lly n1c3 good sw33t p3rson g1v3s up th3 ch4nc3 to br1ng h3r m4t3spr1t b4ck to l1f3 so 4 dumb4ss t34lblood fuckup could fl41l 4round l1k3 4n 1d1ot w1th h3r hum4n d4ught3r th1ng wh4t3v3r for th3 n3xt s3v3n fuck1n sw33ps k4rk4t
You finish your drink.
LATULA: th4t fuck1n mov13
You make another.
KARKAT: OKAY.
KARKAT: OKAY THAT MAKES SENSE.
KARKAT: THAT MAKES SENSE, I GET IT.
KARKAT: BUT YOU DON’T KNOW WHAT IT’S LIKE OUT THERE.
KARKAT: WHAT THE TROLL KINGDOM IS LIKE.
KARKAT: I DON’T EITHER, NOT FIRSTHAND, BUT THE SHIT THAT DAVE HAS TOLD ME...
LATULA: y34h h3
LATULA: h3 told m3 som3 stuff too
KARKAT: IT’S NOT BEFORUS OUT THERE, IT’S NOT EVEN ALTERNIA. IT’S WORSE.
LATULA: 1 know
KARKAT: AND WE HAVEN’T BEEN ABLE TO DO ANYTHING ABOUT IT UNTIL NOW.
LATULA: why fuck1n not m4n
KARKAT: WE’VE TRIED.
KARKAT: LIBERATING A COUNTRY IS A BIGGER JOB THAN EIGHT PEOPLE CAN MANAGE, LATCH. IT DOESN’T MATTER THAT WE’RE ALL GODS, RAW POWER ISN’T ENOUGH. WE NEED CONTACTS, SUPPORT, GRASSROOTS, SOMETHING.
KARKAT: ANYONE WE TALK TO ON THE OUTSIDE, ANYONE WHO WANTS TO HELP, WELL,
KARKAT: TEREZI KNOWS. DRONES DESCEND ON US IN MINUTES.
LATULA: wh4t 4bout m3
KARKAT: SURE, YOU’D MAKE US INVISIBLE TO HER. WHAT ABOUT WHEN YOU LEAVE?
She hangs her head.
LATULA: fuck
KARKAT: EVERYONE WE TALK TO DISAPPEARS, LATCH.
KARKAT: WE CAN’T SAVE THEM. ANY MOVEMENT WE START IS GONE BY THE TIME WE GET BACK TO BASE.
KARKAT: AND WE’RE NOT STARTING A MOVEMENT NOW, WE ARE NOT LIBERATING THE TROLL KINGDOM.
KARKAT: WE’RE RIPPING OUT ITS HEART AND BRINGING IT BACK HERE ALIVE.
KARKAT: EVEN THAT’LL BE A HUGE ASK OF US, AND THE MOST IMPORTANT PART OF IT IS YOU AND ROXY.
KARKAT: IT’S YOUR JOB AND HERS TO MAKE SURE WE CAN STAY UNDERCOVER LONG ENOUGH TO REACH THE GRUB. YOUR SHIELDS FOR TEREZI AND THE ODD HIGH-LEVEL CERULEAN, HER STEALTH FOR THE COVER IDENTITIES THEMSELVES.
LATULA: thos3 sound l1ke two d1ff3r3nt th1ngs 1s 4ll 1m s4y1ng
KARKAT: OH STOP BEING SUCH A FUCKING WIGGLER.
KARKAT: AND THEY KIND OF ARE, BUT THAT ISN’T THE POINT.
KARKAT: ROXY IS AMAZING AT MAKEUP AND ROSE THINKS SHE CAN FABRICATE ANYTHING WE NEED FOR DISGUISES AND SHIT WITH HER POWERS, BUT SHE WON’T HAVE ANY IDEA *WHAT TO MAKE* BECAUSE SHE DOESN’T KNOW ANYTHING ABOUT TROLLS.
KARKAT: AND I’M TOO BUSY WITH MY OWN USUAL PREP. SO SUCK IT UP.
KARKAT: IT’S GOING TO BE SO WORTH IT, I PROMISE YOU.
LATULA: couldnt w3 h4v3 don3 th1s l1k3 1 dunno fuck1n sw33ps 4go?
KARKAT: MAYBE, LATCH, MAYBE, OKAY? IT WAS ALWAYS A MAYBE, BUT EVERY SWEEP HAS GOTTEN US MORE AND MORE INTEL ON THE TROLL KINGDOM. I’VE BEEN COLLATING IT. WHICH REMINDS ME.
He hands her a folder. You try to zoom in on the title printed on the front of it, but it’s turned away from the camera too fast to make out. Latch grimaces.
KARKAT: THIS IS EVERYTHING WE HAVE. YOU AND ROXY NEED TO GO OVER ALL OF THIS TOGETHER.
KARKAT: AND A LOT OF IT’S RECENT, LIKE, LAST COUPLE PERIGEES RECENT! MAYBE WE DIDN’T NEED ALL OF IT, MAYBE ROSE WAITED LONGER THAN SHE NEEDED TO, BUT I’M
KARKAT: FUCK.
KARKAT: I’M NOT EXACTLY UNBIASED!
LATULA: n3th3r 1s sh3
KARKAT: NEITHER ARE YOU!
LATULA: fuck you m4n wh4t do you know
KARKAT: I KNOW YOU’RE VACILLATING AND ROSE IS TAKING IT HARD.
LATULA: sh3
LATULA: sh3 fuck1n told you????
KARKAT: NO SHE DIDN’T FUCKING TELL ME, I’M JUST NOT A COMPLETE MORON.
KARKAT: AND YEAH THIS WOULD MEAN A LOT TO KANAYA AND THAT’S WEIRD, BUT YOU KNOW WHAT? IT MEANS A LOT TO ME TOO. AND IT MEANS A LOT TO YOU TOO.
KARKAT: OH DON’T EVEN START, YES IT FUCKING DOES.
LATULA: y34h 1tll be fuck1n r4d1c4l okay????
KARKAT: RADICAL? REALLY?
LATULA: shut th3 fuck up m4n 1 m34n 1t
Oh god she’s crying you didn’t even know she could do that.
LATULA: 1 w4nt th1s, k4rk4t, 1 w4nt 1t so fuck1n b4d!
LATULA: 1 just
LATULA: 1s 1t such a fuck1n cr1m3 th4t 1 w4nt
LATULA: th1s
LATULA: 4nd h3r
LATULA: th4ts just two fuck1n th1ngs!!!!
LATULA: do3s 1t 4lw4ys h4v3 to b3 stup1d confus1ng bullsh1t
LATULA: 3v3ry t1m3 1 g3t 4nyth1ng 1 w4nt????
KARKAT: WITH HUMANS?
KARKAT: YEAH.
KARKAT: I’M MARRIED TO ONE TOO.
LATULA: th4ts d1ff3r3nt you two 4r3 p3rf3ct tog3ther
KARKAT: HAHAHAHA NO WE ARE FUCKING NOT. YOU THINK I’VE NEVER VACILLATED?
LATULA: you
LATULA: you h4v3????
KARKAT: FUCKING OF COURSE I HAVE.
KARKAT: WHY DO YOU THINK NEPETA PAINTED DIAMONDS *AND HEARTS* ON OUR DOOR? WE GOT THROUGH IT. WE GET THROUGH IT, WHEN IT HAPPENS. SO WILL YOU. ME AND HIM, YOU AND ROSE. IT’S NOT THAT DIFFERENT.
KARKAT: BUT YOU AND ME, LATCH?
KARKAT: YOU AND ME ARE THE EXACT. FUCKING. SAME.
KARKAT: WE ARE THE LAST.
KARKAT: TWO.
KARKAT: FREE TROLLS.
KARKAT: IN ALL OF EXISTENCE. ANYWHERE.
LATULA: ...fuck.
An empty martini glass falls from your hand.
KARKAT: BEFORUS WAS A CASUALTY OF SGRUB, ALTERNIA WAS A CASUALTY OF LORD ENGLISH, AND SO FAR, THE TROLL KINGDOM IS A CASUALITY OF TEREZI NOOKFUCKING PYROPE.
KARKAT: WHEN THIS IS ALL SAID AND DONE, THE FUTURE OF THE TROLL SPECIES IS GOING TO BE IN THE HANDS OF PEOPLE WHO ACTUALLY GIVE A FUCK WHAT HAPPENS TO THE TROLL SPECIES FOR THE FIRST TIME *EVER*.
KARKAT: THAT MATTERS MORE THAN ME, IT MATTERS MORE THAN YOU, AND IT MATTERS MORE THAN ANY. HUMAN.
KARKAT: NO MATTER HOW MUCH THEY MEAN TO US.
KARKAT: YOU KNOW I’M RIGHT.
LATULA: just know fuck1n 3v3ryth1ng dont you
KARKAT: I’M EVERYONE’S MOIRAIL, LATCH. EVERYONE’S.
LATULA: 1mm4 t3ll d4v3 you s41d th4t
KARKAT: PSH. DAVE BARELY KNOWS WHAT A MOIRAIL IS.
LATULA: ...ros3 b4rely knows wh4t p1tch 1s
KARKAT: WHAT DID I TELL YOU? WE’RE EXACTLY THE SAME. AND LOOK AT THAT, WE’RE HERE! THE DOOR TO YOUR VERY DESTINY STANDS WIDE-THE-FUCK OPEN BEFORE YOU, LATULALONDE. CAN YOU PULL YOUR GROIN COVERING OUT OF YOUR DELICATE LITTLE GAMER GIRL SEEDFLAP AND HAVE A CONVERSATION WITH SOMEONE YOU KIND OF DON’T LIKE??? THE FATE OF YOUR ENTIRE RACE HANGS IN THE BALANCE
LATULA: fuck your 3nt1r3 s3lf 1 l1k3 h3r just f1n3 sh3 do3snt l1k3 m3
You throw open the door and launch yourself through it, wrapping your arms around their stupid dumb adorable idiot necks.
ROXY: anything
KARKAT: HELLO.
LATULA: yo?
ROXY: anything u need anything anything anything anything anything anything
Martinis in the future, perhaps a few too many:
-- tipsyGnostalgic [TG] began trolling gardenGnostic [GG] --
TG: hey gg
GG: roxy?
TG: u wanna do smth fun
GG: like, like what? ive got a lot of reading to do, roxy
TG: arts n crafts
GG: arts and...crafts??
TG: jade do u know what
TG: cosplay :)
TG: is
GG: cosplay? i mean yeah!
TG: course u do gg!!!
TG: come make cosplays
TG: tmrw after training
TG: latchll b here 2
TG: b fun
GG: that...actually does sound like a lot of fun :B
GG: and itll be nice to take a break from research i guess, it might even help me focus...
GG: okay!
TG: lit
-- tipsyGnostalgic [TG] ceased trolling gardenGnostic [GG] --
> Be Dirk
DIRK: You’re wasting your time.
JAKE: You dont even know what im going to say!
DIRK: Yes, I do.
JAKE: I simply wanted to warn you that jade is likely going to speak to you about-
DIRK: She asked me last week.
JAKE: Ah.
DIRK: I told her no.
JAKE: Well! That’s
DIRK: Which is what you wanted anyway: you wanted to tell me to tell her no. Not to warn me.
JAKE: Ah i never could fool you dirk.
You choose, with considerable effort, to let that pass without comment.
JAKE: Dare i ask why?
JAKE: You told her no?
DIRK: Well, since all of this is definitely your business
JAKE: It bloody well is my business dirk jade is my friend!
DIRK: Which is why you’re discussing this with her.
JAKE: Dirk you see
DIRK: Instead of with your ex-boyfriend.
JAKE: Oh give it a rest dirk that was ages ago and you broke up with me! I hardly think it
You hold up your hand, and he stops.
DIRK: I’m sorry.
DIRK: I am in what Rose would call “a fucking mood.”
DIRK: And, amazingly, it is not because of you.
JAKE: Go on.
That earnest, open, comforting face. Damn him.
DIRK: The reason for my mood is threefold. Reason the first: Dave. You saw what happened; you saw my reaction. I was being an asshole, I don’t have a clear idea of why, and I don’t even have time to process it—let alone talk to Dave about it—because of reason the second:
DIRK: In about five minutes Rose is going to come through that door and we are going to have an argument about Operation Save The Trolls. I am going to tell her it is futile and she is going to proceed anyway. The mission will fail, she will retreat even further into herself and her problems, and might even withdraw from me entirely.
DIRK: And I don’t want that to happen because I care about her.
DIRK: For all that that matters to any of this.
He places a comforting hand on your arm and, moreover, he means it. Damn him.
JAKE: Forgive me. “Operation Save The Trolls?”
DIRK: It isn’t actually called that.
JAKE: Then what
DIRK: I don’t even fucking remember. Karkat gave it one of those insipid names that trolls give things.
JAKE: I see.
The comforting hand gives your arm a comforting squeeze, and it actually is comforting. God damn him.
JAKE: Reason the third?
DIRK: Reason the third: the situation with Jade. What I proposed seventeen years ago won’t work anymore. It probably wouldn’t have worked then and it definitely won’t work now.
JAKE: I mean.
JAKE: Not that im advocating for it as a course of action dirk far from it but.
JAKE: Surely the fact that she saved my life wouldn’t still-
DIRK: It was never about that. Well, possibly it was at first, but now...
JAKE: What then? What would make her death heroic now?
DIRK: The fact that she’s scared to die.
His hand falls from your arm.
JAKE: ...Oh.
Not so stupid as you seem, are you, Jake English?
DIRK: It’s a perfect catch-22.
JAKE: A what?
Not quite so stupid as you seem.
DIRK: She doesn’t want to be healed for her own sake, she wants to be healed for a cause. Risking death for that cause would make that risk, and therefore that sacrifice, heroic. And permanent.
JAKE: I
JAKE: I see.
JAKE: What do we do then?
When did he become so concerned about other people?
DIRK: Well, as luck, or rather, as dramatic irony would have it, you are the second best hope we have.
JAKE: I
JAKE: I am?
DIRK: You have the largest sylladex of anyone here.
DIRK: It’s possible that we won’t need Jade to shrink the Mother Grub at all.
DIRK: But I’m sure it’ll be fine.
DIRK: She used to shrink planets; now she can shrink bullets. What’s one unbelievably complex alien life-form?
The last remaining of its kind. The last hope for the survival of a species. The last-
JAKE: Is that what Rose wants her to do?
Of course he didn’t know. Of course he just came here, wanting to help, not knowing what he was helping with. Not having any clear idea of what was going on. Because he’s suddenly decided to actually become a good person instead of pretending to be one.
What an unbelievable luxury all of that must be.
A knock.
DIRK: You’d better go.
JAKE: I had better.
JAKE: I.
JAKE: Thank you.
DIRK: For?
JAKE: For.
Jake English smiles in that exuberantly melancholic way that only Jake English can. Only he is capable of doing this to you, capable of pulling at your heartstrings, weaving them into a scarf and walking off wearing it, never realizing that he’d grabbed someone else’s scarf by mistake.
JAKE: Thank you dirk.
He rises and opens the door for Rose, forestalling her entry for a moment so he can address her.
JAKE: Please be nice to him. He only wants to help.
At least she waits until he leaves to roll her eyes.
On the upswing, you flash yourself into a less rattled and more dignified pose; as dignified as possible, anyway, given your taped shades.
On the downswing, her eyes clamp onto yours like a vice.
ROSE: All right, let’s have it.
DIRK: You’re an idiot.
ROSE: Succinct and to the point. Thank you for the uncharacteristic pith.
She turns to go, a theatrical, staged, and entirely unconscious movement that is ectobiologically baked into her very essence. It came from Roxy, it came from you, and both Roxy and you came from nothing, the beginning of a circle with no beginning.
You sigh, steeple your fingers, and attempt to ad lib.
DIRK: Rose, do you want my actual thoughts? Would you find them useful? Or is this just another way for you to hurt yourself?
ROSE: I
What will you do, Rose Lalonde? Will you yes-and? Can you yes-and?
ROSE: Dirk, I wish you would
She glances toward you, then back to the door. Her next stage direction. Sigh indeed.
ROSE: I
ROSE: value
ROSE: your thoughts, Dirk. More than value them, more than you probably know, certainly more than I have put any effort toward making clear to you.
Oh?
ROSE: However antagonistic our relationship so often is, I value it. I value our arguments. I value you.
Oh?
ROSE: You are my father and my closest friend, Dirk.
