ENTITLED: All Rules Broken
FANDOM: Homestuck
LENGTH: 3,500
SETTING: Let me count thine ways.
DISCLAIMER: I DO NOT WANT TO BE A PART OF YOUR CRAZY FANDOM. Let me just leave this here and I will stealth my way out.
NOTES: Roxy is my spirit animal. I clink imaginary champagne flutes with her. Also real ones. Also, I want champagne. Also: bitter weeping.
SUMMARY: As it goes: Roxy gets lost in the nothing-parts of spacetime, and Dirk walks across the universe to find his internet friend. — Dirk/Roxy, Rose, AI
Void.
Meaning, a thing that was not a thing, in a place that was not a place. Meaning, a riddle, which she'd always liked, always like things like cheating and loopholes and shortcuts, tricks. The tricky things were the best things, especially when you were just the right level of drunk, the level where things broke down and got slow, and their names became beautiful when you thought of them, even boring things like 'chair'—but say it slow, ch-air, hold the R. Gorgeous.
Roxy focused, released, let her mind wander away and around, looking for the backdoors of space, a way into the places that were not places, where everyone hid things. Treasure, weapons, themselves.
Calliope?
She didn't try too hard. That was the trick to it, to Void, you didn't make things happen because you weren't.
Callie, time to come back. Time to kick it.
A dark thing, far off but always getting closer. Roxy smiled dreamily, and held out her hand, waiting for the thing to take it.
And then—something went wrong.
A sudden, burning force slammed into Roxy from behind, as though she had been tackled by a linebacker on fire, and she staggered to her knees, her hands flying out to catch her fall, though of course there was nothing to catch, and she squeezed her eyes shut and reached for the part of her that always knew how to bury pain—a place she would need, need badly, because she kept falling, and falling, for too long and too far and too lost…
Roxy woke up, halfways, with the feeling that a hand had just slid through her own. She stared at her fingers, puzzled, and then rolled out of bed to start breakfast for Rose.
At breakfast, Rose said to her, "You seem distracted today."
"Hey cutie," Roxy leaned across the table, and began to eat off of Rose's plate, "You know what time it is? You know the pain of being a parent? Waking up too early for someone else's schedule?"
"That sounds terrible. You should put me up for adoption."
"Yes darling, I'll do my best."
"Don't let me down, mom."
Roxy followed her daughter out to the car which, for a second, puzzled her, before she let herself stop thinking about it and drift and of course. A car was just a car. She waved towards a neighbor, loitered about in the middle of the street while the McHamon twins crossed. Roxy blinked. Had there always been so many people?
Outside her car window, there was a boy walking past with a baseball cap on, and a sword slung over one shoulder.
Roxy blinked, and then spun around, forcing her body into the sharpest turn it could manage, the better to stare at the boy. The sword was not a sword, but a baseball bat. Her heart was beating faster than she thought possible.
"Mom?" Rose cheeped.
"Sorry," Roxy whispered. She felt dizzy, like things that shouldn't have been clicking into place were, like things were making more sense than she wanted, like she was sobering up—
She turned on the radio, merged onto the highway, and forced her mind to clear out.
Sometimes, time moved slowly. Others, it moved too fast to be understood. The moment Roxy caught sight of herself in the bathroom mirror and she had to sink to her knees, fingers plucking at her face, wondering, how was this person her? How had she gotten so old?
A great pounding tension grew behind her eyes and pushed her, face first, to the floor and the darkness. She reached, seeking the emptiness and the complacency she so needed, and the blackness reached back.
"Hey, get over here," whispered the shadow, his hand outstretched, but not waiting so much as reaching forwards, snatching—
Roxy's eyes snapped open, and she swayed dizzily, before heaving herself to the toilet, where she was violently sick.
When things got too confusing, it helped to think of Rose. She'd think of Rose, and empty out. Curiosity, suspicion, and fear would go leaking out of her to be replaced with the warm, easy knowledge that Rose was her daughter, her world, and nothing mattered so much as she did, and if she just kept her mind quiet for a minute, everything could be as it was supposed to.
It was tricky, remembering to not think of things. She drilled it into herself as a reflex, learned to drop her eyes away from mirrors, not to try to remember the past, or think too much about herself. Tricky, but she'd always liked tricks.
