Chapter Text
-rose?
There’s so much wrong with his voice. It’s clear and pure as blue crystal, an April birthstone; if you held it up to the sun it would throw dancing spots of colour on your wall. It has no cracks, no veins. It’s a child’s voice, still – a child who’s trying hard to be brave, to be a man, but who isn’t there yet and knows it. She runs her tongue along the inside of her teeth.
-rose, can you hear me?
-um.
-wow, this is really awkward, haha.
She knows just how he’d scream. He’s never been hurt, not really, not like some of the others have, and that’s precious. You never forget your first time; it breaks you, breaks you inside, and you never really go back together. That first shattering note of a thing undone.
-karkat says we shouldn’t talk to you.
-he says we’ll make it worse.
-but i think that’s really stupid!
-i mean, not that karkat’s stupid, he’s really smart and his plans are great.
-but he doesn’t know you like i do, rose.
No, John. He knows me better. He knows trouble, and you don’t. Get away.
-do you remember back when we started playing?
-and you were trying to work out how to build my house up to the first gate?
-oh man, we had like twenty grist or something, it was so crazy!
-and i was just basically in this huuuuge panic because my living room was full of imps.
-and they were getting that gross black slime on everything and messing with my pogo ride.
-i don’t know what i’d have done if you hadn’t been there, rose.
-you were just like, john.
-john, stay focused. come on. it’s only an incredibly sweet pogo ride.
-i’ve always wondered if the game knew which server players to assign, somehow?
-i know that sounds really weird!
-but if i hadn’t had you as my server player i’d have been so screwed, i mean seriously.
-it would have been like... a screw party, of just all this being screwed happening pretty much all the time, and all the snacks have also been screwed.
-uh, yeah.
-i’m not as good at those as dave is.
-but you know he’d just have made fun of me, he’d have been like oh man fuck this noise, imma go make a terrible comic that isn’t even funny, because i am a butt.
-and jade would have gotten really upset, i think.
-i’d have been all oh noooo and she’d have been all oh noooooooo and we’d just have got stuck in some kind of weird feedback loop.
-or maybe she’d have done her spooky enigmatic knowing the future thing and been totally unhelpful, bluh.
-but you were just right.
-you stopped me freaking out, you were so sensible.
-it was like you were totally in control, even if you did trash part of my house.
-and to be honest i’m freaking out a bit now, rose.
-so...
-i don’t know, calm me down!
-be the sensible one.
-wow, if karkat heard this he’d say i was hitting on you so hard.
-which i’m not!
-that would be REALLY weird.
-he’d say i was, i don’t know, turning pale for you or something.
-but i just want my friend back.
-...
-rose, can you hear me?
-JOHN, NO, WHAT THE FUCK.
-GET AWAY FROM THAT MIC, YOU UNBELIEVABLE FUCKING MORON.
-I AM DEADLY FUCKING SERIOUS, DROP IT.
He is, too. She can hear real terror in his voice, terror for his friend, and she hisses a little with pleasure at the knowledge.
-I EXPLICITLY SAID –
-i know, karkat, jeez! but i’m not just going to stick her away down here and ignore her!
-YES, JOHN, YES YOU ARE.
-THAT IS EXACTLY WHAT YOU ARE GOING TO FUCKING DO.
-YOU ARE GOING TO STICK HER AWAY DOWN HERE AND YOU ARE GOING TO FUCKING IGNORE HER COMPLETELY OR I SWEAR TO GOG I WILL CHAIN YOU TO ANOTHER, ENTIRELY DIFFERENT WALL ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE FUCKING STATION.
-ANYTHING YOU TELL HER IS JUST GOING TO GIVE HER MORE POWER, DO YOU UNDERSTAND?
-SHE’S A MINDWITCH, JOHN. A BRAIN-RAPIST.
-STARTING UP A FRIENDLY FUCKING CHAT WITH HER IS LIKE LEAVING YOUR HIVE DOOR UNSEALED AND THEN GOING FOR A LONG RELAXING SOAK IN THE GOGDAMNED TRAP.
