Okay, guys, a few notes before we begin-
First, this is in an AU. Most of the background info is given during the story, but basically, the trolls got to Earth without interruptions from Bec Noir, but on their way, Gamzee ran out of pie, and Eridan was driven nuts from the close quarters, and having to watch Feferi hang out with Sollux the whole time, so Vriska, Eri, Tav, Nepeta, Equius, and Fef are still dead, but somehow, they still lost Gamzee, and nobody knows where the hell he's hiding. But I'm sure he won't be hidden forever ;o) Anyway, if you're confused, all will be explained in the duration of the story, and just like Homestuck, you have to read to find out, and though I, the writer, have a basic idea of what the next move shall be, I don't have the whole thing, beginning to end, mapped out like a weirdo... No offense- that is a good writing technique, but not for me. So, read the story. Like, now!
Aradia~
I close my eyes and try to sleep, but just like every other night since we landed on this planet, sleep wouldn't come. Karkat says it's the same thing with him- his body so used to staying awake for days on end that he was still having trouble sleeping every day. Sighing, I get up and pull on loose pants and a sweater, and go outside into the bright sunlight. I sheild my eyes while trudging through the cold, white snow, which is apparently the only colour this stuff comes in. Once I'm deep enough in the woods, I lie down, keeping my fingers in my pockets so they wouldn't get chilly. I smile and close my eyes, feeling relaxed for the first time since we played that horrid game.
Suddenly, my sharp hearing picks up a sound- barely audiable, but there. My eyes snap open, and I sit up, alert.
"Hello?" I say, mentally face-palming at my own stupidity. Did I really expect the noise to answer?
"Hi," comes a soft voice. I guess the noise **did** answer.
The noise was actually a human, shorter than me, with light hair and wide eyes. She slowly lowers a weapon she had held up seconds earlier. I stare at it suspiciously.
"Sorry. I thought you were, you know."
"That I was what?" I ask her, getting out of the snow, brushing it off of myself.
"Well, I sort of have really bad eye sight so I thought you were an animal." She flinches, as if she expects me to attack. I wasn't like Vriska, though. I believed her.
"I suppose I do look like one. I'm Aradia," I say, holding out a red, swollen hand. It's numb, despite being in my pocket the whole time.
"Alice," she says, shaking it firmly. "Aren't you one of those aliens?"
"Hey, I'm just as alien to you as you are to me." She laughs, this small, tinkly laugh, and my stomach sort of does a flop that feels weird. A good weird.
"Well, uhm." She pulls her hand away and returns it to her own pocket. "Are you cold? Do you want to come to my camp with me and warm up?" I genuinely consider her offer, but decline.
"I have to get back home, anyways."
"Oh," she says, her lit face dulling down. "But can you come back? I'll be here, every Saturday and Sunday at three."
"Sure," I say, smiling. I wave to her, then sprint towards the house, tripping over a root. I hear her tinkly laugh one more time before I go back home, grinning wider that I have in what feels like forever.
Kanaya~
I started sleeping during the day when we got here, like a normal troll would. While traveling here, when I turned into a vampire, I began to glow, like a light. So it was like... I was the sun, everywhere I went. I could feel the warm sun pressing down on my skin, even in the night when it was almost black outside.
It was sort of a relief, too. Before, I could rarely talk to my friends, as I slept as they were wide awake. Now, however, I am awake with them, and they hardly seem to mind the glow. If they did, I'm sure Karkat would be giving me shit about it.
The sky is an impossible blue with orange and pink clouds dotting the background. This is what a sunset here in the middle-of-nowhere-Alaska looks like- the clouds turn orange, and the sky just turns dark until the clouds are only visible in the moonlight. It's unbelievably gorgeous, though, and I always get up early to watch it.
A floorboard outside of my door squeaks, and I hear somebody inhale sharply. Probably Hannah. She usually tries to be quiet upstairs where we sleep when its daytime. And we respect her by staying downstairs or outside at night, staying quiet for both her sake, and the neighbors', which is stupid, because they live, like, a full block away.