. . .Oh.
ROSE: Please never allow the words we exchange in...pique.
ROSE: To obfuscate the fact that I care about you.
She thinks that she’s going to die.
DIRK: I care about you as well, Rose.
She is hoping that she’s going to die.
DIRK: I care about you a very great deal.
She is hoping this mission will kill her.
And there is only one thing to do about that.
DIRK: Which is why, if you want my thoughts on this mission, I have only this to say.
You explode out of your chair, flashing towards her, carrying her with you out of your room, blowing the door off of its hinges. She keeps her feet, skidding to a halt in the corridor with the tip of your unbreakable katana a single millimeter from her nose. She does not blink.
DIRK: Strife chamber. Now. Bring your wands.
She nods. She holds your gaze. She does not blink.
> Be Rose
The heavy orange door clangs shut, and several annoyed thumps and muffled cries ring out from its other side as Dirk locks it. Your progress toward the strife chamber had not been a quiet one, and you accumulated a small pack of would-be onlookers in your raucous wake. Dirk vanishes, and reappears half a second later with the remains of seven small cameras falling from his hands. This time you hear distinct words from the corridor outside.
ROXY: oh come the fuck on!
LATULA: you suck d1rk
DAVE: what did cameras ever do to you dirk
LATULA: 4nd fun
DAVE: and fun dirk what did fun ever do to you
Dirk flashes again, and reappears in the dead center of the swirl of red and orange, coming to rest so effortlessly that his feet make no sound whatsoever on the observation platform.
A flash, and his sword is at the ready, his stance carved from stone.
You are feeling absolutely amazing all of a sudden.
ROSE: This should be an interesting experiment, Dirk! The full force of magic itself limited only by my imagination, versus your stupid fucking sword.
A lazy flourish in stereo, and you brandish the Quills of Echidna.
ROSE: Perhaps I should keep the safeties on?
DIRK: Perhaps you should watch your six.
You allow a smile to scurry across your face as Dirk flashes right into a contingency spell.
ROSE: I was.
> Be Dirk
The explosion of force is precisely tuned to send you, not just flying, but somersaulting through the air. You right yourself with a thought, and Rose shoulder-checks you into the wall.
> Be Rose
One of Nepeta’s violet horrorterrors oozes to life with a flick of your will, but Dirk reacts too quickly. A slash, a kick, and the paint returns to the wall more or less as it was, save three tentacles severed in cartoonish style.
A panoply of paths to fortune blooms before your very eyes. You discard all but one, the one where Dirk runs into two converging bolts of lightning and eats shit. Low voltage, of course.
Your smile reaches your eyes for the first time in months.
> Be Dirk
ROSE: Are you regretting the inclusion of my wands in your demands?
You are regretting getting out of bed this morning. Flash, flash, feint, flash, the pommel of your stupid fucking sword strikes her solidly in her stupid fucking back and she eats stupid fucking shit for once.
DIRK: I’m regretting not stopping this before it got out of hand.
Rose flies to her feet with an eerie grace and lands in a stance that you never taught her.
ROSE: Do you mean Operation Abscond?
She flashsteps a fist into your gut, doubling you over.
ROSE: Or me?
You had seen that coming. You had tried to counter it. She had countered your counter.
Twice.
All right.
Okay.
Time to get serious.
> Be Rose
Dirk gets serious. You stop smiling. He pushes you to your limit, weaving between your spells and strikes, raining strikes of his own on you, giving better than he gets. But not much better. Initial braggadocio aside, you’re astonished at how close this fight is, at your ability to keep up with Dirk Strider.
So is he.
And even though you’re now losing, you’ve achieved one key victory.
> Be Dirk
You and Rose are still standing, barely.
ROSE: You’re not
ROSE: Pontificating
ROSE: About the mission
ROSE: Or the narrative
ROSE: Or about how wrong
ROSE: I am.
DIRK: Where the fuck
DIRK: Did all of this come from?
She laughs, and you can tell that it hurts. Good.
ROSE: I’ve been having regular
ROSE: Very intense
ROSE: “Sparring sessions”
ROSE: With the best martial artist
ROSE: In the world
DIRK: Tch.
ROSE: For seventeen years.
ROSE: Is it any wonder I got good?
DIRK: You’re decent.
ROSE: I’m out of practice.
ROSE: It’s been
ROSE: Sporadic.
DIRK: The frequency of anything that you do within that variety of air quote is not something I care to
ROSE: Haha. You’re just like Dave.
A pang. A sharper pang than you would have expected.
ROSE: Would you like to talk about it now?
DIRK: What did I just. Fucking. Say.
ROSE: Not about that, about the mission, the narrative, how wrong I am. You’ve earned it.
ROSE: Or something.
DIRK: Very well. Truce?
ROSE: Truuuuce.
And she flops down on her back, arms and legs in a sprawl. Is she drunk? Is she . . .
DIRK: Rose, this wasn’t.
DIRK: We didn’t.
DIRK: We didn’t just have troll sex, did we?
ROSE: BAAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
DIRK: Rose.
ROSE: AHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
DIRK: Rose.
ROSE: HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAOH MY GOHOHOHOHOHAHAHAHAHAAAA
DIRK: Rose.
ROSE: No, Dirk we dihihihihihihidn’t just have troll-holl sex! Holy shit.
ROSE: Troll sex is sex, you big adorable ass. That was sparring, not sex. They are different activities. There’s often a causal relationship at work between them, I will grant you, but for that to be the case one activity has to, in fact, cause the other. My god.
She reminds you so much of Roxy right now.
That scares you as much as it warms your heart. Scares you because it warms your heart.
DIRK: Mission. Narrative.
ROSE: Anything but this topic?
DIRK: Affirm.
You flop down next to her.
DIRK: I will focus the totality of my reservations into a single point.
ROSE: That’s what she said.
DIRK: Goodbye, Rose.
ROSE: No stop I’m sorry I’ll stop.
DIRK: Who the fuck are you right now?
ROSE: No no no I’m sorry, just. Continue. Please.
DIRK: Sigh.
ROSE: Sigh indeed.
You wait for a good, long, solid moment.
DIRK: What makes you think you can change the status quo?
Her good humor vanishes.
ROSE: What do you mean?
DIRK: You know exactly what I mean.
DIRK: Terezi has seized control of the narrative. She made that clear seventeen years ago, and she has continued to make it clear every single day since. We are trapped in a prison of her making, a prison made from. Our. Own. Lives.
DIRK: The warden of that prison has a name.
DIRK: Say its name, Rose.
DIRK: Say it.
ROSE: Skaia.
DIRK: Skaia.
DIRK: What vision did it give you this time? What misleading fucking truth did it tell you? The Mother Grub, happily breeding an army of trolls for us?
ROSE: This isn’t about breeding an army of trolls!
DIRK: Regardless of what it is
DIRK: About.
DIRK: I know Skaia didn’t show you that, because it’s not going to happen.
ROSE: It didn’t show me that, Dirk.
DIRK: Well, what did it show you, then
ROSE: It didn’t show me anything, Dirk.
DIRK: What?
ROSE: I have told you about every single vision I have ever had on this planet. Oh, I have brief flashes all the time; I used them to great effect in our fight just now, but full-on, keeling-over visions? You’re the first one to know. Well, the second, after Latula; she’s usually, there, when I get them.
DIRK: Stay on topic.
ROSE: Each has led to a mission, and each mission has been fairly zero sum: some tactical action necessary for the maintenance of the status quo and enforced by multiple levels of narrative inevitability. That’s Skaia. This isn’t.
DIRK: Everything is Skaia. You know that.
ROSE: And you know what I mean, jackass. This wasn’t Skaia’s idea. It was Karkat’s idea, and I think it’s a good one.
DIRK: No, you don’t.
ROSE: Excuse me?
DIRK: Well, to be more accurate, you don’t think the plan is good. The objective clearly appeals to you; I can see the appeal myself. But the plan? I know you don’t think the plan is good, because I don’t think the plan is good. I think it’s barely acceptable in ways that you are too intelligent to miss.
ROSE: ...
ROSE: Perhaps barely acceptable is all I can manage without prompting from Skaia.
Do you go there?
You aren’t nearly as sure as you were thirty minutes ago.
Hell with it.
DIRK: Rose, that reads like a suicide note.
ROSE: Oh, please.
DIRK: In fact, it reminds me a lot of what Jade said last week when she asked me to kill her.
Rose sits up. You remain where you are.
ROSE: Oh my god.
DIRK: “It’s not enough. It’s not enough anymore.”
ROSE: Oh my god!
DIRK: “I’m not enough anymore.”
ROSE: Stop it! Stop it! She didn’t say that. She said that? Oh my god!
ROSE: Dirk, Jade is a backup on this mission! Karkat and I both think that the Mother Grub will be more than small enough to fit in Jake’s sylladex!
DIRK: I know that, and I don’t buy it. Do you really think Skaia will be that kind?
ROSE: Skaia doesn’t have us in a straitjacket, Dirk, Karkat says the largest Mother Grub on record was about the size of Jake’s house. I would have already scrubbed the mission if I thought we were likely to require Jade for this; I only even mentioned it to her, you know, just in case
DIRK: And just in case, she’s trying to move heaven and earth and the ticks of her own death clock. Because she believes in this cause. Because you have her believing in this cause, like you have everyone believing in this cause.
You scrutinize her, really take her in. Her shock is genuine, her concern real. It wasn’t callousness that sent Jade on a death spiral, it was enthusiasm. Irresponsible, wholehearted enthusiasm.
On Rose’s part.
DIRK: Including yourself.
DIRK: You believe in this.
DIRK: You actually believe you can change the status quo.
DIRK: Don’t you.
ROSE: Yes. I do.
DIRK: Why?
She is silent for a time, silent within time, silent in slow motion. You imagine that you can see her not age, see the actual moment-to-moment mechanical operations that make her body and mind immortal as she waits, merely waits, for the strength to answer your question, waits for it to flow into her from the universe that made her.
ROSE: This is going to sound petty.
ROSE: And small.
ROSE: And self-aggrandizing.
ROSE: And maybe it is.
ROSE: Latula already changed the status quo.
ROSE: I’m going to lose her.
ROSE: And if that’s going to happen regardless of what I do, then Terezi might as well lose something too.
That’s not the only reason she’s doing this.
DIRK: That’s not the only reason you’re doing this.
ROSE: It’s not even close to the only reason, no.
Candor. An astonishing amount of candor.
ROSE: But it’s enough of one, Dirk. In a vacuum, all by itself, it’s enough of one.
ROSE: Enough to be part of a sufficiently compelling narrative, don’t you think?
You let that one sink in for a good few heartbeats before you dare respond.
DIRK: I think that we are not in a vacuum.
DIRK: I think
Before you start to believe in Rose Lalonde as well.
DIRK: I think
Hell with it.
DIRK: I think that I can get this plan from barely acceptable to acceptable if Karkat will work with me, which he will, because he’s scared of me.
ROSE: Karkat likes you.
DIRK: Whatever. I also think that you should resume training with the group if you’re so determined to field yourself. Team synergy matters more than individual skill.
ROSE: Agreed.
DIRK: And I think you should talk to Jade.
ROSE: I’ll talk to Jade.
ROSE: I will. I feel really, really bad about that.
She starts to get to her feet, but pauses to make full eye contact with you, baring as much of herself as she can in that moment.
ROSE: I do.
DIRK: Good.
You stand. So does she.
ROSE: Thank you for telling me.
ROSE: Thank you for all of this.
ROSE: I meant what I said before, Dirk.
ROSE: You’re my father.
DIRK: You’re
DIRK: You’re my idiot.
She hugs you with a laugh and a small sob and immediately pulls away.
ROSE: Oh fuck, that is gross, that is so gross, I am so gross, I am so sticky, and disgusting, and oh my god.
Catching herself with a more sheepish laugh and a slightly larger sob, she takes your hand in both of hers.
ROSE: I love you.
Your heart nearly stops. You must say it back, so you do, and in so doing, you insist to yourself that you do, in fact, deserve to say it.
DIRK: I love you, too.
After not too much time passes, during which neither you nor she get one microsecond older, you unlock and open the door to the strife chamber.
DAVE: what happened
ROXY: r u guys ok???
LATULA: who fuck1n won????
DIRK: Neither of us won. Look. Shut up. I need you to leave Rose alone. She has a lot to think about and a lot to do if Operation Save The Fucking Trolls is going to be successful.
ROXY: :)
DIRK: And she needs a shower.
ROSE: Fuck you, Dirk.
They let her pass, which she does, without further comment but for the upraised middle finger of one hand, following loyally behind her as she enters the locker room.
DAVE: dude
Dave studies your face with a gleeful and too-keen eye. So does Latula. Roxy, meanwhile, studies them.
LATULA: d4v3 my grl won
DAVE: she fuckin did didnt she
DAVE: admit it man she won
DIRK: She convinced me.
DIRK: That does not mean she won.
DAVE: haha fuck off bro she won
You recoil at the name.
DAVE: oh fuck dude im sorry
DIRK: Hit me.
DAVE: come on man
DIRK: Hit. Me.
DAVE: lol dont wanna
LATULA: 1 fuck1n w1ll
ROXY: shut up latch
LATULA: ok4y ok4y
DAVE: dirk im not mad at you
DIRK: You should be.
The emotion in your voice astonishes you even more than it astonishes them.
DAVE: well im fucking not okay?
DAVE: you were outta line
DAVE: you shouldnve done it
DAVE: but all you did was hit me man
DAVE: oh fucking no that thing we do to each other all the time
DIRK: Don’t minimize this.
DAVE: why fuckin not man
DAVE: isnt that my call?
DAVE: who hit who?
DAVE: you dont get to hit me and then decide how i react to it fuck off
DAVE: if i wanna minimize it thats my own god damn business
DAVE: why the fuck does this bother you so much
DAVE: didnt you and rose just beat the shit outta each other for like thirty solid minutes
DIRK: That was training.
DAVE: that was not just training
DIRK: It had a purpose. I challenged her and she accepted. There was a good. God damned. Reason for it. I barely even know why I hit you.
DAVE: i fucking do
DAVE: you were worried about me
DAVE: cuz you love me
You bury your sword in the wall. Roxy and Latula jump. Dave doesn’t. He walks over to the sword and leans an elbow on it. Casually. Perfectly, genuinely relaxed.
DAVE: i love you too by the way
DIRK: The fact that I love you is not a good reason to hit you, Dave!
LATULA: your3 fuck1n r1ght 1ts not
ROXY: shut up latch
LATULA: sorrysorrysorrysorry
DAVE: you think i dont fuckin know that?
DAVE: i didnt say it was a good reason dirk
DAVE: i just said i knew what it fucking was
DAVE: and that is actually good enough for me
DIRK: It shouldn’t be!
DAVE: cuz it was just a fuckin punch dude who gives a shit
DAVE: ive hit you over stupid shit before
DAVE: weve been friends for twenty years
DAVE: and like fucking ninety percent of what we do together is spar
DAVE: cuz we have to
DAVE: cuz if we dont we die
DAVE: and weve all got feelings
DAVE: and sometimes they boil over and we do stupid shit we shouldnve fucking done
DAVE: weve all done it
DAVE: you aint special
DIRK: You are.
DAVE: no im fuckin not
DAVE: im a god damned grownup
DAVE: im a god damned soldier dirk i have taken fucking worse
DIRK: Don’t you mother. Fucking. Get it, Dave? You’re that way because I made you that way, because I did that to you!
He rips your sword out of the wall with a roar.
Roxy and Latula jump.
So do you.
Dave offers you the sword, hilt-first.
You take it.
He leans back against the wall.
DAVE: no you fuckin didnt
DAVE: terezi fuckin pyrope did
DAVE: she did that to both of us
DAVE: she fuckin managed what my big bro couldnt
DAVE: cuz he fuckin tried to make me a soldier
DAVE: he hit me all the fuckin time dirk
DAVE: and he never even acted sorry
DAVE: he never felt bad
DAVE: cuz he didnt even know it was fuckin wrong
DAVE: and at the end of it i never wanted to touch a sword again
DAVE: and i couldnt even fuckin bring myself to feel bad when i
DAVE: when
DAVE: you know what its like to feel fucking nothing dirk?
Of course you do.
DAVE: when you should feel everything?
Of course you do.