-we weren’t even talking, i mean she doesn’t say anything, i was just –
Their voices move out of range of the microphone, become faint fuzzing noises and are lost altogether. Silence trickles back down the walls. Rose Lalonde shifts in her chains so that the cold iron burns more fiercely against her wrists and ankles, and tries not to go to sleep.
* * *
In her nightmares she always escapes.
It doesn’t matter how; it never does, in dreams. She’s just free, free to whisper and slither down the dark tunnels of the station, toes brushing the floor, the ragged skirts of her dress grown impossibly long and fluttering out behind her like wings, free to sniff the cold metallic air and tongue her cracked lips and moan with the hunger of it.
One by one they try to fight. Karkat’s usually first; he runs at her screaming, eyes wild, sickles clenched in his fists, hellbitch, I knew we should have fucking thrown you out an airlock, but it’s not real rage, it’s terror playing dress-up, and she’s not interested. She punches a shadow through his gut and up into his chest, lets it twist and rummage wetly for a couple of seconds as he gurgles in disbelief, then backhands him into the wall and sweeps on. She doesn’t even bother to watch him die.
John begs her to remember who she is. It seems only right that even his last words should miss the point. She stares into his blue, blue eyes, wide and scared behind his stupid glasses, and then drives a slim tendril through each one with a soft crack of glass and a squelch of jelly. How’s that for humour, little prankster? He flops around like a fish on a hook, making high inarticulate noises, until she snaps her fingers and he bursts like rotten fruit.
She licks him off the corner of her mouth and keeps going.
Dave is waiting like a samurai, but the blade shakes and he’s crying, really crying, tears are trickling down from under his shades, and she’s disgusted to think she was ever related to this creature, that any part of her ever loved him. She takes a minute to punish him, snakes of black ice finding every gate and weakness in his body and wrenching their way inside deliciously slow, and by the time he finally dies she’s confident he’s seen the irony, and happy that the thing left over no longer looks like her, or human. She drops it with a damp slap on the tunnel floor and drifts on, humming a tune.
Jade, strangely, never tries to fight. She doesn’t even try to talk. She just looks up at Rose with big, sad eyes, and alone of them all she’s not scared. For a second fury boils in Rose’s gut – how dare this stupid little buck-toothed girl not fear her? – but then something like weariness takes over, and she cuts Jade in half at the waist with a single strike and is gone before the blood stops spurting.
That one always leaves her unsatisfied, somehow.
* * *
-so hey lalonde
-imma paint you a picture okay
-here we are you and me in this kind of crazy baroque laboratory
-screens all up the fucking wall
-tubes and shit everywhere
-theres this holographic projection of some chick wearing a load of toilet paper basically just spazzing out in the middle of the room for no apparent goddamn reason
-im this loudmouth white asshole whos sort of a jerk but also a really fucking incredible rapper
-just imagine me with a buzzcut and youve pretty much got it tbh
-you
-now i know this is a stretch
-but youre a massive black dude with these completely preposterous guns
-i mean jesus youre built like a fuckin sherman tank
-youve clearly done dick for the last year but guzzle whey powder and bench a rhino
-so okay i get what youre thinking
-whats my motivation in this scene
-how should i deliver my opening line
-but its cool
-cause youre in a coma or some shit
-like all laid out on an old fashioned ventilator with an oxygen mask
-members of the international institute for gratuitous fucking product placement wandering round in labcoats rubbing their wangs on each others smart phones and grunting
-btw our new model is fully wang compatible ladies and gents
-nice crisp close up of the hp logo as jism splatters across the hyper sensitive touch screen
-accidentally starting two text messages and a game of angry birds
-nothing says buy our shit like bukkake right
-anyway just when the youtube audience at home are like holy mother of christ wtf is this i could have watched the entire of jack sparrow by now
-i kick this bitch off
-get my fuckin flow on just tight as hell
-start talking bout
-like
-what the fuck am i even meant to do
-like i aint got shit if youre not here
-i mean fuck
-i just
-im trying to make this funny but it aint coming
-i cannot fucking cope with this at all
-rose goddammit
-nows the part where you say lol punkd
-cmon quit this grimm shado witchalok crap and get your pallid ass back out here
-ill tell you all my most dong packed dreams
-ill make one up specially about how i fell in a snakepit and then got kind of prodded at by hundreds of long hard swords and then a rocket took off
-ill make you a fucking cup of tea i dont even care if my balls shrivel up like sultanas
-fucking smile at me
-please
-get up rose im dying i need you
-come back for fucks sake
And something tiny trapped inside her lies down on the ground and howls for grief.