A dangerous thought. She quieted it. When she dreamed the wrong dreams, she learned to wake herself up.
"Mom, what's wrong?" Rose asked, it seemed every morning, the same question. Roxy gave the same reply.
"I love you, blondie."
She did not look at shadows and she did not sleep too long. She turned away the mirrors and glossed over hard questions. She watched Rose grow up. She watched, until one day in midsummer the sun was too hot to see properly, so she pulled on a pair of sunglasses from the glove compartment. The lenses gleamed, mean and hard. When she put them on, they thought, Found you.
Roxy tore them off her head, her heart pounding. She shoved her head down against the steering wheel and held her breath, held the oxygen at bay, held her eyes closed and her chest tight and cramped and the millions of nagging little thoughts that dug and dug and pushed at her brain and when she opened her eyes it was too dark outside, darker than it had been even with the sunglasses on, and Roxy knew, she'd messed up, she'd fallen into some kind of trap, and even now, the dark thing was coming.
There, in some twist of reflection in her rear-view mirror—Roxy spun around, and half saw the man, before he fell back out of existence. For a moment she stayed where she was, tongue stuck to the roof of her mouth, before she realized that she'd raised one of her own hands, and had opened it to the empty air before her.
A sense of great loss echoed within her, and she scrambled out of the car to go into the house to find Rose, to tell her to hurry up, they'd be late for school—
But there was no house. And no car anymore, neither. But mostly, no Rose.
No. Roxy thought, as around her, the street and the trees and even the sun was eaten up by darkness, by nothing. No, where is Rose, where is my Rose, WHERE IS SHE—?!
She threw up her arms against the snatching hands, and screamed with every atom of herself. She screamed until she had blasted everything into nothing, until she herself was no more, until all that was left was black, nothing, void. Things that were not things, and places that were not places, until she made them.
And so the little part of Roxy that remained pushed away her heart, that stunned and torn-up thing, and went to find the woman.
Roxy woke up, halfways. Her body felt wrong. Her hands were too soft.
"Roxy, wake up! Indolence wins you nothing!" a woman's voice called, a voice that Roxy immediately assigned to Mother.
She ran out of bed.
A woman, slim and blonde and immaculate, sort of streamlined in design, was bent over the newspaper. Roxy raced over to her, leaping over the awkward pause that she initially wanted, and threw her arms around the woman, noting as she did so that the shoulders she clung to were small and sharp and—shoulders, not knees or hips, but Roxy hadn't been that small in a long, long time.
The woman laughed a little in surprise. One thin hand curled over Roxy's wrist, and held it there.
"Mom," Roxy said.
"What is it?"
"Nothing," Roxy breathed out, and closed her eyes.
She made captain of the field hockey team, because it was easy. She made homecoming queen, because she threw the best parties. She made five hundred friends, because hey, you never know when a person might not be there.
Sometimes, looking at Rose made her sad. Sometimes, she thought the shadows moved. Sometimes, she woke up crying.
"Your life sounds exhausting," Rose mused, while she loaded up the drained liquor cabinet. Roxy counted the bottles of tequila. She wrinkled her nose.
"You got the expensive kind?"
"Oh, you know. Everyone should be allowed the finer things in life, once in a while." Rose said vaguely. Roxy privately made a note to make the next party a BYOB.
"Is there such a thing as fine tequila?"
"Not really," Rose said lightly, with a wink that was decidedly saucy. She pulled a pair of shades off the crown of her head, and offered them to Roxy with very little care. "Here, I bought these today, but I think I've changed my mind. They'd look better on your face-shape."
Damn it. Another breezy act of generosity. Roxy was certain Rose would never buy anything so frivolous or over priced for herself. She made a mental note to wake up early and wash her mother's car.
She took the sunglasses, and slid them on. "Thanks."
"Oh, balls."
At least I didn't do this in front of your mom, the sunglasses thought. Said? A flicker of words scrolled across the lens, like something out of a cheap spy movie.
"Mom, is that you? This is a pretty good joke."
I have literally had this conversation with seven different incarnations of you so just shut up and listen. I am not your mom. She isn't even your real mom. Or, she is. Kind of? Fuck.
"You're cray-cray," Roxy announced, and decided that painting her toenails was a suitable multi-tasking activity. After some thought, she chose a nice peachy color.