DAVE: i dont think you do
DAVE: i dont care how many hearts youre a prince of
DAVE: you aint never felt like that
DAVE: and you aint never made me feel like that
DAVE: terezi made me a soldier
DAVE: you made me a good soldier
DAVE: if not for that id be dead dirk
DAVE: wed all be dead
DAVE: and thats the fuckin truth
DAVE: you aint my big bro youre my dad
DAVE: now bring it in
He holds his arms out wide, and the only thing you can move is your mouth.
DIRK: Dave. I am so, so sorry.
DAVE: yeah i fuckin know youre sorry
DAVE: bring it in
DAVE: where doing it man
DAVE: where making this oof
DAVE: okay cant
DAVE: cant breathe
DAVE: not even a lil bit
DAVE: okay lemme go
You do. You stand there, looking at Dave’s lopsided grin, breathing much more heavily than you did from the fight.
Roxy sidles over, delicately positioning herself in the two or three feet of space between you and Dave. You take a step back. She closes the distance with a shake of her delicate head. Her delicately tiny frame barely places the top of that head above your clavicle, but she rises into the air to look you directly in the eye. Your oldest friend delicately lifts your broken shades off your face, delicately tosses them over her shoulder, and a fresh, unbroken pair materializes in her hands. She delicately places them onto your ears, delicately clears your hair from under the frames with twin flicks of her delicate fingers, and then her voice hits you like a truck.
ROXY: dirk if u ever do dave like that again u wont do it for thirds
ROXY: cuz ill rip ur face off
ROXY: feed it to jade
ROXY: fukken jerk.
DAVE: mom be nice he said he was sorry
ROXY: u can eat shit dave :)
DAVE: hahahahaha wow
LATULA: c4n 1 t4lk now
ROXY: shut up latch
LATULA: whyyyy
ROXY: cuz fukken funny thats why
As your family bonds, and laughs, and tells itself to fuck off, you cling to Dave’s words like pieces of driftwood at sea.
And the storm rages around you.
> Be Rose
Jade is hovering three feet over her bed when you find her, chin resting on nothing, with two physics textbooks, a book on chakras, and a Gameboy floating around her.
ROSE: Jade, I am modifying the mission plan.
Jade cocks an ear.
JADE: oh yeah?
ROSE: If we reach the Mother Grub and she is too big for Jake to captchalogue, we abort the mission.
JADE: well, that’s stupid.
ROSE: Jade, I’m sorry. I should never have
JADE: never have what?
JADE: given me a difficult assignment?
ROSE: I gave you an impossible assignment.
Her ears flatten.
JADE: it isnt impossible, its hard! i know what impossible looks like, rose!
ROSE: Impossible to me looks like you going to Dirk and asking him to kill you, Jade.
JADE: no, impossible looks like dave being with karkat and being happy!
JADE: or you being with latch and being whatever!
JADE: or nepeta being fucking dead!
Um.
ROSE: Um.
Wait.
ROSE: Wait.
ROSE: You, Dave, you...
ROSE: Me?
JADE: yes! fifteen years ago!!! i got over dave! i got over you! i got over nepeta!
JADE: rose it was impossible, THAT was impossible, so i got over it, i gave up!
She’s speaking loudly, but she isn’t actually shouting, she’s . . . being very matter of fact about this.
ROSE: Would you like to...talk, about it?
JADE: rose i dont need to talk about it, thats what over it means. its fine now, im fine now.
ROSE: All right, just, you brought it up.
JADE: as an example, rose! its ancient history!
And it is. You can see that in her eyes, in her posture, everything. This is ancient history to her, she got through it years ago.
You never even noticed.
JADE: and im fine about this powers thing, too! im just
ROSE: You’re just. Jade. I can’t emphasize enough, you went to Dirk and asked him to kill you.
JADE: why is everyone so hung up on that? rose we are gods, living in a universe made out of video games, sometimes we have to contemplate weird shit! it was one idea, and it wasnt even originally my idea, and it wouldnt even work! i dont want dirk to kill me!
ROSE: He made it sound as though you were in...despair.
JADE: then dirks dumb. i was frustrated, not suicidal. holy shit.
ROSE: I... oh.
JADE: rose this is a puzzle and i want to solve it! and it drives me crazy that i cant figure it out! it makes me feel like im not good enough. that i should be better. and dirk couldnt help and jake couldnt help and roxy couldnt help so im just kind of going nuts right now but rose?
JADE: im a big girl. im okay.
JADE: im sorry i worried you and dirk and everybody.
ROSE: Jade...I just want to say, about you and. Me and.
JADE: dont make it weird, rose
ROSE: Jade, I am not the one who made it weird.
JADE: whatever! done talking about that!
JADE: will it increase our chances?
You flounder. She sighs, floats over to you, puts her hands on your shoulders.
JADE: will it increase our chances, rose?
ROSE: Of course it will.
JADE: then im not going to give up.
ROSE: ...
JADE: okay?
ROSE: You’re not allowed to ask Dirk to kill you again.
She flicks your nose.
JADE: that was one idea, rose
JADE: now go away.
JADE: im doing more trollsona stuff with roxy and latch in an hour and i want to keep researching until then.
ROSE: Very well. Have.
ROSE: Have fun.
JADE: will do!
You leave her there, now floating upside down, not able to shake the feeling that you’re getting away with something.
That you got away with something.
That you and her . . .
Whatever. Much to do.
> Be Roxy
There is so much to do, and you are so excited, and you are so exhausted, but there is so much to do! You still need to figure out Jade’s ears, maybe you can give her big big wide horns like Nepeta’s, that might work but she wouldn’t be able hear very well, you could build a headset into the horns you could do that with all the horns or Jade could be a mutant do mutants have fur can mutants have fur? You’ll ask Karkat if mutants can have fur he’ll get offended but it’s important! Silly Karkat. Hmmmm! Eyes. Latch’s eyes are fine because she’ll be her own blood caste, but sclera contacts for everyone else should work. Mess with the iris color too much and it stops passing the squint test. That’s a problem for you. Goggles for you. Yes? Yes. So much to do so much to do so much to do!
Thirsty again.
You drink some more water.
> Be Karkat
You wish so badly that you were going, but you didn’t fight Rose on it, because, like so many other times during so many other missions, it was the right call. No matter how much this mission matters to you, to trollkind, to all of your dear, dead friends, you, Karkat Vantas, are not field ops. Latch can rip a guy in half. Rose can put him back together in the shape of a hoofbeast. You can . . . weed a garden. And keep a team of complete fucking morons from killing each other (permanently, anyway) for better than eight long sweeps.
For better or for worse, when it comes to military assets, you are David Hasselhoff at conflict management. And you are not field ops.
So, for the very first time during a mission, you are alone in the command center. For the very first time since you arrived on this planet, you are alone in the resistance bunker.
Which makes you, just this once, just for today . . .
KARKAT: THIS IS RESISTANCE ACTUAL. SOUND OFF.
ROSE: Standing by, tentacleTherapist.
LATULA: st4nd1ng by, gamerAscendant!
JAKE: Standing by golgothasTerror!
ROXY: standing by tipsyGnostalgic!
JADE: standing by! gardenGnostic!!!
DIRK: Standing by. timaeusTestified.
DAVE: standing by turntechGodhead
DAVE: love you man
KARKAT: OKAY, PEOPLE-
KARKAT: I LOVE YOU TOO
DAVE: gay
KARKAT: OKAY, SHITSTAINS, I’VE GOT YOU ALL FIVE BY FIVE, YOU KNOW THE DRILL. STAY LOW, STAY HIDDEN. NO FLIGHT, NO FIGHT UNLESS YOU HAVE ABSOLUTELY BEEN MADE. AND REMEMBER. STICK TO YOURSELVES, STICK TO YOUR COVERS AND STICK TO YOUR STATIONS. IT’S GONNA BE WEIRD ENOUGH THAT YOU’RE ALL IN THE SAME GROUP. FOLLOW LATCH AND ROXY’S LEADS, BUT REMEMBER TO DEFER TO ROSE. SHE ISN’T JUST IN COMMAND, SHE’S THE HIGHBLOOD.
ROSE: We do know all of this, Karkat.
KARKAT: I KNOW I KNOW. THIS, THIS MEANS A LOT TO ME. I KNOW YOU KNOW THAT TOO.
KARKAT: ROSE, DO YOU WANT TO DO THE HONORS?
ROSE: Negative, Actual. This was always your mission.
KARKAT: OKAY. OKAY.
KARKAT: ...OKAY!
KARKAT: OPERATION INFILTRATE THE BROODING CAVERNS OF THE TROLL KINGDOM ON EARTH C IN ORDER TO LOCATE AND ABSCOND WITH THE SACRED MOTHER OF MY PEOPLE AND IN SO DOING SEIZE THE MEANS OF REPRODUCTION, SECURE THE FUTURE OF TROLLKIND, HONOR THE MEMORY OF A FRIEND, AND DESTABILIZE THE POWER BASE OF TEREZI BULGESNIFFING GAPELICKING BUCKETDIVING PYROPE IS GO!
Chapter Text
> Be Rose.
Your name is Rozzem Londor. You are a violetblood, a seadweller, and you keep very much to yourself. That is both your right and your preference, and it is of the utmost inconvenience to you that you are outside of your hive at all, let alone for a silly, rote errand such as this. Her Interminable Cooperation, puppet ruler of the Troll Kingdom, has dispatched tealblood Legislacerator Tchula Galgam to conduct a surprise inspection of the brooding caverns. Because Proficience Galgam is of an order of operatives far too secret and classified to exist in official records, your presence is required to add the legitimacy of blood to her demands.
(Your name is Rose Lalonde, and a breeze flows through your hair for the first time in seventeen years.)
To assist Galgam with the particulars—for which read “the actual work”—are the jadeblood Jaktor Baxxal and the limeblood Jenayd Bauwow. You don’t expect that anyone will question the presence of the mutant: is it not the Coopera’s privilege, after all, to preserve some of the more exotic mistakes of the slurry pool as an amusing diversion for herself and her court? What else would they be good for?
(You thought you had stopped missing the sight of the sky. You were wrong. Even without the unaccustomed feeling of contacts, you would still be having trouble keeping tears from your eyes. The trees, the grass, the endless space . . . )
Or so the lowbloods in their sopor-clotted haze will think. As the upper spectral crust is only too aware, the Coopera has never existed, even as a puppet. It is Crockercorp from whom your orders directly come. Most jades will not know this, but the Auxiliary will. And they will tremble. And they will ask no more questions.
(Yet another subspecies of guilt twists around your spine as you realize a simple truth: you would have done anything to experience this. You remind yourself that you are doing a good thing. You remind yourself that everyone agrees that you are doing a good thing. You do your best to ignore the fact that you are intelligent, and charismatic, and that even Dirk is vulnerable to your manipulations. You did not manipulate Dirk. You convinced Dirk. You convinced all of them.)
Also with Galgam are olive tech specialist Roaxel Vespir and her gold assistant Dryken Troate. With you is your loyal assassin Davira Stresi, whose skills with a blade are prodigious. Indeed, they would have to be to compensate for the repugnancy of his rusted blood.
(How fortuitous it is, though, you think, as prosthetic fins brush against your neck, as your gray-painted fingers comb through jet-dyed hair, how very fortuitous that you were indeed raised on that diet of manipulation and charisma, that both Striders and Lalondes learned to lie before they could speak. It is the one thing that makes the helplessly honest Latula an outsider in your family. Don’t think about that. Think of her as an asset, think of them all as assets. Think about how Latula’s powers, cultural knowledge, and effortless charm will compensate for Jake’s awkward disingenuity. How that very awkwardness combined with his unorthodox gender will distract from Jade’s unorthodox existence, how Jade’s strange combination of anger and vulnerability will make for a compelling portrayal of pariahdom. How Roxy has poured passion into this endeavor like nothing you have ever seen from her. Is she doing it for the trolls? For herself? For you? Don’t think about that.)
In the mixed-blood district closest to the brooding caverns, a handful of keen observers might notice a green flash briefly illuminate a tiny blind alley. Those who remember the flash for more than several seconds will have invented several plausible explanations for it long before your group emerges from the shadows and joins the foot traffic of Cooperation City, darkness clinging to you like a second skin.
> Be Latula
This is fucked.
This is beyond fucked.
The things Karkat has told you about Alternia, the things Dave has told you about the Troll Kingdom, even the pile of intel that you looked over with Roxy and Jade did not come close to preparing you for this. You had been steeling yourself for the kind of world you were schoolfed about in Planetary History, the kind of world that Beforus used to be like, only, you know, worse.
Beforus but worse. Alternia but worse.
Worse is just a word.
This is a nightmare.
Rot oozes from every crack in the pavement, shrieks echo from every alleyway and cistern, dread pours from every mind on display to you. Your empathic abilities are more intuitive than analytical, more broad than precise, and more usefully applied to individuals you're close to than perfect strangers in a faceless mass. Even so, this faceless mass is screaming at you. General and unfocused fear falls upon your shields like rain from every direction.
You zero in on specific sights, sounds, specific mistakes in an effort to drown out the roar. Slurs and invectives fill the air. Highbloods lead lowbloods around on leashes like pets. Flaysquads roam the streets with impunity, pulling aside any who catch their eye for “interrogation.” Your group catches one squad’s eye, you are certain, but Rose catches theirs in return, and they slink off in search of easier prey. They find it, and more screams give way to squelching crunches and splatters of unclean blood. You think of Kankri and nearly throw up.
You have never in your life been more grateful that you lack a sense of smell.
This is fucked.
Minutes in the future. Too many.
SWIFER: Look, I’m sorry, Miss Galgam.
LATULA: th4ts prof1c13nc3 to you, *prof1c13nc3* g4lg4m.
KARKAT: MEANER, LATCH.
LATULA: w3r3 you 3v3n l1st3n1ng th3 f1rst t1m3?
KARKAT: BETTER. SORRY.
Auxiliatrix Eggmop blanches, and you feel the fear radiating off of her. It’s mixed with a resignation, an acceptance that this is how it will always be. A sense of being crushed from below and above. Kankri always told you that microaggressions tend to be most pronounced between trolls adjacent on the spectrum. You thought it was bullshit. You thought most of what he said was bullshit.
SWIFER: I’m I’m I’m I’m I’m sorry, Ma’am! Proficience! There’s just nothin I can do if you ain’t in the system!
You choke. For half a second.
KARKAT: ACT LIKE YOU’RE PITCH FOR HER.
LATULA: 1 d1dnt 4sk 1f 1 w4s 1n th3 syst3m
You slam a hand on the wall next to the terrified girl’s head she is just trying to do her job this is so wrong this is so wrong this is so wrong.
LATULA: 1 4sk3d 1f you w3r3 fuck1n l1st3n1ng.
SWIFER: I I I always listen to my betters! Your Proficience! Ma’am!
KARKAT: ROSE, STEP IN.
ROSE: Oh, enough of this.
Rose sweeps forth and lowers her hood. You fade gratefully into her shadow as she adopts an air of cruel kindness.
ROSE: You poor dear. There there. You just don’t understand what’s going on here, do you?
SWIFER: I
ROSE: Of course you don’t. Let me help you. See, Legislacerator Galgam is not Her Proficience. She is My. Proficience. And I. Am The Coopera’s.
SWIFER: I
SWIFER: I see
ROSE: You do, don’t you. Of course you do!
SWIFER: Y-yes
ROSE: You were confused before, weren’t you!
SWIFER: I was confused before.
ROSE: You’ll let us in. Now.
SWIFER: Of course. Of course.
Her hands are green with sweat as she inputs the code sequence.
SWIFER: At your service, Ma’am is it Ma’am? Miss...?
ROSE: Oh, let’s not worry about names, greenblood. After all:
ROSE: You wouldn’t want me to learn yours.
With a shudder, Auxiliatrix Eggmop removes a key from around her neck, inserting it into a slot built into her desk. A turn, and the massive steel doors behind her begin to hiss open.
KARKAT: I KNOW THAT WAS FUCKED UP OF ME AND I’M REALLY SORRY. YOU BOTH DID GREAT.
Rose taps a false horn in acknowledgement. You tap your shades with a shaking hand, and are reminded of their unaccustomed sharpness. For your Alternian counterpart, these narrower sunglasses had been an affectation. On Earth C, they are part of every single Legislacerator’s uniform.
Did Terezi do that out of lingering fondness for her ancestor?
Or just to fuck with you?
You want to wriggle out of your own skin.
SWIFER: I’ll have to, accompany you.
