Now you know I need a miracle
A star-crossed lover, an arrow in my heart
I need a rainy day in an endless summer
A pocket full of stars
-Nine Black Alps, Pocket Full of Stars
When you first see her, it's like you get hit by a fucking battering ram.
You know you recognize her, and you see the same thing reflected in her eyes. It's sort of like she's always been there, like you could turn away and leave and never see her again, and you'd still be able to place exactly where the freckles on her face are. You know she has a birthmark on her shoulder even though it's covered by her dark hair right now, and you shrug off the feeling that she's missing something.
Even though it's dark, you still see her pretty green eyes flash as she excuses herself from her group of friends and starts walking over to you. You should probably pretend you haven't been staring at her like a freak, but you can't bring yourself to look away just yet, and besides, she's staring at you, too.
"Hey, I'm sorry, this might sound really weird, but do I know you from somewhere?" She asks you, and it startles you out of your stupid lovesick-schoolgirl daze.
"I don't know, but, um..." Real eloquent, dumbass. "Maybe? I think I have the same feeling. You just seem... I feel like I've met you before." You are so smooth. The smoothest. Captain Vantas of the USS Smooth Motherfuckery, that's you.
Oh my god, she smiles. Score. "Yeah. That." Holy hell, she's as awkward as you. She shakes her head. "I'm sorry, I'm so rude! My name's Jade, Jade Harley." She shoves out her hand for you to shake.
"Karkat Vantas," you say back, and you really hope your palms aren't as sweaty as you think. "So, Jade, what brings you to this truly excellent and not at all lame as hell party?"
"My brother, actually! He knows someone who knows someone, and they pulled a favor, I guess. What about you? All alone?"
"My brother, too. He works here, so I got in free." Wait, should you have mentioned that? Does it sound like you're bragging? Of course not, you're fine. Wait, you're still sort of shaking hands. You don't want to stop, but should you?
She finally breaks your awkward handshake to adjust her glasses, and looks around a bit. Oh, you're staring again. Yeah, those stars sure are interesting, aren't they? You know like... a constellation, let's find it. You glance back at her to see that she's looking up now, too. "Do you know any constellations?" She asks with a dreamy little smile.
"No, not really. A friend of mine tried to teach me once, but she gave up pretty quick." Is this normal first meeting talk?
"It's too bright up here. I know a place where we can get a better view, you wanna come?"
Kankri's gonna have your ass. "Absolutely."
"Great!" She grabs her phone out of her bag and taps a few keys before squealing, "let's go!" like this'll be the time of her life. She grabs your hand and leads you back inside, down the stairs, and through the front doors of the library.
"Where are we actually going?"
"Oh! See, a friend of mine owns a storefront just up the hill, and she has access to the roof of the building, so there!" She punctuates this statement with a quick dig through her bag, and pulls out a key ring with a little green dog charm on it. "I even have a key, so we won't have to break in or anything."
You're sort of alarmed to realize that you would totally still follow her if she said you'd have to break in. You're that fucking smitten. "Cool. Which store?"
"Um, it's new, she keeps changing the name. Something about light, I think. It's a bookstore," she says, with her face still screwed up like she thinks she's forgetting something. "Anyway, it's super cute, with a huge window in the back and a little loft over part of it where she has tea and comfy chairs and stuff. It's really great. And since I'm sorta between jobs right now, she says she might hire me."
"Are you hurting your chances by almost-breaking-in to your employer?"
"Oh, no, she says it's cool, I do it all the time. I even keep a telescope there just because the view is better than at my place. Sooo," she draws it out, "what do you do?"
Shit. "Um, mooch off my brother, for now. When I go back to school I'll get a job, but I wanted to come back here for the summer."
"What're you studying?" The Dreaded Question.
"Genetics."
"Oh, cool! Where?"
"University of Chicago. What about you?"
"Haha, um, astronomy and astrophysics at Columbia. That's really neat, though, I never really could get the hang of biology. I like frogs, though," she rambles, like she's embarrassed. Holy shit, though. "Oh, we're here!" She unlocks the door and pushes inside, flicking on the light. She motions for you to come in after her, and locks the door again behind you.
You follow her through the room and up the stairs, into a back room, and up more stairs before finding yourself at the door that must lead to the roof. She unlocks it in a practiced movement before gesturing you outside, and oh, wow.