Look, long story short, you're in the wrong universe. I don't really know if it's parallel or a headspace kind of deal or whatever, who the fuck cares about the science, the point is, someone's coming to take you home.
"Interesting," Roxy started on her left hand.
So, this is me warning you. Watch out for him. Only don't, don't look for him, because then you'd remember, and once you remember, whatever world you're in is fucking toast.
"Someone who wants to take me home," Roxy mused. She blew gently on her top coat. "What then, do I meet his mama? Do we live happily ever after?"
No, fuck that guy, insisted the sunglasses. I found you, not him. And this is his fault anyway.
Roxy was thrilled at the prospect of an alternate-life love-triangle. "Wait, no, tell me about him. How is it his fault?"
Okay, basically, you had this power. I can't say too much. But you had this power, and you were using it to find someone, only then the asshole final boss knew about it, so he tried to kill you. Because actually, you're the important one who fucking gets shit done, and he knew that. So in a spectacularly botched plan to save you, the moron looking for you pushed you into one of your dark spaces. And then you sort of hid yourself, in all these worlds, to get better. But then you stuck around, I guess.
"Who is he?" Roxy asked, almost guiltily. Her fingers sunk into her own Pandora's box, the thing that could never be taken back, once known. The thing that ruined her life, over and over and over again.
I don't want to talk about that pathetic fuckhead. You're too good for him.
"What about you?"
I just said that.
"What?"
There was a sudden, definite hint of panic in the speedy reply. Sorry. I meant; you're too good for me, too.
Roxy frowned. She pulled the sunglasses off, and held them in her lap for a moment, staring at them thoughtfully. It couldn't be the same person, right? That wouldn't make any sense. Unless the idea was to trick her into trusting sunglasses-voice, thereby somehow putting her in a position of vulnerability that baseball-guy could exploit, since he was also sunglasses-voice. That was a little mean, and also, probably not true, considering the massive slip-up sunglasses-voice had just made.
She quickly put aside wondering over how the thought "baseball-guy" had sprung into her head.
Roxy put the glasses back on. "I don't think I can trust you."
Good! Yes. Don't. He can see everything you tell me.
"He can see?"
Hear, whatever.
"I guess this is goodbye, then. Sorry. You talked like someone sexy."
Fuck, wait!
"What's up, toots?"
I know you can't trust me, but I'm trying to fucking help you, okay?!
"Oh, don't want me to go? Got a crush on me?" Roxy grinned. She sensed, somehow, that the voice she was talking to was younger than baseball-guy, certainly younger than her.
Yes, you fucking caught me. I could sex you up with my computer bits all day long.
"That's awful sweet of you. Gosh, you are one swell guy. Why is that? Don't want me coming home?"
The word 'home' tugged at her lips as she said it. Roxy thought: the color white. Say it slow, make the word beautiful. Whhh-ite. Like a whisper.
After a second, the sunglasses thought, I just think you seem happier over here. I think maybe it would be better if you just stayed. But he seems to think otherwise.
"Oh, does he love me?" Roxy laughed.
Of course, the sunglasses snapped. Or at least, she thought they probably snapped. It could have been a soft, wistful tone, she supposed. But sincerely doubted.
"Kind of selfish, you know, if my life is better here," Roxy pointed out. "If he loves me, then he should let me go. Hard as that is. I am a treasure."
Look, yeah, he is selfish, but not about this. There's loving someone enough to let them go, and then loving someone to the point where losing them makes your life fucking pointless. Maybe you don't remember, but he does.
A hard, sharp ache got between every single one of her ribs, and the world swerved, a little, like a shaken canvas, long billowing sweeps of reality unsettling around her.
She took off the sunglasses, and put her hands hard against her heart.
"Roxy," said the voice she tried not to hear, "Knock it off."
She breathed in, breathed out. Her rules, her trick. She thought hard about what she would see, when she opened her eyes, and when she was brave enough to try, everything was exactly as she thought it would be.
She set the sunglasses carefully on top of her dresser, and left for her field hockey practice.
The next day, a kid transferred into her third period biology class. All she could look at was his baseball cap, and the blond hair sticking out beneath it. She had the sense of something being not quite right, and felt, for some reason, almost afraid.