Rose laughs like the quiet tinkle of bells in a breeze, and Auxiliatrix Eggmop does not accompany you. The thought crosses your mind to tell her to fucking run. You quash it.
You quash every feeling inside of yourself, especially the clawing, desperate certainty that Eggmop’s attempt to follow you was, on her part, a grievous mistake for reasons having nothing to do with pissing off a highblood. You quash the fuck out of how abjectly terrified she was at the mere thought of being on the other side of those massive steel doors for any reason or duration of time whatsoever. You quash everything.
You step through.
> Be Rose
When Kanaya told you about the brooding caverns on Alternia, she spoke of vast, sweeping chambers of igneous rock that shone with the fluids of life itself, countless clutches of eggs covering it like reefs in a great ocean. A profound place, a holy place, the womb of an entire species.
You had imagined, from the perspective of someone who had watched Star Trek, that what was beauty to Kanaya’s alien mind would likely be off-putting, disturbing or perhaps even disgusting to a human mind. You had flattered yourself, from the perspective of someone who was extremely intelligent and thirteen years old, that, if you ever saw this sight for yourself, your mind would be large enough to appreciate its grandeur, to trace with aesthetically pleased eyes its majestic, alien contours. And Kanaya would look upon you and know that you understood, that she had chosen well, and then.
And then you would kiss, and fuck, or whatever. You were thirteen.
Now you are thirty-seven going on immortal and you can barely keep down your shocked, revolted gorge.
Because you are looking at a factory.
The first thing you see are the gaping maws of the trial pits. High-pitched screams echo from them, mingled with various bestial roars. Lusal roars, you realize. Over the pits traverse countless cocoons on overhead chain conveyors, most rustling with internal movement, tiny bipedal forms dropping into the depths below. One is not fast enough to pupate, and is fed, whole and struggling, into the incinerator at the terminus of the line while you stand there and watch because your eyes will not move from the sight until the sounds have ceased.
KARKAT: I DIDN’T COPY THAT? WAS THAT AMBIENT OR ONE OF YOU?
ROSE: We mustn’t dawdle, Galgam.
LATULA: ...
You seize her face in one hand and show her your eyes, obscured as they are, to make clear as a crystal dagger your true feelings.
ROSE: Is your job.
ROSE: Boring.
ROSE: You?
LATULA: no
LATULA: m44m
You raise your voice to command all of your subordinates.
ROSE: Then we mustn’t. Dawdle.
You smile, and it is the hardest thing you have ever done. Your gaze and those of your cadre turn as one up the factory line as you take the lead, and you wish your mind was smaller, could take in less of what you are seeing. Wigglers of like blood pile atop each other in caste-coded enclosures that line the artless, concrete walls of chamber after chamber. Drones robotically fill troughs with slop that no species could find appetizing. It is fought over, bitten and ripped and crushed over.
You think of the works of Harlan Ellison. You think of the works of China Miéville. You feel Latula’s hand grab onto yours and you must shake her off because Tchula Galgam would not need comfort, and Rozzem Londor would not suffer a midblood’s touch. You must shake her off. You must not squeeze her hand back. You must.
Why are you still in character? You should burn this place to the ground. No. The Grub. Kanaya. Latula. Karkat. Everyone.
ROXY: a violet could get away with that
Roxy’s whisper over comms makes you stiffen, but not shriek.
ROXY: its like a fuck you, i can quad with a peasant wut r u gonna do bout it
ROXY: thing
How the hell does she know that?
ROXY: she needs u rn rose she’s doin bad
Because she’s friends with Latula now. Right. Right.
You continue past the hatching line, where eggs are cut open regardless of development. The stillborn are incinerated. All of this is done by drones, Crockercorp drones, crimson cyborgs of metal and cloned flesh. Where are the chitinous imperial drones? Where are the Auxiliatrices, the jadebloods? Did they refuse this work, were they culled for their dissent? Or do they not care, are they as a people so far gone as that?
The girl at the door was not. She was sad, terrified, and trapped, and you made her existence that much crueler. You are doing a good thing. You are doing a good thing. You must look forward.
Forward to the final stretch, to the final chamber.
Forward to the Mother.
Grub.
You can scarcely believe what you are seeing.
> Be Latula
Your mind turns off.
> Be Dirk
DIRK: Actual, we have eyes on the objective.
DIRK: There is a problem.
Latula’s hand falls from Rose’s.
She falls to her knees.
Her scream fills the entire factory.
You hear a transportalizer activate.
TEREZI: W3LL W3LL W3LL W3LL
TEREZI: W3LL
TEREZI: W3LL
TEREZI: W3LL
TEREZI: W3LL
TEREZI: W3LL!! >:]
DIRK: There are two problems.
Terezi Pyrope steps into view and leans a jaunty hand against the throbbing, discolored flesh of the Mother Grub.
TEREZI: H3Y TH3R3, BUDDY
TEREZI: R34D 4NY GOOD BOOKS L4T3LY??
Is that a joke about the narrative?
TEREZI: TH3 N4RR4T1V3, HUH? TH4TS ON3 OF MY F4VOR1T3S!!
Oh no.
You glance at Latula, who is sobbing incoherently on the floor.
DIRK: There are three problems.
Terezi snaps her fingers, and your comm goes dead.
TEREZI: YOU KNOW WH4T MY F4VOR1T3 P4RT OF TH3 N4RR4T1V3 1S??
TEREZI: TH3 SURPR1S3S!!
TEREZI: TH3 TW1STS!!
TEREZI: WH3N SOM3TH1NG H4PP3NS TH4T 1 D1DNT PL4N!!
She clutches her hands over her chest and swoons.
TEREZI: YOU GUYS, 1 H4V3NT FLOWN BY TH3 S34T OF MY P4NTS 1N
TEREZI: W3LL
TEREZI: 1TS B33N 4 FUCK1NG *WH1L3*, L3TS JUST S4Y TH4T >:]
A gunshot. Terezi cocks her head to one side and back, her smile growing and shrinking with the movement.
DIRK: Jake, hold your fire!
TEREZI: 1D L1ST3N TO H1M, J4K3 >;]
TEREZI: 1M NOT H3R3 TO F1GHT!!
TEREZI: 4ND 4NYW4Y, YOU WOULDNT W4NN4 H1T L1TTL3 M1SS B4TT3RY CLUCKB34ST H3R3, 1 M34N LOOK 4T H3R!!
TEREZI: B1G, B1G, B1G T4RG3T
DIRK: All of you, stand down, don’t engage with her! Rose, get Latch the fuck back in commission!
TEREZI: OOOO, D1D *YOU* JUST C4LL H3R “L4TCH”??
TEREZI: BUT TH3N 4G41N
TEREZI: DOESN’T 3V3RYBODY??
TEREZI: >:D
What is she talking about?
TEREZI: 1M T4LK1NG 4BOUT CH4R4CT3R D3VELOPM3NT!! 4RCS!! THROUGHL1N3S!! B3G1NN1NGS, 3ND1NGS, 4ND CYCL3S!!
TEREZI: 1M T4LK1NG 4BOUT TROLL JOS3PH C4MPB3LL, TH3 MONOMYTH, TH3 H3ROS JOURN3Y!!
TEREZI: IM T4LK1NG 4BOUT YOU, ROS3
TEREZI: YOU POOR L1TTL3 P1TCH B1TCH YOU
> Be Rose
You nearly snap your own neck slamming your gaze from Latula to Terezi.
TEREZI: H4H4H4H4 LOV3 YOU TOO ROS3, LOV3 TH4T LOOK, LOVE TH4T M1ND!!
TEREZI: B33N SL33P1NG W3LL??
TEREZI: DO3SNT LOOK L1K3 1T
TEREZI: 4ND 1SNT *TH4T* 1NT3R3ST1NG!!
ROSE: Is there a point to this?
TEREZI: H4H4 1 M34N SORT OF!!
TEREZI: MOSTLY 1TS JUST SO F4SC1N4T1NG TO S33 1NS1D3 TH4T H34D OF YOURS FOR TH3 FIRST T1M3 S1NC3
TEREZI: W3LL, 4G41N, 1TS B33N
TEREZI: LONG3R
TEREZI: FOR M3
TEREZI: BUT TH3 MOST F4SC1N4T1NG TH1NG OF 4LL 1S
You force yourself to focus back on Latula, who is slack-jawed, mouth agape in a silent scream.
TEREZI: G4H, TH1S 1S SO COOL!!
TEREZI: 1 C4N FL1P THROUGH YOUR WHOL3 3NT1R3 BR41N L1K3 TH3 TR4SHY QU4DR4NT NOV3L 1T 1S
TEREZI: 4ND NOT 3V3N 1 KNOW WH4TS GONN4 H4PP3N N3XT!!
TEREZI: TH4TS PROB4BLY, 4T 4 GU3SS, B3C4US3 R3DGL4R3’S 4BOUT TO SN4P OUT OF 1T
TEREZI: TH1NGS G3T 4 L1TTL3 FOGGY 4FT3R NOT TOO MUCH LONG3R
TEREZI: WH1CH M34NS 1 SHOULD PROB4BLY Y13LD TH3 FLOOR, 4FT3R 4LL, L1K3 1 S41D, 1M NOT H3R3 TO F1GHT!!
She flickers in place as someone walks straight through her.
TEREZI: 1M NOT H3R3 4T 4LL
DIRK: God dammit!
TEREZI: BUT SH3 1S!!
She is the very picture of statuesque, hulking feminine grace in fuchsia ballet flats, with hair twice the length of her body, crowned by a red tiara that blinks not with the symbol of Pisces, but of Sagittarius, crossed not with a line, but a pair of anime sunglasses.
LATULA: m
LATULA: m33n4h?
The hologram of Terezi crows in delight.
TEREZI: H4H4H4H4H4H4 W3R3 YOU 4LL TH3 W4Y B4CK ON B3FORUS, R3DGL4R3??
LATULA: 1m gonn4 FUCK1N K1LL YOU!!!!
TEREZI: 4ND TH3R3 GO3S MY 1NT3L!! M4N, 1TS L1K3 B31NG BL1ND, HOW DO 4LL OF YOU L1V3 L1K3 TH1S??
TEREZI: C4S3 1N PO1NT: YOUR 1NT3L, ROZZ3M?? NOT QU1111T3 ON TH3 MON3Y
TEREZI: CUZ B3HOLD 3XH1B1T 4!!
TEREZI: H3R INT3RM1N4BL3 COOP3R4T1ON 1N TH3 V3RY R34L FL3SH!!
TEREZI: STR41GHT FROM MY B4CK POCK3T
TEREZI: 1NTO 4LL OF YOUR H34RTS
The culling fork flashes into the Coopera’s hand.
TEREZI: 4ND LUNGS
TEREZI: 4ND L1V3RS
TEREZI: 1TS 4 THR33 FOR ON3 D34L, 4FT3R 4LL!!
TEREZI: JUST 4SK BOTH J4D3S!!
TEREZI: 4NYW4Y, QU33N??
TEREZI: DO WH4T YOU DO B3ST:
TEREZI: $L4Y >:D
The hologram of Terezi Pyrope winks out.
> Be Jade
You are not aware of any of this. You are not aware of a single word Terezi has said. You are not aware that The Batterwitch is standing right in front of you. The call of animal communion sparks a distant memory in you as it tries and fails to take hold of your Knight-defended mind, but that is of no interest. Even the words of Jake’s furious battle cry as he brings both pistols to bear on . . . someone, are lost to you.
You are only aware of one thing.
You are aware of the Mother Grub.
Her face.
You know that her face is the face of a troll writ large, because Karkat told you it would be, but you would never guess that to look at it. Nearly all of it is obscured by a mask, an insane jumble of straps, cables, tubes.
So many tubes.
There are hundreds, each descending from one of hundreds of tanks suspended like a cluster of mismatched fruit from the ceiling above. Each drips with . . . you guess slurry, and possibly nutrients, you don’t know, all you know for certain is that her jaw is nearly broken with the glut of them, but she cannot close it. It, and the tubes, are bolted in place.
Above her face rise horns exactly like Kanaya’s, but each the height of a small tree, and they are riven with anchor points from which stretch chains that could moor a cruise ship. They are each as taught as bowstrings, and they hold her head utterly immobile.
Equally immobile is her body. She is held aloft in a rough question-mark posture not by her wings, which are crushed in the grip of more manacles and chains, but by massive metal bands that encircle her great, distended tumescence, cutting agonizingly into her flesh, each with their own network of chains, some connected to each other, some connected to the frame of her enclosure. They have no clasps or locks, but rather are welded in place, with no thought in their design put toward removability. You were bedridden long enough to be aware of the dangers of bedsores, and the mottled discoloration you see around each point of pressure is unmistakable to you, even on such greenish, alien skin as this. At the lowest end of her body, eggs are deposited rhythmically, spasmodically, surely involuntarily, onto a conveyor belt that never stops rubbing and chafing the puckered flesh which rests upon it.
All of this fills the periphery of your vision, the details slowly filling themselves in from the edges inward as your gaze remains locked to only one thing.
Hers.
Her eyes are the only clearly visible feature of her face. They are wracked with pain, bursting with despair, and brimming with intelligence. This creature is sentient. She is fully conscious. She is aware of every microsecond of her own suffering.
And you cannot help her.
She is too big.
Far too big to fit in Jake’s sylladex, many times larger than the largest object you have manipulated since getting hurt, and those were simple, homogeneous masses. This is a creature of utterly alien anatomy, connected who knows how intricately to an enclosure even larger than she is, which would need to be shrunk with her for transport and removed later, carefully, surgically, another problem all its own, but to even get to that problem you have to solve this one and you.
Can’t.
You were a fool to think you could. You were a fool to try. You were a fool to hope. And now, standing face to face with the single greatest evil you have ever witnessed, this victim’s eyes pleading with you to do the impossible it is impossible you
give
up.
> Be Jake
You hear a clean, wet sound behind you. Lowering your pistols, you turn, and see Jade Harley, her eyes wide with grief and regret and despair. Dirk is holding her up by the hair with one hand, his bloody sword in the other, as the rest of her crumples to the concrete floor of the factory like a puppet.
> Be Latula.
Blood pounds in your hear ducts. Every muscle in your body quakes. Your face is pulled back into a grimace of emotion more primal than anger, more basic, and the person who did this to you, did this to the Mother Grub, is not even here.
If you’d been coherent, you would have seen that immediately, seen that there was
nothing
where there should have been a
mind,
warned your family that something else was going on.
Was that why she did that to the Mother Grub? Was it just to fuck with you!?
To break you so badly that you’d lose it?
Fuckin’ maybe.
You don’t give a shit.
Terezi isn’t here for you to kill.
Meenah is.
Is she being controlled?
Fuckin’ maybe.
You don’t give a shit.
Meenah was always a bitch anyway.
LATULA: h3y p4ych3ck!!!!
She doesn’t react to the nickname. Of course she doesn’t, she isn’t your Meenah. She does react to an axe kick followed by a whole entire skateboard to the back of the head. You dodge the culling fork once, twice.
Rose yells something. Dave yells something.
They charge past you and attack.
Where’s everybody else?
A blood-curdling screech of anguish and rage cuts through your haze.
JAKE: DIRK WHAT THE BLITHERING FUCK DID YOU DO???
What?
Ow!
ROSE: Latula!
Meenah has you by the fucking windhole. Fuck, she’s tall. Fuck, that’s a long way down. Fuck, you can’t breathe. Fuck. Fuck. Ow. Fuck.
A spell wraps around Meenah’s arm, her eyes flash to the side. A cry from Rose. Not one of the fun ones. Spell sputters, dies. Is she okay? You can’t turn your head. Dave swoops in, a blur. A blur of gold. He goes down. Going down.
Going.
Going.
Where the fuck is everybody else?
Going dark.
> Be Jake
DIRK: I flipped a coin.
JAKE: YOU FLIPPED A FUCKING COIN?????
He just looks at you. He just looks at you. Still in his troll disguise, his baleful eyes are uncovered, and that makes them, somehow, even harder to read.
Jade’s head sits on the floor. Still in her troll disguise.
Her eyes are uncovered as well.
You think about that thing you see people do in movies, that tender brush of the hand down someone’s face and how stupid that is, why would that make it any better just because they closed their dead
grandmother’s
granddaughter’s
eyes.
DIRK: Called heads.
DIRK: It landed tails.
DIRK: It doesnt matter.
JAKE: It doesnt matter IT DOESNT!!! MATTER?????