* * *
Days pass, probably. Little Rose, objective Rose, the Rose who doesn’t get off on all the ways she’s going to kill her friends, notes that she no longer needs to eat. Shortly after that she takes a sort of inventory of bodily functions and realises with ice-water fascination that she’s not breathing any more; hasn’t been for God knows how long. Once that’s on the table she spends a relatively pleasant couple of hours distracted, unable to focus on anything but the way her chest isn’t lifting and sinking, the way if she forces the muscles to work and pull in a lungful of sterile filtered air it just feels weird and awkward ‘til she blows it back out; like putting a ball-bearing on your tongue and waiting for it to dissolve.
She is, officially, dead.
Well, not quite. Death is notoriously hard to define – the problem, of course, is how do you tell it apart from life – but she seems to remember the cessation of consciousness is required, and she’s still conscious, even if she wishes she weren’t. But her body has stopped, and she can’t help feeling that’s a significant point on any downward curve you choose to draw. An axis has been crossed. y is less than 0. The jury’s still out on x.
Presumably the darkness is keeping everything in one piece. Perhaps it isn’t? Perhaps she’s going to rot? Sit glumly on the cold stone floor of her brain while the blood curdles and goes thick around her, skin turns papery, eyes and organs crumple. She watched a documentary about forensics once. What order does it happen in? What goes first? How long before bits actually start dropping off?
They all come to see her sometimes, except Kanaya. Kanaya, Jade informs her sorrowfully, just can’t bear it. I think it makes her too sad, Rose! Rose knows better. Sadness wouldn’t stop Kanaya Maryam. Disappointment’s another matter. They say you should never meet your favourite authors, and that goes double when they’re stapled to a wall, making noises like something blowing tar through a straw. The whole business is appallingly undignified. Kanaya wouldn’t like it.
Terezi’s a regular, though, which figures; frequency of visits and respect for Karkat Vantas’ leadership abilities are inversely proportional. She’s there nearly as often as Dave – chiding, nagging, mocking, goading. Pathetic, Seer! They told me you were strong. It’s a good tactic, a lot better than John’s, and were their roles reversed Rose thinks she’d probably be doing the same. She appreciates it. But it doesn’t work. What she really wishes is that they’d all just stay away, because the thing in her is getting stronger and it’s getting smarter. She’s learnt to feel them, now, up there in the booth behind sheet steel and troll Plexiglas, even when they say nothing; bright coloured shapes that wobble and shine, swirly blotches of life on a dead black slide. Dave is a jagged scribble of oranges and cream and he makes her hungry. Jade is a chiming harmony, green and gold like Sir Gawain. And most often of all there’s the fizzing, crackling knot of angry scarlet that translates as Karkat. He never talks, never says a word, and if it wasn’t for her new party trick she’d never know he was there. But he is, every day, sometimes for hours. Math should have told her as much.
One space of time she wakes from winding an obsidian ribbon round Terezi’s slim throat and feels a new light, a sound-shade that’s not in her lexicon yet, and thinks: Kanaya! But it can’t be. It’s iron grey, hard to make out, and cold, and it hums. Vibrates: something electrical, a fridge, a computer, the low drone of cooling systems. It tastes like licking the top of a Coke can. And every minute or so – no, lazy, every minute, sharp as isotopes – it flashes with colour so bright it hurts her teeth. Red. Then blue. Then back to red.
She’s not even sure it’s a person. But it’s new, so she has to try. The same way she does every time, she sends out a thought, the tiniest thought she can think, white and feeble like a new root from a bulb, nothing fierce or demonstrative enough to trip the alarms and drown her brain in black thrashing brine, and she thinks:
help me
And a voice – crisp, a little nasal, plainly surprised – says okay.