I wasn't sure if I was all to happy with this at first, but it's grown on me a lot. One of the weirder things I've written in a while though. Kids with PTSD waiting and falling in love with people who aren't there. Developing OT4. Warnings include: Incest, polyamory.

Do enjoy.

Love and Light and Vision

There is something about dying together that changes everything, or so Rose thinks as she pours over her texts. There are small doodles in the margins in between her translation notes, shaded dark and neat with every idle stroke of her pencil to alien paper as she lets herself wander. It's a subtle thing, almost. Subtle enough that even she doesn't realize at first.

But Dave looks at her now like he'd do it again. As if everything she says he might just be able to handle and still come back on top. It's hard to believe that someone can trust her so much, after everything that went wrong. But they have all made mistakes, this she knows and can rationalize. Somehow that doesn't make it any easier.

They've seen each other at their worst, but even then, staring into Dave's eyes that he'd only let her see once, she knew she didn't have anything left to give him.

But she can try.

(She thinks she's falling in love, but not only with him, not really.)

Sometimes Dave comes into her room, when the whole meteor is silent even though night and day has long since ceased to be constants, and she'll hold him because she hasn't been able to sleep either for what feels like a long time. She doesn't tell him that, not really, even if she's sure he already knows. This isn't for her so much as it is that she believes maybe he's taken the worst of the game and she can be something steady if that is what he needs. So she tugs him close on those days (nights) and lets him struggle and mumble against her breast until he stops trying to fight it.

When you've seen someone at their lowest, it's almost easy to let out everything else as well.

He's been quiet tonight. There are days when he will gasp out his nightmares into her pajamas, fists balled into the cloth like she could be anywhere but here even if she wanted to. Or times when he talks about Bro. Not just the topics they avoid, that are too harsh just yet to touch without burning, but fights under the hot sun and all the annoying things that he misses so dearly.

But mostly they talk about John and his jokes or Jade and her perpetual cheer. He rants about them, their dorky teeth and blatant smiles like it's almost sickening. He talks like they are just a key stroke away and she wants it to be true so much that she doesn't correct him, just strokes her hand through his hair, mindless of all his insincere protests. They were a unit once and that is something irreplaceable, not by just her or him alone, but for now this will have to do.

Relaxed against her like this, Rose thinks he might be smiling, but she thinks a lot of things she doesn't really know.

His voice startles her out of her reverie, cracking at the edges in ways she knows are only partly physical.

"I think miss them." Dave says, letting his forehead lean back against her shoulder.

Rose doesn't even have to ask whom he means.

"As do I." Because of course she does. Three years is far too long to live without the things they need.

He's tense now, breath shaky like he's preparing for a fight he already knows he will lose. And they are really, but not in the ways he thinks.

"Assholes don't even know what they're missing out on. We could be having some sick bro parties, but instead they decided to take a cruise out to fucking Neverland while we're-"

She cuts him off, voice breaking through his with all the authority of someone who knows they have none at all.

"I am sure they feel the same."

She feels the fight rush out of him almost as quickly as it was there.

"Not fucking fair." Except that nothing is and Rose has already seen the ways everything goes wrong.

"It's only three years." Rose whispers into his hair, almost as if she believes it herself.

"Two years, one month, fifteen days, three hours, and six, five, four seconds." He mumbles just to be difficult, but she knows he's already restless.

"I'm sure the Hero of Time can at least wait that long."

Sometimes Rose doesn't think she can, but she doesn't tell him this either. She has to anyway, and three years is short in comparison to everything else.

Dave lets out a dramatic sigh against her and doesn't say anything else for a long time. It's only when she assumes him asleep, still as he is in their position that has long since ceased to be comfortable, that he speaks again, barely a whisper like he doesn't think she can hear him.

"I love you."

Rose doesn't respond. She thinks it's not meant for her anyway.

She tries with Kanaya, wants to make something work so hard, but their relationship is cracked and brittle in places she can't name. They're too similar for all their differences and Rose knows where that would lead, where her own choices have taken her, so she steps back before it can go any further.

(And maybe neither of them deserve to be used as a replacement, even though that has never stopped Rose before.)

Kanaya made dresses for a girl much younger than herself, one who believed in magic and truth and let herself be wrong and Rose can't wear them, not now.

Instead she takes her time in the library, pointedly ignoring her cups of coffee and pouring over all the information she can access. Being a Seer is about knowing, but not often understanding. She can guess at paths and see their ends, but there is always something lost, context she can not possess. She might be trying to gain some of that, by collecting all the books she can find, but really it just fills the time.