Dirk Strider falls on his ass. Your fist throbs with the impact and you’re on top of him and you’re hitting him again. And again. And again. And again. And somehow his sword is still in his hand, and fuck that, and fuck him, so you rip it free, and sink it into the concrete next to his head with a mighty downward stab. A spiderweb of cracks drinks Jade Harley’s blood as you lay back into Dirk mother fucking Strider again, and again, and again, and again, and he does not make one single solitary move to stop you, does not make one single solitary sound.
ROXY: jesus christ jake leave him alone!!!
You’ll be damned if you leave him alone. You’ll be damned if he ever gets up again. You’ll be damned if
ROXY: look look look look look look look look look look look look look!!!!!!
The cracks in the concrete are glowing.
> Be Jade
Your name is Jade Harley.
You sit up and stretch, and for the first time in seventeen years, you are whole.
You are a goddess of space and crackly bullshit magic.
You are brave and smart and pissed the fuck off, and you can do anything.
So you do.
A glance at the Mother Grub, a contracting gesture of fingers and thumbs, and both she and her prison of metal and chains are the size of a physics textbook, and into your sylladex she goes. A glance at the slurry tanks, another gesture, and they are in your sylladex as well. Drones sputter and die all around you, across the whole factory. Danger. It’s harder to manipulate their guardian-resistant armor, danger, but with a touch of extra effort they are the size of toys, and then they are the size of nothing. Danger. You rip open the cages that hold the wigglers danger you stop the conveyor belts danger you crumple the incinerators like tin cans danger you pull sheets of concrete out of the ground to use as lids for the trial pits danger you
JAKE: Jade!
JADE: danger
JAKE: Jade!
JADE: danger
JAKE: You need to stop!
JADE: danger
JAKE: You are going to bring the whole place down!
JADE: good
JAKE: On our heads jade!
He is in your way
danger
he is blocking your view
danger
he is stopping you from
danger
almost crushing you with his embrace
danger
it is the only thing keeping you from exploding but it is.
Enough.
You scream, once, briefly, loudly, allow yourself exactly two quick, efficient sobs, and then let his arms calm you, and Bec, down.
JAKE: Good jade.
JAKE: Best friend.
You wag your tail.
Then you remember where you are—you are both so stupid.
JADE: oh god the batterwitch
JAKE: Oh god the batterwitch!
You both look as one to see Latch Lalonde dangling in the air, unmoving, slack.
The thumb and forefinger of a fuschia-manicured hand close around a gold Ring.
And pull.
> Be Roxy
ROXY: GET AWAY FROM HER YOU CUNT!!!!!!
Massive fucking hands made of Perfectly Generic Objects clobber the massive fucking cunt into a wall.
ROXY: THATS MY FUKKEN DAUGHTER IN LAW YOU CHEAP!!!!!
ROXY: ASS!!!!!!!
ROXY: WHORE!!!!!!!!
Latch drops, and her finger goes back into the ring just before it slides entirely off. You make her hand into a fist and tie it shut with some shit you pull out of nowhere. You start compressions.
ROXY: rose wake the fuck up!!!
No answer. You throw a Perfectly Generic Object at her head.
ROSE: Latula.
ROXY: need some help over here
ROSE: LATULA!
She scrambles over. You wave her off.
ROXY: im doing this you get dave up and kill the batterwitch
ROSE: What the fuck
The culling fork sails past your head.
ROXY: KILL THE BATTERWITCH ROSE
ROSE: How
ROXY: omg give ppl fukken ORDERS are u the highblood or NOT
ROSE: EVERYBODY ON ME!
You drag Latch out of the way of the ensuing chaos and concentrate. Really hard. Harder than you ever have be-
TEREZI: WH4TCH4 DOOOO1N????
She’s six inches tall, perched on top of your hands as you pump Latch’s pusher up and down. The hologram is obvious this close up. You ignore her and keep going.
TEREZI: LOOKS H4RD >:]
TEREZI: 4NYW4Y, WH1L3 1V3 GOT YOU H3R3 4G41N FOR 4 S3C
TEREZI: YOU KNOW, W1THOUT R3DGL4R3 G3TT1NG 1N TH3 W4Y
TEREZI: LOV3S TO G3T 1N TH3 W4Y OF PL4NS, TH4T R3DGL4R3!!
You ignore her and force air down Latch’s windhole. Terezi whispers in your ear while you do.
TEREZI: HOWS C4LL13?? >:D
You ignore her and resume compressions.
TEREZI: 1SNT 1T W1LD TH4T 1TS N3V3R 4BOUT TH4T?? 1TS 4LW4YS 4BOUT *K4N4Y4*
TEREZI: 4ND YOU KNOW WH4T 3LS3 W4S 4BOUT K4N4Y4?
She hops off your hands and strolls along Latch’s juddering chest, down her arm, and pretends to tap her cane on the Ring of Life.
TEREZI: TH1S W4S.
ROXY: i know
TEREZI: YOUV3 KNOWN TH3 WHOL3 T1M3, H4V3NT YOU
TEREZI: TH4TS SO 1NT3R3ST1NG TO M3!!
TEREZI: YOU S33, ROXY, C4N 1 C4LL YOU ROXY??
ROXY: no
TEREZI: ROXY >:]
TEREZI: TH3R3S SOM3TH1NG 1 L1K3 3V3N B3TT3R TH4N 4 SURPR1S3, GU3SS WH4T TH4T 1S
ROXY: five dicks at once?
You go back down for air. Terezi whispers.
TEREZI: 4 MYST3RY
TEREZI: 4ND TH4TS YOU, ROXY
You resume compressions.
TEREZI: TH3R3R3 TH1NGS 4BOUT YOU 1 JUST DONT UND3RST4ND
TEREZI: 4ND C4NT PR3D1CT
TEREZI: 1 THOUGHT 1D T4K3N C4R3 OF TH4T WH3N 1 K1LL3D T4VROS
TEREZI: 4ND JOHN!!
You ignore her.
TEREZI: 1TS R3FRESH1NG
TEREZI: NOT B31NG 4BL3 TO PR3D1CT 3V3RYTH1NG
TEREZI: M4K3S 1T FUN
TEREZI: BUT DONT FORG3T
TEREZI: JUST B3C4US3 1 D1DNT PL4N SOM3TH1NG
Air. Whisper.
TEREZI: DO3SNT M34N 1 D1DNT PL4N *FOR* 1T
Compressions.
ROXY: uh huh so was she like that the whole time
TEREZI: W4S WHO L1K3 WH4T >:?
ROXY: the mother grub
ROXY: was she like that this whole time
TEREZI: TH3 F4CT TH4T YOU TH1NK S3V3N SW33PS 1S 4 LONG T1M3 1S FUCK1NG *4DOR4BL3*
TEREZI: *YOUR3* FUCK1NG 4DOR4BL3, ROXY, JUST LOOK 4T YOU GO, LOOK 4T YOU TRY!!
TEREZI: SP34K1NG OF TRY1NG, 1TS T1M3 FOR MORE 41R!!
Fuck. Air. Whisper.
TEREZI: TRY1NG 1S 4 *R3C3NT* TH1NG FOR YOU
TEREZI: 1SNT 1T
Compressions.
TEREZI: YOU 4R3 JUST SO H4RD TO R34D!!
TEREZI: 1 LOV3 1T!!
ROXY: glad2help
ROXY: you miserable cunt
TEREZI: YOU *4R3* GL4D TO H3LP, ROXY
TEREZI: TH4444T 1 DO KNOW 4BOUT YOU
TEREZI: YOU 4R3 *4LW4YS* GL4D TO H3LP, 3V3N WH3N 1T COSTS YOU 3V3RYTH1NG, 4ND YOU KNOW WH4T 3LS3??
She points at Latch’s face.
TEREZI: SO 1S SH3
TEREZI: 4ND WH4T DO W3 C4LL 4 P3RSON L1K3 TH4T??
Air. Whisper.
TEREZI: W3 C4LL TH3M 4 H3RO, ROXY >:o
TEREZI: T1CK. TOCK.
Compressions.
TEREZI: ROXY, 1 KNOW SOM3TH1NG
TERESI: TH4T YOU DONT KNOW
TEREZI: 1 M34N 1 KNOW LOTS OF TH1NGS TH4T YOU DONT KNOW >;]
TEREZI: BUT TH1S ON3 TH1NG 1N P4RT1CUL4R 1S
TEREZI: R34LLY, R34LLY, R34LLY FUNNY
TEREZI: 4ND 1N F41RN3SS TO YOU, 1 DONT KNOW WHY 1T WOULD H4V3 COM3 UP 1N CONV3RS4T1ON, BUT, W3LL
TEREZI: TH4T PUSH3R, W1NDHOL3, PUSH3R, W1NDHOL3 TH1NG YOU’R3 DO1NG??
Air. Whisper.
TEREZI: 1T DO3SNT WORK ON TROLLS >:D
Latch coughs. Terezi pretends to stagger under the sudden convulsion.
TEREZI: BUT D3ST1NY DO3S >:]
Tears fill your eyes.
TEREZI: 4W P4P *SHOOSH*, YOU ST1LL S4V3D H3R FROM B1G B4D P31X3S, YOULL G3T SOM3 PO1NTS FOR TH4T!!
TEREZI: 4ND SP34K1NG OF P31X3S, 1T SOUNDS L1K3 YOUV3 GOT TWO TH1NGS TO C3L3BR4T3!!
Cheers erupt behind you, and you look to see the Batterwitch impaled on her own fork.
TEREZI: H4H4 D1D *J4K3* G3T TH3 L4ST H1T?? GOOD FOR H1M!!
ROXY: what do you even fukken want
TEREZI: OH, TH4T 1SNT TH3 R1GHT QU3ST1ON, ROGU3 OF VOID
TEREZI: TH4T 1SNT TH3 R1GHT QU3ST1ON 4T *4LL*
TEREZI: TH3 *R1GHT* QUEST1ON 1S:
She twirls her cane in one hand.
TEREZI: WHY D1D 1 L3T YOU DO 4NY OF TH1S??
And snaps the fingers of her other hand.
Tyranny-class war drones crash through every wall of the factory.
TEREZI: S33 YOU 4T WORK TOMORROW >:D
Rose shrieks a command, and everything around you vanishes in a burst of crackly bullshit magic.
> Be Karkat
It is silent in the command center of the resistance bunker on Earth C. It has been silent for ten solid flapfucking minutes.
It is cacophonous in the command center of the resistance bunker on Earth C as seven complete flapfucking morons appear simultaneously in a burst of absolute fuck this you are going to kill Dirk with your bare fucking nubs.
KARKAT: DIRK!
DAVE: hey karkat were all okay
DAVE: no wait fuck shit shit shit shit roxy is latch
ROXY: latch is okay!!
ROSE: Latula? LATULA!!!!
DAVE: cool were all okay
KARKAT: DAVE, THIS IS WHY I LOVE YOU.
KARKAT: GAY.
DAVE: gay aw
KARKAT: UH HUH SHUT UP. DIRK STRIDER!
LATULA: h3y
LATULA: *koff*
LATULA: b4b3
LATULA: >B)
ROSE: Oh my god oh my god I love you. I love you. I love you I’m so sorry I’m so sorry.
LATULA: you fuck1n do????
KARKAT: FUCKING OF COURSE SHE DOES, LATCH, YOU’RE BOTH MORONS.
ROSE &
LATULA:
E
X
C
U
S
3
Y
O
U
?
????
KARKAT: EXCUSE YOU! IS EITHER OF YOU NAMED DIRK! FUCKING! STRIDER!
JADE: DIRK!!!!!! DIRK DIRK DIRK THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU karkat karkat dirk killed me IT WAS AWESOME
KARKAT: HE DID SHITFUCKING WHAT???
JADE: yeah!!! he
KARKAT: NO YOU KNOW WHAT WE ARE PUTTING A PIN IN THAT. DIRK!
DIRK: Yes, Karkat?
Your lususlacerator looks beat to absolute hell. His trollface is rubbed almost completely off, revealing bruises, cuts, and scrapes all over his face. No one else looks even a tenth as bad as he does, though on your scan you see that Jake’s trollface is rubbed almost completely off of his hands, revealing bruises, cuts, and scrapes and you’re putting a pin in that as well.
KARKAT: ...ARE YOU OKAY, DIRK?
DIRK: Yes, Karkat.
KARKAT: “WE”!!!
KARKAT: “HAVE”!!!!
KARKAT: “THREE”!!!!!
KARKAT: “PROBLEMS”??????
KARKAT: THE ONE PERSON IN THIS ENTIRE *CULLCLUTCH* OF ABSOLUTE CLOTFUCKING *NOOKJAMMER* SIMPLETONS I CAN COUNT ON TO GIVE ME A PROPER! FUCKING! REPORT AND *THAT* IS YOUR LAST TRANSMISSION BEFORE COMMS GO DOWN???????
KARKAT: WHAT FUCKING HAPPENED OUT THERE, DIRK??!! REPORT!!! NOW!!!!!!
Dirk’s gross fucking face looks actually abashed for exactly 0.2 seconds, which moves you deeply, then he glances at everyone else in turn, back to you, and his shades appear in his hand. He slides them back over his ganderbulbs with an understated economy of movement that conveys perfectly a sense of utter triumph.
DIRK: Mission accomplished. We have the Mother Grub.
You sag against Dirk and embrace him.
DIRK: Full debrief pending, apparently.
And weep.
And everyone around you roars.
When it all dies down, you manage a single sentence.
KARKAT: CAN
KARKAT: CAN I SEE HER?
LATULA: k4rk4t
What. Is that tone of voice?
KARKAT: YES? LATCH?
LATULA: you dont
LATULA: w4nn4
KARKAT: YES I DO. YES I DO! WHAT HAPPENED TO HER? WHAT THE FUCK DID TEREZI DO TO HER??
LATULA: k4rk4t
She turns her face fully into Rose’s chest and starts sobbing. What the fuck. What the fuck!
KARKAT: SOMEONE. TALK TO ME.
DAVE: karkat
KARKAT: YES DAVE?????
Dave’s lip quivers, his actual lip actually quivers Dave Strider’s lip quivers.
DAVE: i fuckin cant man
KARKAT: SOMEONE HAD FUCKING BETTER
DIRK: I can.
DIRK: It was an atrocity.
DIRK: A war crime.
DIRK: Terezi subjected the Mother Grub to brutal, constant, and pointless torture. Likely since she was hatched.
KARKAT: *WHAT*
KARKAT: *WHY*
DAVE: why does she do anything man
DIRK: That is all you need to know right now, Karkat.
KARKAT: I WANT TO SEE HER.
DAVE: no you dont
KARKAT: I WANT TO FUCKING!!!
KARKAT: SEE HER!!!!!!!!!!!
DIRK: Jade.
JADE: okay. okay.
JADE: karkat?
JADE: its gonna be
KARKAT: JUST SHOW ME, JADE!!!
JADE: okay.
JADE: okay.
She slowly removes a card from her sylladex, retrieves its shrunken contents.
And your mind turns off.
You hear words, spoken in a voice that sounds like yours, coming from very far away.
KARKAT: TEREZI USED TO BE MY BEST. FUCKING. FRIEND.
They sound like a confession.
A hand finds yours, and because it is Dave’s hand, because you can feel through his touch the rhythmic quaking of his entire body, see the tears dripping off of his chin, hear his open and unstifled sobs echoing off the walls of the command center, you feel, and perhaps even are absolved of the crime of ever having known the person who did. This.
Dave knew her, too. Dave was her friend, too. You squeeze his hand, and absolve him as well.
And then.
Your mind turns back on. You stare at the Mother Grub with desperately analytical eyes.
KARKAT: WAIT, WHAT’S WRONG WITH HER?
LATULA: 1snt 1t fuck1n obv1ous!!!!
KARKAT: NO. LATCH THAT’S. I I DON’T MEAN THAT, I MEAN. I. SHE’S.
KARKAT: I’M I’M I’M NO AUXILIATRIX BUT
KARKAT: SHE ISN’T BREATHING.
JADE: she isnt what???
KARKAT: THE.
KARKAT: THE VENTRAL BELLOWSACS, JADE, SHE’S NOT...
KARKAT: JADE SHE’S DEAD.
KARKAT: SHE’S DEAD.
JADE: no shes not
JADE: NO SHES NOT
KARKAT: JADE.
