With the exception of the first chapter (which ran for three pages), all individual sections were confined to a single typed page. The challenge was to keep this small and relatively simple. The whole of it is based around a friend's idea that no one actually died on the meteor; that was just a horrific nightmare Gamzee was having because of the lack of sopor. The names of the Ancestors are based off of the Celtic Trees for the relatively respective months. Uath (the Psiionic) is the Hawthorn, Duir (the Signless/Sufferer) is the Oak, Tyne (the Disciple) is the Holly, and Muir (the Dolorosa) is the Vine.

~Tawnya

You met him once, the one you're descended from.

You stood on a featureless plane just long enough to remember you were supposed to be dead when he was suddenly there, one hand resting gently on a dream bubble as he turned to look at you. Seeing an adult, let alone an adult psionic, should have terrified you. Honestly though, you were too tired to be more than passingly fascinated.

You'd seen pictures, but static images don't ever really prepare you for the reality. The twined horns are something of a mark for your caste, so you knew he was a yellowblood despite the mess his uniform was in. He's old enough that his skin's turned nearly jet black in colour, but the scars on his wrists, around his still dichromatic eyes, are still close to the ash grey of your own skin. You've rarely had to look up at someone, but he's at least another length taller than you, broad in the shoulder, narrow in the hip, and with enough muscle in between that he looks like the fully capable warrior he's supposed to be instead of the twig you are.

The both of you ended up staring at each other until you finally got curious about how strong he really was compared to you. You've never had a meaningful telepathic influence, basically just enough to take in the projections of other's thoughts, but that also means it's nearly impossible to feel when you reach out. Just a brush, to gauge how advanced his traits are… You didn't even get close before the sheer power burned you, and fuck if he hadn't noticed what you were trying to do. He smiled at you, rather sedately, amused and…appreciative? That smile also revealed the dual set of fangs, which made the similarities between you two downright identical. He never made a sound, but you swore he was laughing at you.

Suddenly, it didn't matter that he was older, stronger, bigger, faster and infinitely more skilled. You had survived the destruction of your planet, the destruction of Skaia, the destruction of your new universe, and Scratch, and now the birth of the Green Sun. You'd thrown a meteor the size of a small moon across paradox space. Like hell you were going to just let anyone diminish that. He might slaughter you; you were still going to make him work for it.

"So big in so many ways already. Not big enough in others quite yet." His voice was thunder and empty space. The teeth that produced such a god awful lisp in you only added sibilance to his words, softening an otherwise hard and intimidating edge.

"Fuck off," you growled back, trying to be as threatening as possible.

He smiled even more at that. "It's nice to see that not everything stayed the same."

It became rather obvious after that that he wasn't going to aggress against you, which killed the fight in you in return. You both went back to staring at each other. After an indeterminate amount of time, you actually felt comfortable enough to look away from him and to the buddle he had yet to relinquish contact with. Within was some sort of mountainous area, barren, rocky, but far from desolate. There was a cave set into a wall and a fire that burned in a well-tended stone ring, besides which sat—

"KK?!" You'd recognize those nubby horns anywhere. And the fact that he's in that bubble, blank-eyed, meant something that couldn't be true. Karkat was never the one who was supposed to die during this fucked-up escapade. It was never his voice that spoke of death in your head, just lingering and excruciating pain in your ear for whatever you'd said that pissed him off. Something in you clenched hard seeing that; you felt nauseous, breathless, and enraged. It was a bit staggering, actually. You'd been mad, angry, pissed-off and surly at him, but enraged and for him were two things that had never happened before, let alone in conjuncture with each other. The feeling just went on and on, spiraling you down faster than a ~ATH script and farther than even the deepest depression fit you'd ever experienced.

You didn't even realize you were ready to tear something apart until a heavy hand landed on your head and abruptly dampened the psionic flow leaking out of you. The power was diminished, but not gone completely, and you lashed out wildly at the one holding you back. Throwing a pebble to stop a landslide might have been more effective than the grub-weak assault you managed to mount. It did burn some of your anger away, enough to appreciate the display of skill and control the other presented. The power you threw at him was absorbed, rippling through him the way a drop of water might rejoin a pond—there and gone. The hand on your head never twitched, nor did the grip smothering your abilities waver. It was only then that you realized he hadn't stripped you completely and left you helpless, choosing to merely incapacitate you instead. He was frowning at you now, though there was clearly an appreciative undertone. Since there was little else you could do and you were still so angry, you hissed at him.

"He is not yours."