I get out of the bed, which takes a lot of getting used to when you've slept your entire life in a sopour-filled recaupercoon. I still sometimes find myself getting completely undressed for bed, or dragging myself to the shower, still in my pajamas, to wash non-existent slime out of my hair.
Shaking off the urge, I open the door to see Aradia, muscles clenched, breath held next to my door, and looking very much alive.
"What're you doing up so early?" I ask, rubbing the sleep from my eyes.
"Well... I could ask you the same thing," she responds in a whisper, holding a finger to her burgundy lips.
"Touché. Why are you sneaking around?"
"Because," she says, then lowering her voice to a whisper again. "KK bitches when I wake his majesty up."
"I bitch when you what?" comes a voice from the door across from mine.
"When, uh, I..." Karkat pokes his head out of the door across from mine, raising a brow. "Nothing," Aradia says, finally giving up, and walking downstairs.
"Is she okay?" my moirail asks, soft enough so she can't hear. After the day on the ship, when half of us died, Karkat got so much more... Sensitive. Like, he actually, as he often says, "gives a fuck." I suppose that watching 4 of your closest friends die, and seeing the disembodied heads of two others would do that, though.
"She's fine. Just embarrassed, I'm sure," I tell him. Karkat looks relieved, but he doesn't smile. God, why doesn't he ever smile?
Terezi~
There's voices outside my door. Karkat's and Kanaya's. Why are they talking in the hallway so early. I can smell the warmth of the sun still reflecting off of the clouds and filtering through my blinds. Pursing my lips, I put on my glasses, which were lying on the side table next to my bed. I really hate having to put them on every night and take them off before I go to bed. It's annoying, and sometimes, I forget, and Karkat makes fun of me. Why is he so confusing all the time?
I put my feet on the ground, kicking around for the slippers that Hannah bought me. They are red and fluffy, and they smell just like my scalemates. When I find them, I slip them on and grab my cane.
I smell surprise when I exit the room, as if they didn't hear me.
"You look like shit" Kanaya says. I personally think she looks like shit. Or smells it, anyway. When Hannah told us that most female humans shave and wax the hair from their legs and arms, and neatly trimmed their brows, Kanaya went nuts, removing the hair from her body, leaving two thin brows and the hair on her scalp.
I thought she looked ridiculous. I like the curly hair on my legs, and growing from my underarms, but Hannah said it was poor hygiene to keep your pits unshaved. She made me do that, but she said that here in Alaska, you wore pants all the time, so she had no problem with my leg hair. I was grateful for that.
"Terezi? You okay?" Karkat asks. "Can you say something?"
"I'm hungry," I mumble, and head downstairs for some food.
One thing that amazes me about this new planet is how simple it is to get food. You work a simple, safe job, get paper, tangible money, and buy yummy, delicious food. With the money.
Downstairs, there is a lot of food. There's a fridge full of it. And next to the fridge, there's cabinets full of it. I suppose that this is why so many of the humans are so fat. When we actually take our places as ruler of this world, that's the first thing to go- the overabundance of food.
I get a cookie. Not even a big one- just one small cookie. Back home, that was a meal. You hunted for food, and most of the time, you didn't catch anything, so you had to make some tiny animal last you several days. Our mistress made sure that the planet had enough food for those of us smart enough to catch it alive, but not enough for anyone to get big. Only high-uppers, like Feferi, were lucky enough to have so much food.
Hannah lays stretched on the couch, watching a show. It was boring and dull. I liked the ones with oddly proportioned characters and a colourful setting. Hannah says that those ones are for babies. I don't care, though. It tastes nice. Hannah also says I shouldn't lick the television, because it's unsanitary.
Hannah says I should do this. Hannah says that is weird.
I'm starting to think that Hannah doesn't like me as much as I like her. Like Vriska.
No, stupid, don't think about that! But I already did, and soon, I'm running into the basement so I can cry without hearing my best friend's voice telling me that crying is abnormal.
But my tears never come. They never do. I just sit there, on a pile of folded clothes in a laundry basket, feeling sorry for myself. I know in my mind that it was the only way. You can't just Leeroy Jenkins it and expect everything to go smoothly.