You can almost see the whole town from up here, the little street lights not even that far away from your height, but just enough that they make everything glow like you're in a movie. The river reflects the light from town in broken sparks. You walk up to the edge, which has a short barrier around it, and just look.
"It's beautiful, isn't it?" She says from over your shoulder, and you turn to look at her. She's got this look of unbridled joy on her face, like there's nowhere else she'd rather be, and she's staring right past you and up at the sky.
"Yeah."
She walks up beside you and points to the Big Dipper. "You know that one, right?"
"Yeah, but that's the only one."
"Well, if you follow the handle there, you get to the North Star, right? And then you can see the Little Dipper." Her hand moves accordingly. "It's sort of across from the Big Dipper."
"Oh, I think I actually see it!"
"Yeah! And you see that triangle-y shape just over there? That's Draco, and his tail goes right between them," she says, and she keeps pointing and smiling, just fucking overjoyed about those stars. She goes on to tell you about Casseopeia and Cepheus, Andromeda and Perseus, and gets to Lyra when she asks you, "Do you know any of the stories?"
"Not really. It's a lyre, right? I know that that one has something to do with Hell." You totally should have taken that astronomy class in junior year.
"Oh my gosh, yeah, it's so romantic! So Odysseus is the son of Apollo, so he has this gift with music. He can play the lyre better than anyone else, and he can charm any woman. His music is so good, that people just get overwhelmed with emotion when they hear it. So one day, he falls in love with this woman, Eurydice. She loves him too, so they start planning to get married. Eventually they do, and they have a really beautiful wedding, but then Eurydice gets bit by a snake. She dies on their wedding night."
"Seriously?"
"Sh! So Odysseus, because she was his true love and he'd do anything for her, he walks right into the Underworld and starts playing his lute. He charms his way past all the guards and all the dead, and he walks up to Hades himself. He says that he'll do anything to get Eurydice back, and they make a deal: that Orpheus will walk out of the Underworld and never look back, and Eurydice will follow him. He has to take it on faith. So Orpheus agrees, and starts walking back, playing his lyre. And he thinks he can hear her footsteps behind him, but he's not sure. And they start getting lighter and lighter, and eventually he's right there, at the gates of the Underworld, and he can't stand it anymore and looks behind him. He sees Eurydice right there behind him for just a second before she disappears, and he never sees her again."
"What."
"I love that one. It's so sad."
"Well, why the hell did he have to look back at the end?"
"I don't know! He just has to make sure that she's still there!"
"But he was so close! He couldn't just take his fucking word for it for another five seconds? She was the love of his life, he wasn't willing to stick it out to make sure he'd see her again? That's not romantic, it's selfish."
"You think so?"
"Well, yeah. He just sort of gave up, didn't he, because he thought there wasn't a point. What the hell does he do then?"
"I'm pretty sure he goes back home and plays the saddest music ever, then a bunch of nymphs disembowel him to get him to stop or something."
"Oh."
"Yeah. The rest of the story's better." She doesn't seem bothered by your scathing analysis. She's actually smiling, like she's enjoying this trainwreck of a conversation, like you didn't just throw her story back in her face.
"Why do you like it so much?"
"Oh, I don't know. I think… I like the futility of it? Like, Orpheus knows it's almost impossible to bring her back, but he tries anyway. And even though he can't do it in the end, he did his best, and honors her memory the best way he can. I think it's romantic how he doesn't care that it's impossible, that he'd do anything for Eurydice even though he knows it probably won't work." You suppose it sounds nicer when she says it like that.
You don't really know what to say, now. She's looking back up at the stars, happy as a fucking clam. She sorta trailed off at the end there, like she's remembering something, but not something sad. She looks… happy. Then she glances back over at you, and it's like it's magnified, like she swallowed a little sun and it's just shining out of her.
"Karkat?"
"Yeah?"
"I feel sorta like we were supposed to meet. Is that weird?"
"Probably. But… I think I get it."
She turns back to look over the river as the fireworks start going off, the little green explosions reflecting on her glasses.
Yeah, you get it.
She turns and looks back at you before she walks through the door, broken and bleeding, but smiling. Her fluffy woofbeast ears twitch as you make eye contact, and you feel yourself smile back.
You did it.
You did it, and nothing is ever going to tear you and your friends apart again. You're the last ones to walk through, and you think to yourself that finally it will all be worth it.
A look of hopeful determination replaces her smile when she holds out her hand, and you take it.
Together, you step through the door leading to your new world.