There was a different type of possessive rumbling in his voice that instantly stopped yours. It wasn't the overt, territory-claiming sound of a matesprit, but the muted promise of strength and severity someone protecting a moirail would use. It knocked some sense into you, finally letting that enragement fall away. He removed his hand (but not the dampeners) and you looked at the bubble again.

It—was not Karkat sitting there, looking alone, sad, and tired. It was what Karkat would look like if he survived to final maturation. The lines that made your KK blocky and square had stretched out in that other, made him lean and predatory. His skin was a solid charcoal except where it splintered into that vibrant red of his blood, consuming huge chunks of his forearms and hands as it streaked out. The hair is longer, falling in softer waves and obviously tugged that way by sturdy fingers repeatedly sweeping through it. The horns were different, too, now that you actually looked at them; bigger around, a little longer in length, even if they were still just as nubby. Confident in the fact this was most assuredly not Karkat, you relaxed, and so did the grip on your psionics.

That's when you actually heard your friend.

"Sollux, you bulge-sucking, nook-fisting asswipe, you do not get to die on me! I'm not letting you get out of server maintenance by playing a fucking martyrdom ploy. You hear me, you fucking lousy excuse for a pupated grub? I'm your leader and your server player and I am ordering you to keep it together, shitstain! …Goddamn it, Sollux, don't leave me here with these idiots by myself. Don't die again and leave me with fuck all to do about it...Please…"

The clenching feeling came back; hearing Karkat Vantas beg brought all that aggressive need you felt earlier into sharp focus. The realization of what that truly meant finally hit you: you pitied him, which seemed more than a little fucked up since the way you two tended to snipe at each other really probably should have lead you to black, not red. Or maybe it had been red all the time and the two of you were the one's fucked up about it, unable to respond to feelings of pity properly. Or maybe you were both just six and a half sweeps old and didn't have a goddamn clue what matespritship and kismesissitude really felt like.

As if your mind wasn't already trying to go in about a thousand other directions, what Karkat had said mixed with what the psionic across from you had said. "Wait. I'm not dead?"

"Neither of us are," he confirmed quietly, and finally looked away from you to the bubble. There was longing and a tired patience in his tone. "Not quite yet. We are both still too powerful to become simple ghosts. There are things we must still do."

That's when you finally took a good look at what he was doing. He was pouring his power into the bubble, the red and blue energy wrapping around the perimeter in smooth flashes of iridescence rather than the lightning crackle you're prone to producing. Carefully, you touched the outside too. It was solid, like it had been made from unblemished stone or metal. A slight push against the surface only served to rebound the energy expended and the slightest flare of psionic anything made it snap and sting. It was amazing. He had created a flawless barrier. He was protecting the bubble.

"I could not protect them in life, when they needed it the most," he had said, responding to the unasked question. "The least I can give them is a peaceful afterlife, where her Imperious Condescension and her new master cannot touch them. Where they will never suffer at the hands of another again."

That word thrummed through every nerve in your body: protect. In the background, you could hear that KK had given up swearing at that point for simply crying over your cooling almost-corpse. Absolutely weak and pathetic and there wasn't a single troll there who'd step up to the line and let him be that vulnerable. They were all too busy needing him to be the leader. The only one who could offer any sort of defense needed to be defended himself, mostly from himself. The realization that there was no one else rocked through you. You needed to go back.

"Impossible as you are," was the response, though there was a heavy pause afterward, like he was debating something more. "Though…between the two of us, there is perhaps enough life for one." That red-blue stare bore into you and you finally felt that tickling of fear you probably should have had all along. "I have lived for longer than someone of my blood should. Longer than almost any other. And I am tired. I have seen enough of Her destruction to know what is coming next, how it will tear through space and time. The tyranny that started all of this is coming again. If I give this last bit of myself to you, this haven will become vulnerable to that. Therefore you must protect this even as you are protecting him."

As eager as you were to do whatever to get back, you did honestly pause to consider what it would take to assume his position. "I can't do that," you finally admitted. "It's too finite. I'd just blow everything up."

"I would not be so cruel as to dump my burden upon you and leave you to flounder under it. We would both burn out with nothing to show for the effort. It will need to occur in stages as it is, so there will be plenty of time to teach you the control you require."

You put your hand on the bubble, trying to get a feel for it, and slowly let your power start to feed into it. "Then let's hope I'm good at bilocation on top of everything else."

He looked weary, but hopeful as his hand reached out to press against your chest. It was disconcerting how large that hand was—the sheer size alone could have snapped your neck nicely, no psionics needed. But that was a risk you were willing to take.

