Chapter Text
It’s difficult, you think. Loneliness.
In the new universe, in the new place, the trees stretch on forever. You’ve never seen these many trees, not even when you and your dad would go camping. And stay in the woods for days and days and then you’d have to use the bathroom in the woods even though you felt like everything was watching you pee.
In this new universe, though, this new place, it doesn’t feel like anything’s watching. There are hardly any bugs buzzing, where you ended up, and the few wild animals you all have spotted have run away. It’s a place that feels abandoned, not a place that feels new again.
Of course, none of you have ventured much farther than your valley and your glittering new city. At least, not without Jade. The fear of being lost in the forest with no way back again is something that eats at all of you, you think. It certainly eats at you. You prefer to hang out above the city, somewhere near the top of the tower Rose designed for the 16 of you, and watch everyone below you.
It’s not lonely up here. The wind never stops talking.
And sometimes you can hear what people are talking about. The wind takes their conversations and propels them up, up, up the side of the tower. It’s fun. You feel like sort of an asshole and sort of like a voyeur at dinner, but it’s fun in the moment.
You let yourself fall, incorporeal for a moment, and spread out just as you hit the ground. Pulling yourself together, you let your feet touch the ground. You’ve lost your shoes somewhere, and it’s not like you need them anymore. The small stones Rose paved the city with bite into the soles of your feet.
If you’d had to stay out there, in that empty and dying universe by yourself, you don’t know what you would have done. You feel like you probably would have withered away and let yourself just get blown to shreds. Let all your pieces dance and whisper through the empty spaces between stars. Even the word loneliness is difficult.
The tower that Rose built for all of you is huge, stretching up 12 stories. She used mostly you and Jade and Prospeterian labor, and you’re still not 100% sure how she got all the glass in all the windows, but you think it looks amazing. The tower hardly looks like it exists, like it’s just a reflection of everything around it. The rest of Can Town takes up the rest of the valley, small half-buried bunkers with warm lights and paths winding through them. You wouldn’t have minded living in one of those, but Rose insisted that all 16 of you live together.
“It will be fun. And, I feel like if we all live in a cooperating living system, we can keep an eye on each other and make decisions more effectively and comprehensively. Okay?” There wasn’t really anything you could use to argue against her, so they’d all just sort of moved in. You move through the glass doors and into the lobby. It’s almost as though Rose was expecting this tower to house not only all of you, but another group of people as well. Like she was expecting more than your sessions.
The tower is quiet.
It smells of loneliness and disinfectant.
The first three stories are what you would expect from a typical apartment, aside from the fact that no one really occupies the rooms. Jade has a room full of dogs on the first floor, you think, and you know Kanaya has a workshop somewhere around here. And you’re pretty sure Karkat was, at one point, trying to get someone to install a home theater, but you don’t think that ever happened. If he had got it, he wouldn’t have let anyone watch anything other than shitty romcoms. Not like your way more sophisticated action flicks.
And then, up the grand set of stairs in the back of the lobby and you’re up in the courtyard.
The courtyard is probably your most favorite place.
It stretches up, up, up, eight stories high. All open space, carved out from the inside of the tower. There’s plants and stuff around the bottom, and some walkways and a little platform so people can stand up there and yell about shit to their heart’s content, and then above that there are bridges. Spiderwebs of bridges, all above your head. You think that Rose probably came up with this place just for you.
You leap and soar, your shirt billowing up under your armpits momentarily before coming back down to cover your stomach. Your room is at the top, right underneath the glass roof. Right up on top, watching over everybody.
You don’t think you’re lonely, you just know you have the potential to be, and that frightens you. You think it would be easy, to get lonely in a place as small as this, and never figure out how to become not-lonely again. Like getting lost in the woods and never coming home. Sort of aimlessly wandering just out of sight of what you’re trying to get back to.
Your room is pretty bare, but you don’t mind. Jade painted a giant wind mural over your bed, and you’ve got an extra hammocking hanging up in the rafters. It’s sort of like a loft room, big and airy. What you would have wanted if you’d stayed on Earth and gotten a college degree and a job and a house. Except for all the clothes in the corner. You feel like an adult wouldn’t have that much dirty laundry lying around.
You throw yourself down on the bed.
It’s your day off. All of you have some sort of complicated workweek, determined by a lottery and a drawing and then something to do with color-coded popsicle sticks. Pumpkins in the greenhouse, the real food elsewhere, house maintenance, cleaning the bathroom, studying the solar system you happened to plop down in, local exploration, cataloging of local flora and fauna, plumbing, cooking food. Running your own little corner of the universe isn’t as easy as the stories would have you believe.
Just thinking about it makes you want to go to sleep.
She wakes you up by knocking softly on the door. You always know who she is. Her hand falls shorter on the doorframe than anyone else’s. And then she just comes in, because she knows she’s welcome.
Out of everyone, you think that Calliope has drawn the shortest straw. And not just in the physical stature. She’s wearing some sundress Kanaya has sewn for her, all flowers and flounces and her knobby green knees just sticking out at the bottom. You pat the bed next to you, and she climbs on up. You don’t think you were this serious when you were eight years old.
“What’s eating you up, Callie-oh?” You ask her and run a hand down the front of her smooth face.
“Nothing.” Her voice is quiet and sort of raspy. “I just wanted to say hi to you.”
You smile. “Hi-oh, Callie-oh.”
“John,” she groans and rolls her eyes. “That’s not even a joke. That’s not even funny.”
You laugh, and she falls back into your pillows. “You should put some pictures up here,” she says, “so you can look at them when you’re going to bed at night?”
“Oh yeah? Pictures of what?”
“Me,” she does that little pose, where her fingers are under her chin, and her head is tilted a little. Roxy does that when she’s trying to be cute. “So you remember the sunshine in your life.”
You laugh. You’re not sure when Callie started looking to you like you were her older brother, but you don’t mind it. Siblings are one of the only good things you got out of this mess. “How can I forget, when you’re always up here. Come on, tell me what’s the matter.”
“It’s just that--!” She sits up, bracing herself against her elbows. “Rose treats me like I’m so young all the time. I don’t get to go on explorations with Jake, I don’t get to do anything important and big. I just stay around here and weed.”
“You’re eight, and--”
“I know! But I’ve done more stuff in my life than you have ever done in all of yours. I am practically grown up, okay.” Her mouth turns down a little in the corners, and her teeth stick out a bit more.
“I know, but she loves you and she wants to keep you safe. When we were your age we all had to stay in the same area and do unimportant stuff, but you’ll grow up, okay? I promise.” You sit up too, so you can look her in the eyes. “Do you want to come with me to alchemize a camera so we can get some pictures for my wall?”
“You can’t distract me.” She crosses her arms over her chest and glowers, the bright yellow flowers splashed across her torso totally asynchronous with the anger across her face.
You bite your bottom lip to keep yourself from laughing. “I wasn’t trying to, dear. Come on. It’ll be fun, I promise.”