JADE: no shes FUCKING not ill prove it ill prove it ill prove it ill prove it
Jade recaptchalogues the Mother Grub in a flash and takes off at near-relativistic speed. You all know where she’s going. You take off after her.
A groaning rumble vibrates through the bunker as you near the newly constructed brooding block. You enter, and it is many times more spacious than it had been just moments prior. Jade is panting, haggard, standing knock-kneed, her elbows pushing further and further apart as it fills the massive wall in front of her, and you fall on your face, as does Latch, in despair before the majestic, tormented corpse of the last mother your species will ever know.
JADE: no
JADE: NO
JADE: NOHOHOOOOOOOOOO!!!
JADE: BUT I DID IT! WE DID IT! DIRK! DIRK WE DID IT!!! NO NO IT CANT SHE CANT NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO
Rose darts into the air.
KARKAT: ROSE ROSE ROSE WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING
ROSE: Honoring a memory.
She pauses, hangs there, fifty feet above you, and seems to find a flaw. Then the Quills of Echidna appear in her hands and a flash of her will removes all trace of disguise from everyone. Rose, the human, faces you and Latch.
ROSE: With your permission.
Latch vibrates her head into a violent nod.
LATULA: pl34s3
LATULA: pl34s3
You hesitate.
KARKAT: WHAT ARE YOU GOING TO DO?
LATULA: just l3t h3r do 1t m4n
KARKAT: ROSE, WHAT?
Rose tries to speak, and cannot. Then:
ROSE: What must be done.
KARKAT: ROSE, I
You understand. You understand and you want to say it should be you, should be Latch, but neither of you have the skill or the knowledge. Why would Rose? Rose is a human! She knows even less than you!
But you believe in Rose Lalonde.
You nod.
She nods in turn to each of you, rotates to face the Mother Grub, seems somehow to relax in a way you have never seen her relax, and you would swear that the literal sigil of Light flares around her head. Her face glows, her hands glow, the whole of her body glows bright as the sun she had not seen in seven long sweeps as her Quills pen a thundering dirge for a victory futilely won.
Chains fall. Manacles break and are cast aside. Tubing and pumps are dragged out by the meter. Straps are unbuckled, anchors removed, the great head hangs bare of its blasphemous coverings, face frozen, unblinking until the eyes close in a gentle wave of Rose’s will. As she brings the gargantuan, now-unfettered body to rest gently on the ground, she turns to you and Latch again.
ROSE: Would you like to pay your respects before. Before the next step?
You, and Latch, and Rose, and Roxy, and Jade, and Jake, and Dave, and even Dirk stand in vigil over the fallen goddess. No one speaks any words. None are appropriate to speak. None, except, perhaps:
KARKAT: SHE WAS KANAYA’S SISTER.
And even though that doesn’t mean anything, even though it doesn’t really translate into the troll language, and even though it is literally untrue, this stupid human concept you only vaguely understand is enough to give some desperate context within which to comprehend your own grief, and horror, and rage.
ROSE: You don’t have to watch this part.
ROSE: I’m sorry in advance.
None of you turn away as the sigil flashes anew and Rose begins the autopsy. You almost stop her, almost rescind your permission, almost scream that there is no point, that she will learn nothing useful, that the Mother Grub has suffered enough indignity and injury.
But you have no better ideas. You have no idea whatsoever of the proper procedures for the care, respect, and disposal of Matriarchal remains, and as you watch Rose work, as tormented flesh is parted, stripped and laid aside, this search for answers, futile though it might be, seems to you as appropriate as any ritual you have to hand.
And it is not futile.
It is far from futile.
In addition to the cage around the Mother Grub’s body, there was a cage inside her blood pusher. A knot of metal, a snarl of metal, a rough, jagged, spike-covered thing that no surgery you can imagine could possibly have implanted, had been wrapped, coiled around just behind the walls of her beating pusher. It sits before you all on the floor of the chamber, cruel and massive and jade with blood. Rose begins cleaning it with twin waves of the Quills, revealing:
ROSE: Red. Of course.
ROSE: Guardian-resistant armor.
ROSE: Solid. It probably weighs around five tons.
ROSE: If Jade had.
ROSE: I’m so sorry.
ROSE: I’m so, so sorry, Jade.
You look at Jade. She looks at nothing. Her eyes are galaxies away, and also locked onto the crimson snarl of metal before her. Forever.
ROSE: It shrank at a slower rate than the rest of the Grub. Than her heart.
JADE: i could have compensated if id known
JAKE: But you couldnt have known.
JAKE: And if you had.
JAKE: Terezi would have done something.
JAKE: Different.
JADE: something that i wouldnt have been able to stop.
Her voice is robotic and emotionless.
DIRK: You could shrink the entire planet.
DIRK: If not for this.
Dirk’s is not.
DIRK: You could shrink the entire fucking planet and put it in your fucking pocket while we figured out a way to kill that fucking bitch.
DIRK: What would stop you?
DIRK: Other than the looming possibility that, for example, every troll in the kingdom had something like this implanted in them at time of hatching, or every human at birth, or
DAVE: was
DAVE: was one of the machines
DAVE: for that
DAVE: for doin that
DIRK: I don’t know, Dave; I wasn’t looking for something like that. None of us were. Why would we have been?
He points emphatically at the cage.
DIRK: This was
ROSE: A message.
DIRK: Exactly.
ROSE: No.
DIRK: Ah, yes?
KARKAT: DIRK, SHUT UP.
There is something in her voice.
ROSE: Fuck.
ROSE: Fuck!
ROSE: FUCK!!!!
Rose begins to glow with a black light.
LATULA: b4b3 wh4ts
Rose stops glowing entirely.
LATULA: b4b3?
ROSE: IT!
ROSE:
ROSE: It
ROSE:
ROSE:
ROSE: doesn’t
ROSE: matter.
ROSE: I have one more thing to do.
ROSE: I have one more thing to do, I’m scared to do it, and I would like your help.
ROSE: Yours as well, Karkat.
KARKAT: WHAT’S
ROSE: It involves the body.
ROSE: It.
ROSE: Involves her.
KARKAT: OH.
KARKAT: OH!
Rose whirls around to face you.
ROSE: Don’t get excited, Karkat, we don’t know!
ROSE: And Terezi might have trapped it as well.
ROSE: But my hands should not take this risk. No, they cannot take this risk; they have no right.
ROSE: It should be the hands of a troll.
The three of you walk over to the lower section of the great corpse, a part that Rose’s autopsy has not yet reached. Rose flashes with Light one final time, and points. You and Latch approach, and she holds the abdomen steady while you carefully, slowly, reverently slice it open with one of your sickles. You pull the two halves of the incision apart; Latch reaches in.
And pulls out the matriorb.
It is intact.
It is alive.
It is in the hands of one of the last two free trolls anywhere in existence.
Rose makes a sound somewhere between a laugh, and a sob, and falls to the ground in a dead faint.
Behind her, on the snarl of metal that killed what is now the previous Mother Grub, the words:
It Keeps Happening
are engraved with the rough, violent cuts of a chainsaw, picked out by a wash of rapidly drying jade.
Chapter Text
> Be Latula
Rose’s stifled scream wrenches you awake just like it does every morning and, like every morning of the past few months, you pretend it doesn’t. After six and a half sweeps of marriage, you know that having disturbed you only makes it worse for her, no matter how you try to comfort her.
Well.
Unless instead of comforting her, you distract her. By ripping her clothes off and making her feel even worse.
But you can’t do that anymore.
Fuck this.
LATULA: so your3 flush3d for m3 huh?
ROSE: Oh, good morning to you too.
LATULA: your3 flush3d for m3
LATULA: you s41d th4t y3st3rd4y
LATULA: w3 gonn4 t4lk 4bout th4t or
ROSE: It was the heat of the moment
LATULA: no 1t w4snt b4b3
LATULA: k4rk4t s41d 1t w4s r34l 4nd h3 knows fuck1n 3v3ryth1ng
ROSE: He does, does he?
LATULA: 1 m34n som3on3 fuck1n h4s to
LATULA: 1snt gonn4 b3 us w3r3 fuck1n stup1d
LATULA: sp3c14lly you
LATULA: 4nd 1m 3v3n stup1d3r
ROSE: Riveting. Latula, I’d like to talk about this after getting some more sleep
LATULA: dont c4r3
ROSE: You dont care.
LATULA: dont c4r3 wh4t you w4nt
ROSE: Fine, then.
She starts getting out of bed.
You don’t stop her.
She stops herself.
She lays back down and snuggles up to you.
LATULA: no dont l34v3 wh4tll 1 doooo
Her hand thumps against your chest hard enough to make you wince.
ROSE: Fuck you!
She starts “actually” getting out of bed.
You don’t stop her.
She stops herself.
She lays back down and you snuggle up to her.
She pouts.
LATULA: 1 know you b4b3
LATULA: 1 know you
ROSE: You do, do you?
LATULA: 1 m34n som3on3 fuck1n h4s to
She stiffens, then trembles, then looks up at you with the most pathetic wiggler barkbeast face you’ve ever seen.
ROSE: Fuck you.
LATULA: fuck you >:}
She buries her face in your shoulder and does not cry, but she shivers.
LATULA: 1ts storyt1m3
ROSE: Story?
ROSE: Time?
LATULA: fuck1n storyt1m3 b4b3
LATULA: onc3 upon 4 t1m3 or wh4t3v3r?
LATULA: th3r3 w4s th1s tot4l n3rd n4m3d m1tun4 c4ptor
LATULA: 4nd h3 w4s fuck1n r4d1c4l 4nd w3 d4t3d flush 4nd 1 lov3d th3 sh1t out of h1m?
LATULA: 4nd w3 pl4y3d sgrub you know
LATULA: 1 w4s sup3r good 4t 1t cuz 1m fuck1n pro
LATULA: b3c4m3 4 fuck1n god 4nd sh1t
LATULA: h3 d1dnt
LATULA: h3
You take a long, long breath before saying the next part.
LATULA: h3 d1d som3th1ng stup1d
LATULA: 4nd br4v3
LATULA: 4nd 1 st1ll dont know 1f 1t w4s 4 m1st4k3
LATULA: 1 tr13d to stop h1m 4nyw4y
LATULA: couldnt
LATULA: 4nd h3 got hurt
LATULA: hurt b4d, l1k3, b4d b4d, l1k3 m3ss3d up h1s th1nkp4n b4d
LATULA: h3 w4snt th3 s4m3 4ft3r
LATULA: d1dnt g1v3 up on h1m
LATULA: w3 look3d for 4 w4y to m4k3 h1m b3tt3r
LATULA: 4nd th3n w3 d13d
LATULA: w3 turn3d 1nto fuck1n ghosts w1th 4ll th3 s4m3 fuck1n probl3ms th4t w3 h4d 4s fuck1n p3opl3
LATULA: 4nd th4t w4s 1t
LATULA: h3 w4s stuck l1k3 th4t for3v3r
LATULA: st1ll d1dnt g1v3 up on h1m
LATULA: for
LATULA: for 3ons
LATULA: 1 dont 3v3n know how long 4n 3on 1s b4b3
LATULA: l1k3 no bullsh1t 1v3 got no clu3
LATULA: t1m3s fuck3d 1n th3 furth3st r1ng
LATULA: 4ll 1 h4v3 1s how 1t f3lt
LATULA: 4nd 1t f3lt l1k3
LATULA: 1t f3lt l1k3 fuck1n 3ons b4b3
LATULA: 4nd 1ts so fuck3d up cuz l1k3 1t w4snt h1s fuck1n f4ult h3 got hurt
LATULA: 4nd 1 know 1t w4snt my f4ult
LATULA: 1 know th4t
LATULA: 4nd 1 usu4lly b3l13v3 1t.
LATULA: but wh4t3v3r, 1t w4snt f41r, 1t h4pp3n3d 4nyw4y, 4nd h3s just l1k3 th1s now 4nd 1
LATULA: c4nt
LATULA: h3lp
LATULA: h1m
LATULA: 4nd 3v3ntu4lly 1 fuck1n h4t3 h1m for 1t
LATULA: 1 know 1 told you h3 w4s gr34t b4b3 h3 w4s gr34t and 1 m1ss3d h1m 4nd
LATULA: 1 w4snt ly1ng
LATULA: 1 st1ll m1ss h1m
LATULA: th3 old h1m
LATULA: from b3forus
LATULA: from fuck1n 3ons b4ck
LATULA: th1s n3w on3? th3 on3 1 w4s stuck w1th?
LATULA: 1 should4 lov3d h1m
LATULA: h3 d3s3rv3d 1t
LATULA: h3 w4s 4 h3ro
LATULA: but should4 do3snt m4tt3r 4nd you c4nt f4k3 lov3
LATULA: not for 3ons
LATULA: 4nd 4ft3r 3ons 4ll 1 h4d w4s how 1 f3lt
LATULA: 1 h4t3d h1m so much b4b3
LATULA: 4nd not not p1tch h4t3 l1k3
LATULA: go 4w4y h4t3
LATULA: get th3 fuck 4w4y from m3 h4t3
LATULA: hum4n l4ngu4g3 do3snt h4v3 3nough fuck1n words
ROSE: The word you’re looking for is “divorce.”
LATULA: wh4t
ROSE: If you are looking to terminate our marriage.
LATULA: WH4T????
ROSE: Then divorce is the appropriate word to use. You may call it a Human Divorce if that makes the concept easier to assimilate.
You hold her very tightly, very, very tightly.
LATULA: b4b3 your3 not
LATULA: fuck1n just
LATULA: no just fuck1n l1st3n to m3
LATULA: just fuck1n l1st3n
ROSE: ...very well.
LATULA: s
LATULA: s
LATULA: storyt1m3
LATULA: so 1 w4s l1k3
LATULA: tr4pp3d?
LATULA: 4nd th3n
LATULA: fuck1n
LATULA: you com3 4long
LATULA: on 4n 4ctu4l l1t3r4l b34m of fuck1n l1ght 4nd sh1t
LATULA: 4nd your3 r34lly hot l1k3 r34lly
LATULA: r34lly hot
LATULA: 4nd your3 4 fuck1n n3rd too
LATULA: 4nd you h4d som3th1ng 1mport4nt for m3 to do
LATULA: th4t 1 could 4ctu4lly do
LATULA: 4nd 1 h4d 4
LATULA: 4 fuck1n 3xcus3
LATULA: to g1v3 up
LATULA: on poor fuck1n m1tun4
LATULA: 4nd 1 fuck1n h4t3d mys3lf for 1t
LATULA: 4nd 1 h4t3d you
LATULA: cuz l1k3 you w3r3 so fuck1n lucky
LATULA: cuz you h4d k4n4y4 for wh4t l1k3 two sw33ps
ROSE: ...my god and you had
ROSE: you had Mituna for
ROSE: eons
ROSE: and I made it
ROSE: all
ROSE: about
ROSE: me
LATULA: b3c4us3 you lov3d h3r!
LATULA: 1 d1dnt l1k3, *h4t3* you for *th4t* b4b3
LATULA: l1k3 1 w4s p1tch for you, you w3r3 flush for h3r, 1m a troll 1 w4snt j34lous
LATULA: not l1k3, th3n, not 4t f1rst
LATULA: not for 4 wh1le
LATULA: 1t w4s just th4t you h4d h3r for two sw33ps 4nd you couldnt stop lov1ng h3r? for sw33ps 4ft3r you lost h3r? 4nd 1 h4d m1tun4 for fuck1ng for3v3r 4nd 1 couldnt 3v3n lov3 h1m wh1l3 1 h4d h1m
LATULA: you d1dnt know how lucky you w3r3 th4t you st1ll h4d that lov3
LATULA: 4nd 1 h4t3d th3 fuck out of you for th4t
LATULA: for b31ng so fuck1ng lucky 4nd not s331ng 1t
LATULA: l1k3 4nd you st1ll h4d so m4ny of your fr13nds l3ft b4b3
LATULA: 4nd th3y 4ll fuck1n c4r3d 4bout you so much
LATULA: 1 h4d my own m4ry4m!
LATULA: 4nd v4nt4s
LATULA: 4nd leijon
LATULA 4nd 1 lost 4ll of th3m to g3t 4w4y from m1tun4 4nd h3lp your spo1l3d 4ss
LATULA: 4nd th3r3 you w3r3 just
LATULA: just w4lk1n 4round 4ct1ng l1k3 you h4d probl3ms
LATULA: 4nd b31n stuck up 4nd
LATULA: 3nt1tl3d 4nd
LATULA: 4nd so fuck1n hot
You hurl yourself over her, covering her with your body and you kiss her, bite her, begin savaging her and she responds and she fights you and you fight her and you
You roll back off of her and she screeches.