"This will hurt," he said, though it was rather pointless. You were both dedicated to this course of action.

"I've gotten kind of used to that."

"Indeed, you will."

There was no time to ponder the tense of that statement before what felt like lightning arced through your chest, consuming you in pain. You realized later it had actually been lightning pumped straight into you so that your blood pusher restarted. You felt awful, choking on blood, weak as a newly hatched wriggler, but alive with Karkat curled around you in a way that felt better than it probably should have. It was all worth that first kiss, and more than made up for the whole ordeal with all the ones that came after.

…As it turns out, bilocation is something you seem to excel at. It was a little strange, being conscious in two totally different locations at two completely different time frames with two entirely different sets of tasks being performed, but then again, you were rather built for doing exactly that. The only time you had serious trouble maintaining the duplicity was when you were still healing. At least at that point, he was still strong enough to keep you there. Now, you're almost to your destination in paradox space and he is barely a whisper in the cracked darkness. You've been maintaining the bubble for almost a complete sweep now as he helps adjust and fine-tune your work. Between what he's taught you and the hours you've spent practicing on the meteor, you're pretty sure you could give him a real fight if he wasn't already so drained. And you still haven't had your second psionic awakening.

It still startles you when his hand finally slips completely from the bubble's surface. The colour has faded from his eyes, leaving only the slightest hint of red and blue to them. Just enough power left to get him through to the otherside.

You're staring at each other again because you don't know what to say. There's nothing left to say; he's told you everything there is to tell about himself and so have you. You know he misses the ones he's so carefully shielded in this bubble, people he's searched for through endless amounts of space and time and guided here. He's built a world for them with little more than memory and strength of mind. He's made it his life to care for this tiny bit of reality because he had nothing else to live for. And that's what scares him now. For as much as he wants rest, peace, he can't forgive himself and therefore cannot conceive of the others forgiving him. His task is finally complete and now comes the point where everything he has done and gone through will either be validated or rendered pointless. For an existence that has been hanging upon this single act for so long, it's understandably terrifying.

It's also completely stupid. Maybe he's been taking it all in for too long to notice, but the other three that compose the core group in that bubble have very set routines that are pretty much dedicated to him. The fire is always tended, something he has remarked in passing was their way of guiding one of their own back. A vigil is kept by at least one of them at all time. The KK-lookalike is the one who spends the most time doing as such, but the Nepeta- and Kanaya-lookalikes take their own turns, more often than not actually looking to where you two stand just outside the border as if they can sense you there. As your energy overtook his in the holding of the shield, you would catch snippets of conversations, and there have been many reassurances that he would come to them when the time was right from all of them to each other.

"Take care of them," is what your mouth finally says for you. There's that soft smile you've come to know as affection from him. And the light touch of his hand on your hair is approval.

"I will," is his response. And then he's gone, just as suddenly as he had appeared. The energy under your control ripples, signaling his passing.

You wait a little bit before implementing your own addition to the shield. It feels a bit voyeuristic, but you're compelled to see what happens next. All three of them are actually sitting outside when your ancestor approaches them. They're obviously a bit surprised by his rather sudden arrival, which only seems to make him more self-conscious. It takes almost no time for them to overcome that shock as the Karkat-lookalike stands and nearly throws himself across the fire with a clearly elated, "Uath!"

"Duir." Seconds later, he's enveloped by the girls as well.

"It took you long enough!"

"We're so happy to see you finally came home."

You don't need to see anymore. It's enough to know he was welcomed. That even a story as long as his got to have a better ending than there might have otherwise been. You pull back and augment the shield so that the surface is no longer transparent. A dark opaqueness clouds the miniscule space between the bubble's actual surface and the shield, leaving it as dark as the space that surrounds you. You figure they deserve some time to themselves, away from even you. You settle into your new position as guardian with a contented sigh and then—

—and then Karkat's staring at you in worry, pawing at your face. You're crying. Worse yet, you don't know why, only that you need to. It takes a moment to get enough control that you move the correct set of arms before you pull him close, hiding in the front of his shirt because you can't seem to stop crying now that you've started. He holds you, going through his whole fussing routine like you're suffering from a headache instead of whatever the hell this is.

"Captor, what the actual fuck?" he asks when you finally manage to calm down some and stop feeling less…less. All you can do to answer is shake your head and kiss him repeatedly, drinking in his warmth and realness.

You are Sollux Captor, and you met your ancestor once. You hope that someday, you have a chance of being as great as he was.

To be continued.