"Terezi?" Hannah's voice came from a door where only lamp-light shone through. "You okay?"
"Yeah, why?" I ask, once more pursing my lips, even though she couldn't see me.
"You ran down here. You left half of your cookie on the counter and everything." I could really use that cookie.
"I remembered that there's laundry down here. I want to fold it while it's still warm." I feel satisfied with my excuse.
"Oh, okay, then. I'm going out shopping today. You want to come?" I'm shocked. Usually she asks miss hairless to go shopping. Unless it was food shopping, and even then, she says she's scared that I'll lick the food. As if I have no sense of self-control.
"Yeah, sure," I say, not wanting to miss the chance. I want to know what a human store is like. I want to smell everything and know what it's like. "But wait!"
"Yeah?"
"It's dark. It gets dark after the stores close, right?"
"Not when it gets dark at two. Now come on, be ready in an hour." I grin a toothy grin, run upstairs, grabbing my cookie on the way, and into my room, peeling off my clothes. I wanted this to be a good first store we went to.
Sollux~
I hear people moving around throughout the house, but I can't yet smell the sugary warmth of the vanilla candles that Hannah lights every night, which makes me wonder why everyone's up so early.
I sniff the air, hoping to pick up some kind of specific scent, like Terezi has been teaching me to, but I can't. Just like every other day, I have no idea what I'm doing. I sit up and reach out for the sunglasses given as a gift. I'm sure Hannah just didn't want to see my dead eyes all day, but then again, I'm sure nobody else does anyway. And I asked for them, so she was being kind more than she was being rude.
When I find them, I feel them for which way they go on my face, and put them on, covering my face. I feel like, as being half ghost and all, I should be entitled to at least partial vision. But I didn't. I couldn't see anything except darkness, spilled across the whole world. That everyone else got to see. But then again, that's all that I ever wanted, wasn't it?
Terezi claims she was made an offer to revive her vision recently, but she declined. I don't know if it's true or not. Like, why would she decline? Kanaya says she probably made it up to make me feel better. I understand that. My main goal with playing this whole game was so that they could live, even if I died. I could tell that the others were uncomfortable with the whole idea, but I made them go through with it.
I did it so they could all live.
But they didn't. Half of us died, and who knows if Gamzee is okay. Plus, I could never help anyone get over seeing their dead friends. I never saw any of it, and I suppose I should be grateful, but it's hard to be grateful for somebody dying.
In a way, though, I feel like it was always supposed to be like that. Like somehow, we're happier now than we would be with all of us alive and well.
I hop out of the bed, reaching for my own cane. Unlike Terezi, I actually use mine for walking, but she loves hers so much. When I think of her, I imagine her toothy grin and sharp angles, but the details of my friends are slowly fading away. I hope I never forget their faces.
I hear Terezi run past my room. She's the only one who ever runs, excepting KK when he's chasing someone, but his footsteps are harder, as he insists on wearing shoes inside. Terezi, however, wears these fuzzy slippers. She says they smell red. I say they smell like feet.
"What's the hurry, TZ?" I ask, grinning slightly.
"Hannah says she's taking me shopping."
"You? Not Kanaya?"
"I'm surprised too. But I can't pass up such an opportunity, so I go!" I hear her nasally laugh resound in the bare halls. I'm not sure where KK is. I heard him out in the hall, but he would have said something by now if he were still there.
"Well, are you still going to teach me today?" I ask. Terezi is a good teacher, despite her insisting that she isn't. Even though I can't smell or taste colours or shapes, I can judge my surroundings by ear, which is much more useful than just going by cane alone.
"No, Sollux. I'm staying in the store all night and I'm not coming home until the morning," She laughs again. She says she laughs so much "Because I'm just so damn funny!" which she is, but she's no comedian.
"Okay. Thanks," I say.
"Don't thank me- thank the store owners who decide to close at 9 PM!" Followed by another laugh.
"Is it just me, or are you laughing more lately?"
"Shush, I'm just nervous. I don't want Hannah to think I'm even more of a screw up than she already knows!"