ROSE: What!!!! But...God dammit! UGGHHH!
LATULA: 1 c4nt 1 c4nt fuck1n hurt you anymor3!!!!
ROSE: Why. THE FUCK! Not!?
LATULA: b3c4us3 1 v4cill4t3d, b3c4us3 1m flush3d for you now
ROSE: What difference does that fucking make????
LATULA: wh4t do you
LATULA: fuck1n m34n 1
LATULA: why would 1 hurt you 1f 1 lov3 you
She stares at you like you’re a wiggler, like she isn’t the one being fucking stupid right now.
ROSE: The same reason you always did before! Because I fucking like it!
Wait, what?
ROSE: Because it comforts me in a way that nothing else can, because it forces me to acknowledge that my body is real and that someone desires both it and me, because momentary death with no dreams is an exquisite release of tension and stress, because proof that I do not deserve to stay dead is a balm to my fucking soul!
ROSE: The pain feels so unbelievably good, Latula, and I miss it so very very much!!!!
What.
The fuck?
LATULA: w41t
LATULA: you
LATULA: 1T DO3S????
ROSE: Of
ROSE: Course?
LATULA: s1nc3 fuck1n WH3N????
ROSE: Since.
ROSE: Ever? The the the
ROSE: The locker room, the what the fuck, the ablution block
LATULA: you l1k3d th4t?
ROSE: What do you mean???? Of course I liked it oh my god.
ROSE: Oh my god did you not?
ROSE: Like it????
ROSE: Oh my GOD!
LATULA: b4b3 you fuck1n k1ll3d m3 of cours3 1 d1dnt l1k3 it
ROSE: OH MY GOD WHY DID YOU LET ME DO THAT TO YOU THEN!!!!
LATULA: 1 didnt just l3t you b4b3 1 fuck1n told you to
ROSE: Why did you TELL ME TO
LATULA: b3c4us3 w3 w3r3
LATULA: p1tch
LATULA: wh4t do you 3v3n m34n
ROSE: Yes, pitch, that thing trolls do where you hurt each other and like it!!!!
LATULA: b4b3
LATULA: trolls dont l1k3 p1tch s3x
LATULA: why would w3 1t
LATULA: fuck1n hurts
ROSE: Oh my god all the things I’ve done to you all the things I’ve fucking done to you oh my god oh my god oh my god oh my god
LATULA: ROS3
That shuts her up. Fuck. Something had to.
LATULA: b4b3.
LATULA: b4b3 fuck1n l1st3n?
ROSE:
ROSE: Listening.
LATULA: ok4y 1 dont know? how hum4ns do 1t?
LATULA: 1 gu3ss? 1 thought 1 d1d but 1 gu3ss 1m fuck1n stup1d?
LATULA: trolls w3 dont
LATULA: l1k3 p1tch s3x but l1k3 1ts fun?
LATULA: l1k3 1ts not fun 1ts not fun 4t 4ll but
LATULA: w3 w3
LATULA: your stup1d hum4n l4ngu4g3 do3snt h4v3 3nough stup1d hum4n words!!!!
ROSE: Oh my god.
LATULA: dont fr34k out 4g41n b4b3!
ROSE: No, I just figured this out.
LATULA: f1gur3d wh4t out
ROSE: I’ve watched Star Trek. I should have seen it right away.
ROSE: I should have at least seen it at some point in the last seventeen years of fucking you, that I can say with no doubt in my mind.
ROSE: Latula, your species apparently experiences at least one additional emotion to mine. A whole separate set of biological impulses. Whatever this “pitch” is, humans cannot, apparently, comprehend it. It is a separate evolutionary drive to that which incentivizes flushed sex, not a variant of the same one, as I had always . . . well, assumed.
ROSE: Does that sound right to you?
LATULA: th4ts 4 lot of fuck1n words but 1 th1nk so?
ROSE: Pitch sex, is it, well, not good, but positive? Is it
She giggles. Humans are so dumb and weird.
ROSE: Is it radical?
LATULA: b4b3 1ts so fuck1n r4d1c4l
ROSE: Excellent. May we please continue doing it?
LATULA: fuck1n 1 c4444nt
ROSE: OH my god why NOT?
LATULA: look b4b3
LATULA: trolls?
LATULA: only hurt p3opl3 w3
LATULA: h4t3
LATULA: you hurt som3on3 cuz you
LATULA: h4t3 th3m
LATULA: 1 thought th4t w4s l1k3 obv1ous, l1k3 4n obv1ous w4y for 4 sp3c13s to b3?
ROSE: Bullshit, trolls never hurt anyone but their caliginous partners?
LATULA: no no no 1 m34n y34h of cours3 w3r3 l1k3 sup3r fuck1n v1ol3nt l1k3 1n g3n3r4l?
LATULA: 1 4ctu4lly c4nt st4nd? how v1ol3nt?
LATULA: but l1k3, p1tch is
LATULA: look you dont hurt p3ople you dont h4t3
LATULA: l1k3 y34h 4 lot of p3opl3 do but 1f you do your3 a b4d fuck1n person?
LATULA: look th4ts th3 fuck1n th1ng b4b3
You attempt to build a different way to put this than the way you’ve always put it in your head using nothing but the air around your fingers.
Turns out you can’t do much with that. Jegus troll christ fine.
LATULA: you know 1m not
LATULA: l1k3
LATULA: th3 m41n
LATULA: m3
LATULA: r1ght?
ROSE: You are not the Latula...Pyrope from the Beforan session’s alpha timeline, yes, I’m aware.
LATULA: y34h 4lph4 m3 r1ght
LATULA: whyd you pick m3 4g41n?
ROSE: You reached god tier. She, apparently, did not.
LATULA: r1ght y34h so
LATULA: 1 th1nk sh3 m1ghta b33n l1k3
LATULA: th3 b3tt3r m3?
LATULA: cuz l1k3 1 th1nk 4bout h3r 4 lot?
LARULA: wond3r if sh3s st1ll lik3
LATULA: out th3r3
LATULA: 1n th3 furth3st r1ng
LATULA: 1f sh3s st1ll w1th h3r m1tun4
LATULA: 4nd 1 th1nk
LATULA: god th4ts so fuck1n s4d
LATULA: for both of 3m
LATULA: 4nd th3n 1 g3t to be w1th som3body as fuck1n r4d1c4l 4s you inst34d
LATULA: 1 f33l l1k3 4 monst3r for s4y1ng y3s som3t1m3s
LATULA: l1k3 to th3 r1ng not to you b31ng my w1f3
LATULA: w3ll 1 m34n th4t too
LATULA: god 3sp3c14lly th4t
ROSE: I thought YOU were MY wife.
LATULA: b4b3
LATULA: you 4r3 for sur3 my fuck1n wif3
ROSE: ...very well.
LATULA: but l1k3 1 d1dnt know
LATULA: why 1 d1d 1t
LATULA: why 1 s41d y3s
LATULA: to th3 w1f3 th1ng
LATULA: b4ck th3n
LATULA: 1 just
LATULA: 1 just kn3w 1t
LATULA: w4snt 4 m1stak3?
LATULA: but m4yb3 1t w4s????
LATULA: l1k3
LATULA: god th3s3 past s3v3n sw33ps
LATULA: stuck 1n th1s fuck1n h1v3 1 c4nt l34v3
LATULA: f1x1ng th3 sh13lds tr41n1ng for noth1ng pl4y1ng fuck1n v1d3o g4m3s
LATULA: 1v3 b33n so fuck1n
ROSE: Miserable. I know.
LATULA: h4ppy, b4b3
LATULA: h4pp13r th4n 1 3v3r w4s w1th h1m!
LATULA: 3v3n b3for3 h3 got hurt
LATULA: 4nd th3n 4 f3w p3r1g33s 4go 1 r34l1z3d why 1 m4rr1ed your dumb fuck1n spo1l3d n3rdy hot fusch14 4ss
LATULA: 1ts b3c4us3 1t w4snt your f4ult you got hurt 31th3r
LATULA: but 1
LATULA: could
LATULA: h3lp
LATULA: you
LATULA: 4nd th4ts wh3n 1 r34l1z3d 1 lov3d you
LATULA: 1 th1nk 1 h4v3 for sw33ps
LATULA: but th4t m34ns 1m a fuck1n monst3r or som3 sh1t!
LATULA: b3c4us3 1
LATULA: 1 n3v3r
LATULA: 1 n3v3r stopp3d
LATULA: w4nt1ng
LATULA: to hurt you b4b3
LATULA: 4nd 1 th1nk
LATULA: 1 st1ll l1k3 1t
LATULA: wh3n you hurt m3?
LATULA: 3v3n though 1ts fuck1n
LATULA: wrong!!!!
ROSE: Latula, I literally just told you that I like it! Emphatically! With descriptions, quotations and a page of Works fucking Cited!
LATULA: but th4ts 4 hum4n th1ng! for trolls 1t m34ns 1m 4 fuck1n fr34k 4nd you d3s3rv3 som3on3 b3tt3r
She laughs. She actually laughs at you! At you! About this!
Wait, she’s not laughing at you. Well she is, but not about this. Well, about this, but.
Why does it not feel like she’s making a mistake?
ROSE: No I don’t.
LATULA: y3s you do b4b3
ROSE: Well, I don’t fucking care, because I don’t want someone “better.” I want you.
ROSE: Because I am also a fucking freak, and a monster.
LATULA: no your3 not your3 fuck1n 4w3som3
ROSE: Latula, I might be awesome, might, but I’m not normal.
ROSE: What I described to you about how I process pitch sex, I wasn’t talking about humans generally. I was talking about me.
ROSE: Getting off on violence isn’t normal for humans.
ROSE: It’s kink.
LATULA: wh4t the fuck 1s k1nk?
She is on you, ravenous, relentless, locking her mouth to yours, drinking you, breathing you in and keeping you, scrabbling against you with her stubby talons, digging them in as she arches resplendent above you, eyes full to the brim with nothing more or less than the thing that you needed more than anything else in the world to see. Her words fall like rain and they burn you, scour you, cleanse you.
ROSE: I love you so much, I love you so much, I love you so much, I cannot. Live. Without you. Latula Lalonde.
LATULA: h3y? cool? s4m3?
ROSE: Shut the fuck up.
> Be Dirk
DIRK: In answer to your unspoken question:
DIRK: No.
DIRK: I was not sure.
ROSE: How sure were you?
DIRK: A coin flip.
Rose patricidally flexes the fingers of both hands.
ROSE: So, let me make sure I understand this.
ROSE: You killed Jade on the strength of a fifty-fifty chance, without my leave, after you and I had a conversation wherein you indicated that the idea sickened you.
DIRK: You will recall that I never
ROSE: Very good, Dirk, yes, you never outright said that you wouldn’t do it, and the conversation never reached the point of me ordering you not to. You saw to that very tidily. Must I give you explicit instructions not to kill my friends, Dirk?
DIRK: I find it curious that they stop being assets
ROSE: When I care about them?
ROSE: I cared about Nepeta as well, and oh, that is my weakness, I’m a bleeding heart, so irrational, I am. Well at least I have a heart with which to bleed, Prince.
DIRK: You are acting like a child.
ROSE: I am acting incensed, Dirk!
ROSE: Why should I ever trust you again?
DIRK: Because I was right.
DIRK: Because we are at war.
DIRK: Because Operation Abscond would have failed without me.
DIRK: Because my mind works in ways that yours does not and thankfully cannot.
DIRK: Both my perspective and my methods are critical to your success.
ROSE: Not our success?
DIRK: Your success.
DIRK: Because you are the main character.
DIRK: And you know that.
DIRK: Damned.
DIRK: Well.
ROSE: Damned appears to be the operative word there.
DIRK: It has a certain additional relevance in this place, yes.
You find yourself once again acutely aware of your immortality, of the moment-to-moment reconstruction of both of your bodies. The process used to feel like a conservation, a tireless restoration of a set of museum pieces kept on constant display.
Now it feels like a factory.
DIRK: Would you like me to explain my actions in full and in so doing salvage a relationship of existential importance to the both of us, or would you like to tell me to eat shit and die?
Rose’s eyes close before you can see them roll. She half-vanishes into the softness of the chair.
ROSE: The former.
DIRK: Seventeen years ago, I floated the idea of healing Jade by resurrection. We discussed it, all of us, and agreed, again, all of us, including me, that the risk was too great, owing to the heroic origins of her injury. This made perfect sense, and the matter was closed. Or so I thought.
DIRK: Last week, she brought up the idea to me again. I told her no. With the addition of the Mother Grub, the risk of a heroic death became a guarantee. She agreed with me, but left unhappy.
DIRK: And then I couldn’t stop thinking about it.
Does she still respect your mind that much, to agree with your assessment that only something of genuine importance could preoccupy it? That that preoccupation is itself evidence of a thing’s importance?
You think she does.
DIRK: Two conversations separated by seventeen years.
DIRK: To a sane universe, that would be happenstance.
DIRK: To Skaia:
DIRK: It is a plotline.
DIRK: And Skaia likes its plotlines to have exciting conclusions.
Rose arches upwards out of her chair, the upholstery of its arms twisted in her grip, neck on the low headrest, heels on the floor, legs rigid as she attempts, seemingly, to break her own back for a moment. Then she slackens, and crashes back downward. She lays there, and sinks slowly as the cushions once again deflate to accommodate her, her face twisted into a grimace.
ROSE: I.
ROSE: Hate.
ROSE: That that sentence just granted you my full attention.
You allow yourself a sigh of profound relief in the form of a single, infinitesimally heavier intake and exhalation of air. Rose doesn’t notice it. Jake would have.
DIRK: So what story was being told?
DIRK: I considered the characters:
DIRK: The brave, computationally gifted, and above all resourceful Jade Harley. Witch of Space, First Guardian hybrid, diminished by injury in both capacities. Eager to please and desperate to prove her worth, with a propensity for emotional self-deception.
DIRK: The cold, analytically brilliant Dirk Strider. Prince of Heart, and nearly perfect in that capacity. Egomaniac. Withdrawn. Collected yet scattered, with a strong tendency toward self-destruction.
ROSE: Jesus Christ, Dirk, it is so weird when you do this.
DIRK: The premise of the story: Jade Harley has indicated a willingness to die to achieve a personal goal, and not just to die, but to be murdered at the hands of an ally.
DIRK: This is a moment so sublimely dramatic and so utterly in keeping with the exact kind of story Skaia prefers to tell that it makes sense to assume that it will, in fact, happen.
DIRK: So why would it happen? What would achieve the necessary drama?
DIRK: A sudden, shocking betrayal would require an unwilling Jade Harley who enjoyed a closer relationship with Dirk Strider than he had any intention of fostering.
DIRK: “Enjoyed” is not the word I would choose.
ROSE: “Enjoyed” is not the
ROSE: You bastard.
DIRK: I was never born, in wedlock or otherwise.
ROSE: Fuck off.
DIRK: But Dirk Strider was, in this thought experiment, destined to do it. Jade Harley had approached Dirk Strider, and no one else in this bunker would ever dream of countenancing the idea regardless. It was possible that Dirk Strider
ROSE: Please just say “I”, I am begging you.
DIRK: It was possible that I would do it; therefore it had to be me.
DIRK: From a drama standpoint, the only scenario that made any sense if it did have to be me concerned not some unlikely ad-hoc bond forming between the two of us, but rather a calculated metanarrative triumph on my part at personal cost primarily to myself.
DIRK: Because successfully exploiting the mechanics of Sburb in a self-sacrificial manner sure to piss off nearly all of my friends
ROSE: ...is exactly the kind of thing that Dirk Strider would do.
DIRK: Yes.
ROSE: Fucking hell.
DIRK: Especially if one of them.
DIRK: If the main one.
DIRK: Was Jake English.
ROSE: Oh dear god...
DIRK. The sole point of connection between me and Jade.
DIRK: That is a framework, a pattern to be recognized, but neither means nor motive.
DIRK: I would never do it if I thought it wouldn’t work.
DIRK: So why would it work?
DIRK: Let’s look at scenarios where it doesn’t, where she stays dead.
DIRK: Any scenario involving a just death would require Jade to deserve one. She did not. That’s out.
DIRK: A heroic death was, as discussed, a possibility. The Grub. The troll species. Jade’s desperation to prove her worth.