Now, her pencil moves blankly in her hand and she watches, almost detached. Her scribbles are disorderly now, all semblance of order vanishing with each stroke. The lead stains her carpals, metacarpals, phalanges as she fills in pages, bubbling word after word as torrents consume her until the book is heavy and black beneath her hand. She's felt like this before, back when she was foolish and young enough to listen to all those who asked for aid and it's almost familiar.

It's almost as foolish.

Hard graphite tears through the paper, but she doesn't care. She knows everything contained in all the books here or otherwise. Knows it so well it hurts, but it still doesn't change anything when she knows she herself is the same.

Three years with her failures is a lot to ask a girl who won't let herself be forgiven.

There are nights when Rose will let herself fall asleep and when she does she dreams of things that haven't happened and futures that she will never know. Her favourites are the ones where it's just her and Jade and Dave and John, doomed but together and so happy. She spies on their bubbles, they way they let themselves be and exist freely, and it makes her heart ache just a tiny, tiny bit.

She needs them, but she has never found a timeline where that doesn't come with a price.

And she has to win, for them.

(When she awakens the metal walls of her room are fire cold and she is alone.)

This time it is she who comes to Dave

He's sitting on his bed, a cup of coffee thick with oil on the desk beside him, hands fiddling with a set of turn tables he'd managed to alchemize, and it's such a familiar sight she nearly stops.

But then he turns to look at her and it's that same look, that one he's been giving her on the whole trip and she can't take it. She wants to scream at him, wants to rip and rend and tear, kill him just so he can know he won't die again.

So she kisses him, pale fingers tugging harshly into the material of his shirt to keep him close, just to see if it will change anything. And it does, but not in the way she expects. She pulls back to look at his face, perhaps thinking she might see surprise that he never hides as well as he thinks, but instead he's calm and steady. He pulls her in again, lips to lips and doesn't taste like anything.

Rose thinks she's taking advantage of him like this, as she leans against him in the night, roughly stroking at his skin and hair, her lips brutal on his neck, but she can't find it in herself to care. Not tonight. He holds her close like he thinks she's going to die again and again, but Rose is no hero anymore so she knows she won't. Dave is, though, so she keeps him to her just as tight.

She knows she's falling in love and she can't stop.

(But not just with him, still, because she is a selfish, selfish, selfish thing and he reminds her of everything she had and still could if she let herself.)

But three years is almost insignificant and their time is nearly up. It's not her she knows he wants, but that's okay because it's not really him she wants either, but it might just be enough to pretend.

She cries into his shoulder and thinks something is missing, but even if she can fathom what it is she knows she will never have it. Rose can't take them from him, won't even try. And three years is far too short but maybe if they had just a few more moths of this things might just have been okay.

(In the morning, she's still the same as always and treats him as such. She won't let this change anything because she doesn't know if she would be able to let go.

Besides, it's all ending [far too] soon anyway.)

Three years feels like nothing as she takes her first steps off of the asteroid in almost exactly that exact length of time. He feet float down to the gold of the ship and she's smiling lightly as if to hold back her grin. Dave is already ahead of her, walking coolly even though she knows he must be vibrating with excitement. He hasn't needed to hide himself away for a long time, but she thinks it's exactly that what has made him strong enough to do it now.

She knows it wouldn't have mattered anyway, they used to be able to read each other like books and not even that could change with age.

But he can't quite hide his smile and that's what stops her, frozen on the surface. She's not sure she belongs in this picture anymore, now that she is no longer needed.

John and Jade are running forward, taller now and slightly awkward just as she saw they would be, and their arms wrap around Dave harshly. They grin and Dave gives a halfhearted push away before he gives in, twirling John just to annoy him while Jade pouts and latches onto Dave's back.

It's a beautiful scene, Rose thinks, perfect even. She knows enough about relationships from her books to know that there is a stability that comes with threes. Three years, three people, three different sessions. She's not really needed here after all.

She lets her flats pivot a bit on the smooth surface of the ground, turning to leave before they even realize she's been there and gone, but a pull on the hood of her dress stops her.

Dave is standing there suddenly and his face, for the first time in ages, is unreadable to her. But she doesn't hardly have time to think because he's pushing her into John and Jade who are there to hold her just as tightly if not more.

They say that they've missed her in contact and John's laughter and Jade's happy tears and Dave's subtle smiles as he joins them all.

She let's herself drown in them just a bit, grinning with all the force of the sun.

(They kiss for the first time after they've won the game, the universe breaking and reconstructing around them.

It's been a long time but Rose knows she's finally home.)