"Well, then," I say. "Don't scream it to the world, alright?" I hear her steps continue to her room.
Sighing, I get up and make my way downstairs. After a solid month in this house, I memorized it's structure enough so I could easily navigate it with the aid of my cane.
In the kitchen, I hear the electric hum of the toaster oven, and these footsteps that can only be Hannah's. She goes to the freezer, pulls something out, and drops something frozen on the counter.
"Toast?" I guess.
"Close. Bagels. I'm taking Terezi for a girls' night out, so I'm making her a breakfast sandwich. Do you think she'll like ham, sausage, or bacon better?"
"I honestly don't know. All of them?" Hannah laughs. She has this laugh that sounds like it belongs to a witch of some sort. But when she talks, her voice is kind and warm.
"I'll just put on sausage. And some of this..." I smell the sweet scent of syrup. I'm not sure such a thing belongs with egg, which I also smell. "You want one?" I don't have the heart to tell her that none of us were capable of finishing a whole bagel sandwich by ourselves- not even Terezi, who loved the different flavours of earth food. We had such mass-produced food, but you had to trade so many things for it. Such a sandwich would be considered a delicacy back home, eaten for special occasions, with the exception of highbloods like Feferi or Equius, who could enjoy that stuff daily.
"Sure," I finally say, deciding that I could share it with someone else. "So, where are you two going to?" I ask in attempt to avoid an awkward silence.
"Probably the outlets. There's really not many other places we can go. And there's this new spa that opened, and maybe we can check that out too. I saw this red lipstick the other day that I'm sure she'll melt over."
I resist the urge to laugh, or to even crack a smile. Terezi doesn't hide her discontent for shaving, waxing, or putting any makeup of any kind on her face. She openly admits that she hates it. I picture her with red lipstick on her lips and am amused with the outcome.
"I don't really know how she'd look, but I'll take your word for it," I say. We all agreed that we would give away as little information away as possible about us, so Hannah doesn't know much about us. Only that we're aliens whose home planet was destroyed, and that we came here as our new home. She knows that Terezi and I are blind, and that we need help figuring out what the fuck is going on.
What she doesn't know is that we're trying to gather up as much information as possible about this place so taking it over is all the more easier.
Karkat~
Sollux is in the kitchen, talking to Hannah about makeup, and how it would look on Terezi. I can tell he knows that she's going to gag when Hannah suggests it, but he's not saying anything.
I'm sitting in the living room with a controller in my hands and headphones in my ears. The words from the kitchen filter through the sounds of shooting and screams from the video game I'm playing. I forget what it's called though. I've been forgetting a lot of things since that day on the ship.
Kanaya says that it's probably my mind's way of dealing with the grief- like if I don't remember anything, nothing can haunt me. I trust her opinion. If she says that the cure to something is shoving a chicken down your ear tube, then I'm going to have one sore ear tube the next morning.
Actually, Kanaya is the only person I've told about my sudden forgetfulness. I feel like the others would mistake it for weakness, and they already think I'm weak enough.
In the game, there's a cutscene. The main character's partner was shot, and he's bleeding out. The main character tries to help him, putting pressure on the wound. It's not working. The partner's eyes flutter closed, the sound of gunfire droning in the background. I take off my headphones and turn the game off. Why did I do that? It wasn't scary or gory, and the animation was poorly done. So why is my chest tightening like this?
"Who's in there?" Sollux asks Hannah.
"Karkat," she answers, placing sausage from a skillet on a bagel.
"The game got boring, so I turned it off," I said, speaking before I even thought. He didn't even ask about the game.
"Oh. Cool. Mind if I hang out with you in there?" he asks, probably wanting to talk about anything but makeup.
"Sure," I say. He makes his way into the living room, holding his cane in front of him so he doesn't hit anything. I get up and guide him to the couch, sitting next to him. Sollux was always grateful for any help we offered him since he went blind. I thought it was so adorable when Hannah would bring home paint swatches from the home improvement store, and Terezi would have him sniff and lick them, and try to guess what colour it was.