Roxy marched back home and straight to the den, where her mother was sipping a martini with two olives. Without preamble, she announced, "Mom, I am probably in the wrong universe and also may I have one of those?"
"Finish mine," her mother said, and then, "The wrong universe?"
"Yes, I am pretty sure."
"How fascinating," her mother said, and Roxy knew that her mother believed her. "Parallel timelines? Alternate reality? Or maybe even a dream one?"
"I don't know. I can only remember little pieces."
Her mother looked thoughtful. "The human mind is more powerful than any computer. It could be that when you came here, it filled in the gaps instantaneously as you encountered new things, based on what you had observed or already knew. And, I'm sure, it guessed in some places. Maybe got some things wrong. It may even have made you forget about where you came from, as a means of protecting yourself from the reality dissonance."
"Sure, makes sense," Roxy agreed. She took a sip of the martini, and pressed her lips tight and thin over her teeth, in a strange, painful smile. She hadn't swallowed quick enough.
"Well, I hope it's not an alternate reality, in any case," her mother said, still looking thoughtful. "Knowing you, I think you'd feel guilty about having left me behind. I hope it's something easier."
Roxy hadn't thought of this. "I won't leave you behind."
Her mother smiled, and touched Roxy's hand gently. "It'll be alright, darling. I may not even be your mother, where you come from."
"No," Roxy said, and suddenly knew that the woman sitting next to her was her real mother, and also: she had never known her, because her mother was dead. For a second, a terrible, paralyzing grief exploded through Roxy's chest. She swallowed.
Roxy stared hard at her mother, and said, "Mom, I love you no matter what, all rules broken."
Her mother smiled, and her eyes curved softly upwards.
"My beautiful girl," Rose said.
Roxy thought, the part of me that always hurts.
Her memories crashed into her.
Roxy stumbled. She felt dizzy and sick and sad, so soul-shatteringly sad. "Oh my god," she mumbled, and reached blindly for her mother's sleeve. "Oh my god, what a joke. The love of my life won't love me back. What kind of a stupid ending is that? What kind of a—" her voice broke, and shot up with a gasping sob. "Oh, mom," Roxy said helplessly, as tears formed behind her eyelids, as her hands reached and reached, "Oh, mom, how could I forget him? How could I forget me?"
She reached, and reached, and reached, and she couldn't stand to open her eyes, to know once again—her mother was gone.
Make the word beautiful. Mother. Mmmotherrrr. Warm at both sides, like an embrace.
Roxy opened her eyes, and saw Nothing. The place that was not a place, where things were not things, and she made and unmade herself.
"Roxy," called the dark thing, the empty space of a man. Roxy sighed. She had never been afraid of dark things.
"Oh, you," she said fondly. The shadow felt like Dirk.
"You're lost again," said the shadow. There was something bossy and slightly accusatory about the way he said it, as though it were somehow her fault, as though she were a naughty girl who'd run away from home and just happened to find herself in a place far, far away. The complicated, shifting shades that comprised the thing seemed to grow warmer, more solid, as Roxy came towards it. She reached out her hands, and pressed her palms to where its face should be. She could feel the bones of it, the structure, though it felt as though a sort of fabric was stretched between their skins.
"Do I have to go with you? I'm fine where I am," Roxy sighed, still hoping that what she felt now was a dream. She had moments, sometimes, where she felt like she fell into herself, into a great, frightening space. Sometimes, when she woke up, it was hard to remember who she was, where reality began.
"We're the heroes," said the shadow. And then, the deal-breaker, "I need you."
Roxy grumbled. Such a Dirk thing to say.
"How'd you find me, anyway?"
"Your heart."
"Ugh," Roxy moaned. "That's so not cute and I totally know that you're playing me. You should really sprinkle these moments around, and not just save them for when you need something. Such a give away. Question: in this other space-time, are we together?"
"Sort of."
"Together but not together."
"Yes."
Roxy clicked her tongue. Such a tease. "But you're there," she confirmed.
"Yes," he agreed, and the dark thing's arms came up and around her, and Roxy felt something begin to pull, a jerk that seemed to tug at both her naval and the back of her throat.
She swallowed, and said, "Then, that's where I should be, too."
She let herself go.
Roxy woke up.