DIRK: So what was the exploit? How would I thread the needle?
DIRK: The answer, as I reached it, was as follows:
DIRK: Jade’s death would be neither heroic nor just if it happened in a moment of bleakest despair and failure.
ROSE: Jesus, Dirk.
DIRK: But there was a problem with that, Rose: she was already in despair. I saw that when she talked to me.
ROSE: No, she wasn’t, though, She told me herself.
DIRK: Yes, she was. You will recall the final item of her dossier: her propensity for emotional self-deception.
Rose starts to get it.
ROSE: You bastard.
DIRK: I couldn’t kill her then; she had just heroically asked me to do it and, moreover, she hadn’t failed yet. And had she stayed in that pit of despair, the sight of the impossible task before her during the mission itself—and of course it always was going to be impossible—could well have inspired her to be brave, to rise up, and still fail, but not for lack of trying. Like a hero.
ROSE: You bastard!
DIRK: So she had to go in with optimism, and be brought low by reality, so low that she didn’t even try at all.
ROSE: You manipulated me! You manipulated her! Through me!
DIRK: This morning, I explained all of this to her in precisely the same terms as I am to you now. She gave me a hug, and told me it was the nicest thing anyone had ever done for her. If that matters to you.
ROSE: It does not! Fuck you!
DIRK: Which brings us to the latter concern: motive.
ROSE: No, shut up. Shut the fuck up. Who are you, my mother? I don’t give a damn about why
DIRK: Yes, you do. And you already know why.
DIRK: Would you like to say it, or should I save you the heartache and do it for you?
She is not on her feet in a rage. She is not shouting, or gesticulating, or engaging in any histrionics whatsoever. She is, rather, curled up into a fetal ball and letting the walls close in around her.
ROSE: You did it. So I would not. Have to live with myself. After giving you the order.
ROSE: Because if you had told me all of this then, I would have had.
ROSE: No.
ROSE: Choice.
DIRK: When I began to realize that Operation Abscond was not an elaborate attempt at suicide on your part, I began to believe that the mission would succeed.
DIRK: In not insubstantial part because I would have to kill Jade Harley to make it succeed.
ROSE: For me.
DIRK: Because you are the main character.
ROSE: God dammit.
She is sitting up now, and utterly still, like a hunted beast is still, like a stone perched atop a cliff is still.
ROSE: Did you tell Jade that part?
DIRK: Which part?
ROSE: That it was for me, Dirk! That her life or death was wagered in a pantomime of tribute to me!
DIRK: It was no pantomime.
ROSE: I wish it was.
DIRK: Would that make it easier?
ROSE: Yes.
ROSE: Maybe?
ROSE: I.
ROSE: The story has to be real, I know that, the story has to be real or Skaia will not accept it. So it doesn’t matter, because it always will be, won’t it?
ROSE: Never a dull moment. Never a motion to go through, never a role to phone in. Not when it matters. Not when Skaia demands its pound of flesh.
ROSE: Dirk, I.
ROSE: Please don’t take this the wrong way.
ROSE: I don’t wish that your gesture was insincere.
Her hand hovers over her heart.
ROSE: I wish that I didn’t appreciate it.
ROSE: I think that might make it easier.
You nod.
DIRK: I understand exactly, precisely what you mean.
ROSE: Did. You. Tell. Her.
DIRK: She deserved to know.
Her mouth tightens, her brow furrows, a small, tight quake of her entire person, and then she nods, her hand relaxes, sinks back down to her side, and she closes her eyes.
ROSE: What did she say?
DIRK: She asked me to tell you that she is there if you need to talk.
She does not begin to weep, and you cannot bring yourself to push her over that edge, even though it might mean she would not ask what she will now ask.
ROSE: Dirk, you said this was a coin flip. What you just described was not. A coin flip. It was certainty.
You would not have given her that crumb to follow but for the fact that she asked you how sure you had been, and you could not lie to her. Because if you lie to her even once during this conversation, she will never trust you again, and she will be right not to.
Damn her and damn you.
ROSE: What was on the other side of the coin, Dirk?
DIRK: The chance that I was wrong about all of this.
DIRK: The chance that you were wrong about Operation Abscond.
ROSE: So you killed Jade to make this the timeline where we were right.
DIRK: No.
DIRK: I think I would have killed Jade either way.
ROSE: What?
DIRK: I think that either I would have killed her to facilitate the mission, as I did, or I would have killed her to doom the timeline.
ROSE: What.
DIRK: I have a theory, or, rather, a suspicion:
DIRK: We cannot die.
ROSE: What
DIRK: I think that any timeline where any of us die a heroic or just death is automatically doomed.
ROSE: That is absurd, Dirk.
DIRK: That doesn’t make it untrue, though I’m not entirely convinced of it myself regardless. It’s essentially unprovable so any-
ROSE: You are forbidden to try.
ROSE: I mean it, Dirk. I don’t know where the hell you are going with this, but before we take one step further into this conversation, let me make this abundantly clear. You are forbidden to experiment with this concept in any way without direct and explicit approval from me, and you are forbidden to discuss this with anyone but me for any reason. That is an order.
ROSE: And I think you told me about this because you wanted me to give you that order.
DIRK: Affirmative.
DIRK: And because, having given me that order, you will follow it as well. Particularly the part about discussion. This cannot leave this room, Rose.
ROSE: Agreed.
ROSE: Please explain your reasoning.
DIRK: Terezi has made herself as essential to the timeline of this universe as Lord English made himself essential to mine.
DIRK: Perhaps not to the same degree but in the same way.
DIRK: She has a plan, a grand vision, and within that vision she is the villain and we are the heroes. Nothing else could possibly explain her actions. And whatever goal this plan of hers has, about which I, incidentally, have no guesses whatsoever, it certainly involves we the heroes being in a holding pattern. Indefinitely. And that requires all of us. Because each of us is critical to the continuation of at least one other.
ROSE: Was Jade a test of this?
DIRK: Is that a question you want to know the answer to?
ROSE: Yes.
ROSE: Yes, Dirk, I need to know this.
ROSE: Even if it breaks me.
ROSE: Even if it breaks us.
ROSE: And definitely if it breaks you, because so help me god, Dirk, if you
You hold up your hand, and she stops.
You remove your shades, slowly, soberly, and make direct eye contact with her, baring as much of yourself as you can in that moment.
DIRK: No.
She flashes out of the chair and knocks the wind out of you with her embrace.
ROSE: Do not test this.
DIRK: I won’t.
ROSE: I don’t know if you’re right about this, but do not test it, I know you, Dirk. You’d test it on yourself. You would. Yes, you would, and I would fall apart without you.
DIRK: I exaggerated earlier. You’d get by without
ROSE: Don’t say that.
ROSE: Don’t make that a plotline.
DIRK: Skaia wouldn’t know what fucking hit it if it tried to come for me.
ROSE: It would have to go through me.
DIRK: Now who’s making plotlines?
ROSE: Fuck you, Dirk.
ROSE: I’m the main goddamned character.
DIRK: You’re an idiot.
DIRK: You’re my idiot.
DIRK: And I would fall apart without you.
You are not crying. Certainly not. Neither is she. Certainly not.
You and your daughter hold each other until you stop doing whatever.
ROSE: Dirk.
Oh, no.
ROSE: How bad did it get.
ROSE: With Jake?
Shit.
ROSE: I know you two haven’t been close for a long time, but you’re at least...cordial, surely he-
DIRK: He told me to eat shit and die.
DIRK: And he meant it.
DIRK: We are no longer friends by any meaning of the word.
She stands there like a tree in the midst of being felled. Dammit. Well, you do have a plan for this.
DIRK: And you will stop right there. That is my affair, and his, and nothing to do with you. I ask that you spare it not a moment’s fucking thought, in reciprocation for the fact that I have always stayed at considerable distance from your relationship with Latula.
ROSE: Me and...Latula? I suppose you have, but, why was that, something to be reciprocated for?
DIRK: Well, it’s not as though it cost me anything to do so; I don’t particularly care what you do with whom, and, indeed, actively do not want to know.
DIRK: But the fact of the matter is that I am the Prince of Heart. And the best way to give the two of you a chance is to keep myself as far away from that part of your life as possible.
ROSE: You.
ROSE: You make jokes about Dave and Karkat all the time, though.
DIRK: Dave and Karkat could withstand a hurricane.
ROSE: And Latula and I could not, is the implication?
DIRK: Would you like me to answer that question, or would you like me to continue staying at considerable distance
ROSE: I’m grateful.
ROSE: And I am aware that this is a distraction.
DIRK: Yes it is. And I’ll thank you to respect both it, and my wishes, and be distracted by it.
She breathes in, and out, and nods. She hugs you again, and you hug her back. When she leaves, you collapse into the chair she had been sitting in.
And wallow.
> Be Roxy
Two weeks after Operation Abscond, you walk, invited, into Rose’s room for the first time in your life.
ROSE: Thank you for coming to speak with me, Roxy.
ROSE: I wanted to...
ROSE: Look, you and I don’t.
ROSE: I’ve been.
ROSE: I wanted to thank you.
ROSE: For saving Latula’s life.
ROXY: omg shut up
ROXY: ur such a fucking idiot
ROSE: Um.
ROXY: uve been a fucking idiot every day 4 the last seventeen fucking years
ROSE: Um?
ROXY: i didnt save latch 4 u i saved latch bc im a good person
ROXY: ur not the only thing i think about rose
ROXY: not the only person i care about
ROXY: and i do care
ROXY: i care a lot
ROXY: i love you rose
ROSE: Please leave.
ROXY: that’ll b the day
ROXY: i mean it was the day, for seventeen fuckin years
ROXY: not gonna keep bein the day
ROXY: tha days they r a changin
ROSE: I don’t have time for this.
ROXY: i know what you did.
You literally see her blood run cold.
ROXY: wut u thought about doin
ROSE: Get out.
ROXY: wut u tried to do
ROSE: GET OUT.
ROXY: SHUT THE FUCK UP ROSE
She shuts up.
She shuts all the way up.
She is motionless, her face a mask of terror and hatred. Too bad for her you know which part is a mask and which is a fucking lie.
ROXY: how u wanna do this?
ROXY: u wanna fight?
ROXY: like u and dirk fought?
ROXY: want me to fucking hurt you?
ROXY: treat you like shit?
ROXY: like u treated me like shit for seventeen years?
ROXY: like u tried to steal my chance to bring callie back so u could bring back kanaya!?
Her mouth parts and no sound comes out. She had been hoping you were bluffing.
ROXY: well guess what rose
ROXY: u only did one a those things
ROXY: u treated me like shit for seventeen years
ROXY: and im pissed off about that one
ROXY: but not about the other one
ROXY: bc u didnt
ROXY: FUCKING
ROXY: DO THAT
ROSE: Yes I did.
ROXY: I TOLD YOU TO SHUT UP
ROXY: JEGUS didnt wanna TALK to me for seventeen years NOW you wanna
ROXY: you dont get to you get to listen!!!!
ROXY: you DIDNT do that rose!!!
ROXY: you THOUGHT ABOUT IT
ROSE: I asked Skaia if Kanaya would work
ROXY: god u r SO bad at this DIRECTIONS thing okay yeah thats what i thought u did
ROXY: you know what thats called?
ROXY: thats called fukken THINKING ABOUT IT
ROXY: u know who else thought about it?
ROXY: I DID!!!
ROXY: bc im not a FUKKEN! IDIOT LIKE YOU!!!
Okay she’s crying now time to back off a little.
ROXY: me and callie talked about it rose
ROXY: we talked about it before you ever even knew about latch!
ROXY: she tried to give up the ring for kanaya
ROXY: and i wouldnt let her bc i loved her
ROXY: but if youd asked me to give you the ring for kanaya?
ROXY: fuck terezi just
ROXY: cuz u wanted it
ROXY: i woulda said yes bc i love u too
ROXY: and then thatd be 2 people i love askin me and i couldn say no to both of them!!!
ROXY: and if kanaya woulda WORKED? against TEREZI??
ROXY: rose we woulda made u take the ring!!!!!
When did you start crying too? Probably around the same time Rose did actually. Rose, by the way, is making a sound like a dying swan right now so you hug her and she actually doesn’t throw you off so that’s pretty nice.
ROXY: if youd done it without asking
ROXY: i woulda hated u
ROXY: i woulda hated u so much 4ever and ever and ever like u think i do
ROXY: but u didnt do that
ROXY: u thought about it!!!
ROXY: that doesn make u a bad person rose it just means u loved ur girlfriend god dammit youre so stupid
ROXY: and im sorry i waited seventeen fukken years to tell you all this but really im not sorry bc
ROXY: rose ur so stupid u didnt believe i didnt hate u for callie!
ROXY: even though u asked and we said yes and it was the right thing to do
ROXY: youd NEVER!!
ROXY: have believed i didnt hate u for being human
ROXY: cuz u could never forgive urself for that
ROXY: but i forgive u rose
She screams.
She ruins her throat screaming. She screams until she can’t make noise anymore. She shakes until she can’t move anymore. You hold her the whole time. She doesn’t throw you off.
And even this is not enough.
ROXY: and rose u still dont believe me
ROXY: not really
ROXY: not all the way
ROXY: i knew u wouldnt
ROXY: cuz ur dumb
ROXY: so i
ROXY: i brought proof?
You get up, and without your arms around her, Rose sinks backwards onto the bed in a daze. When you come back into the room, her eyes are closed.
So you put your proof down gently on her chest. She immediately flies to bewildered alertness.
ROXY: so a week ago i got drunk again
ROXY: dun remember why
ROXY: think it was like a one last time kinda thing
ROXY: and i waited the week 2 tell u bc wanted to make sure it was one last time kinda thing
ROXY: and to make sure she wasnt gonna like
ROXY: die
ROXY: like she came out wrong or whatever
ROXY: but shes fine
ROXY: shes normal
ROXY: dun remember how i did it
ROXY: prolly never will
ROXY: but her name is jaspers the second and shes urs
ROXY: u dont get a say
The gorgeous gray kitten rubs itself against Rose’s trembling hand.
ROXY: im gonna visit her a lot tho
ROXY: dun get a say bout that either
You visit Jaspers the Second every day.
Rose never once asks you to leave.
Within six months, she is calling you Mother.
Within a year, the matriorb hatches.
Within three years, the first clutch of eggs is laid. It is a very, very small clutch of no more than three or four thousand. Jade begins expanding the bunker with your help, and the two of you uncover a massive underground cave system of glistening igneous rock. Operation Accelerate liberates the surviving jades from the troll kingdom, including one Swifer Eggmop, and the cavern teems with activity and hope.
Rose and Latch occasionally vacillate. They often fight. They precisely as often make up.
They adopt a girl and name her Kanaya, a boy and name him Mituna, and suddenly you are a grandmother.
Soon afterwards, Jade confides to you, all lowered ears and tucked tail, that she’s always wanted a child as well. She is surprised, but happy, to learn that the two of you have been dating for years. You laugh, and marry her, and have twins: Becky and Zazzerpan. That Rose is in your life to be extremely irritated by the latter is most of the reason you did it.
You are deliriously, ridiculously, indescribably happy in a way you never thought possible.
All of you work tirelessly as the bunker becomes an arcology. Operation Assimilate frees more trolls, and Operation Accumulate more after that, and their voices echo off of the brightly painted designs that never stop appearing no matter how many gray on gray on gray on gray tunnels and passageways and blocks that you construct, and maintain, and populate.
Twenty-three years after Operation Abscond, Operation Ascend results in the liberation of the entire troll kingdom, forming the troll nation of Gameria (name courtesy of Latch) and giving the resistance its first foothold on the surface of Earth C. Terezi erects colossal walls around her remaining territory and the war enters a cold period. The celebrations last for weeks.
Rose’s nightmares never stop. The eight of you never age a day past the crest of adulthood.
Neither does Jaspers the Second.
You’re not quite sure why.
Oh well. Just another thing to be happy about.
Right now, you’re watching trollevision with your kids and grandkids, and cuddling with Jade, while Jaspers the Second purrs on your lap. You stare into her deep, olive-colored eyes that seem like they know goddamn everything.
She stares back.
And purrs.
smellydotcom on Chapter 2 Sat 17 May 2025 09:38PM UTC
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Madam_Melon_Meow on Chapter 3 Sat 17 May 2025 09:44PM UTC
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froginthebog on Chapter 3 Mon 19 May 2025 03:39AM UTC
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