Even now, as he leans against me for support, he's so cute. But I would never use that word out loud. Not even to Terezi.
Kanaya walks down the steps, her face peeking into the living room at us.
"Hi, you two!" she says, smiling a familiar smile. I know that smile. She plasters it on her face every time she has a plan to meddle with our lives.
"Hi, Kan," Sollux says, looking forward at nothing.
"So, uh, I have something for you guys. You know, to make you feel better about-"
"We don't need any help," I snap. I'm not trying to seem mean, or anything, but Kanaya looks offended. "But, I mean, I guess we'll have a look. Or uh, whatever it is that Sollux does." He was still struggling to understand his surroundings by smell or taste. He mostly listens to echoes.
"Okay. This is gonna blow your mind," She says. "And, TA-DA!" She holds her idea above her head.
"What is that?" I ask.
"What do you mean? It's my idea."
"Suddenly, I understand nothing," Sollux says. "What is it?"
"Paper," I tell him. Kanaya snorts.
"And pens." I roll my eyes.
"So we what, give ourselves paper-cuts and stab ourselves with a fucking ball-point pen?" She's had a lot of weird ideas, but this one is the most outlandish.
"I'm no idiot, Karkat. You might think I think you're telling me everything, but I know you're really bothered. Just... Write everything down on these papers."
"What? No way! If I wanted you to know, I'd tell you," I say, then shut up immediately after. I basically just told her, 'Yeah, this shit bothers me. I give you permission to meddle.'
"No, here. You sit here and write your thoughts on the paper. With the permanent pen. So it can never be erased, right?" she says. I look at her sideways, raising a brow.
"What's your point?"
"Then when you're done, you burn it in the fireplace!" I look over at the fireplace. The flame is controlled, contained. Unlike my thoughts. Sometimes I remember bits and pieces of what happened- I'll see Kanaya, mouth hanging open for a second, standing so still. A small bit of blood trickled from the corner of her mouth, and she looked over at me. I remember that she died, but somehow she's still alive. I know that before then, she didn't glow, so why can't I remember her without her luminescent skin?
I look at the paper Kanaya had held out to me. Her smile was inviting, and I grab her offering, placing it on the floor in front of me.
"I'll leave so you can write. You too, Sol. Without seeing what you're writing, it'll be so illegible, nobody will be able to read it. And then you can crumple it and Karkat will burn it."
"Sounds good," Sollux says, grinning. I look up at her. Every time I see her, I see her with her mouth open, choking on her own blood, a gaping hole in her torso.
On the paper I write and write. I write about what I remember and what I'm told, about all my fears and things I wish were true. I write about my weaknesses and doubts, and when I'm satisfied, I hold the paper out to the fire, watching the flames eat away first at the corner, then at the whole thing, until there's only the part I'm holding. I chuck that into the flame as well.
Next to me, my friend finishes his writing, and follows the heat of the flame, holding the paper partially in the blaze until it burns his fingers. He seems to barely notice it, and flicks the corner into the fire.
As much as I like to tell both myself and others that Kanaya's little "exercises" don't work, that one really made me feel better. From the stairs, I hear several loud thuds. I turn around, and at the bottom of the last step is Aradia, face first in the carpet.
"Hey, KK, Sol, how's it going," she says, raising an arm above her head and giving a little wave.
"I... I don't wanna fucking know."
So, every chapter cycles through the five trolls (perhaps I'll add Hannah later, but for now, she's just a guardian, providing them with a home and food) and they each have separate, but carefully interlocking stories, inspired by either a song, a tumblr post, or a specific page in the comic. If you hadn't noticed, this is a fanfic inspired by things not made by me. I have no creativity- I'm simply writing a basically pre-written comic in a pretty way.
Also, as with all of my other stories, I am not linear with updates. I may post one the day after the previous one, but the next one could take weeks. I write when I get around to it. I post when I remember to. Just so I don't have to come up with explanations as to why I'm late every chapter.
So to those who read this whole thing, thank you. To those who plan on reading more, you're awesome. And to those of you who sub/fave this?
I fucking love you! Thank you so much!