Summary: Kanaya had been careful. The weight of her entire race was on her shoulders, after all. Two sweeps have been devoted to trying and failing to breed grubs in the center of her hidden lab, and she isn't so sure her heart can take any more failure. A short little fic about hope and how victory can be a most offensive shade of blue.
Disclaimer: Months of planning and plotting have come to naught, and I still don't own Homestuck. A very grudging grumble of acknowledgement to Andrew Hussie for allowing me to frolick in his world willy-nilly what with my markers and out-of-control headcanons.
Author's Note: An AU in which a disaster leaves Alternians very low in number, and Kanaya Maryam and Eridan Ampora are left with a lab to try and breed not only the next generation of Alternians, but also a new mother grub. Another story that may or may not be turned into something more.
Kanaya had been careful. She had been so very very careful. The weight of her entire race was on her shoulders, after all. Not a movement was made that wasn't calculated and thoroughly planned. Not a plan was implemented without the most thorough examination and the go-ahead by her partner, clueless though he claimed to be. Many sleepless days and nights had passed, but she had made sure to be well-rested to see this moment come to pass. Her partner was in another section of the lab watching over their little mother grub, no doubt plagued with similar doubts. He was probably pushing off his hopelessness, though. Despite how pathetic he claimed to be, her moirail was so very very good at that. She envied him for that.
Even with all that planning, however, with every blink it grew harder to open her eyes again. Her stomach was in knots and the stress of the past year was crushed her poor abused thinksponge. She couldn't sleep at this critical moment, but she wanted nothing more than to escape. She took another bitter sip of Eridan's vivifying elixir, and she waited.
As she stared at her own shadow on the egg's smooth surface, she thoughts of all the ways this go wrong. What if the missing bile was necessary to purge genetic impurities? What if she had combined the genetic material in an improper ratio and the specimens were too weak? What if her limited number of donors wasn't enough to pass for a slurry? What if she couldn't provide the proper care for the grubs? What if the nursery wasn't hot enough? Cool enough? Big enough? What if her mother grub died? What if every grub she brought into life was doomed to die because she was too impatient to wait for her mother grub to grow up?
Her brain spun and her bloodpusher was doing a very poor job and, with her head spinning, Kanaya rested her head on her hands. She let out one long sigh, and as the air escaped her lungs, all hope of posture did as well. She slumped in her chair, sweating and uncomfortable from the heat of the incubationator. Somewhere in the lab something beeped, and she lifted her tired head and began the process. She flipped the cover of the incubationator open, being sure to leave the filter on to keep any contaminants from getting into the vat. She adjusted the temperature by one thousandths of a degree, and then similarly adjusted the acidity of the sludge the eggs rested on. She had gone through these motions no less than a dozen times, but she pushed all memories of their previous tries to the back of her mind. The only thing more heartbreaking than thinking of all those unbroken eggs was the sight of all the motionless grubs.
When all the adjustments were done, Kanaya began to pace, but the anxiety of missing something vital led her back to her chair, staring at the eggs through laced fingers and heavy lashes. They all looked…kind of wrong. Their surfaces were a bit bumpy and some had obvious deformities, but she refused to think about anything than how wonderful all her little grubs would be when they arrived.
There was a beep from behind her, a much more familiar and positive beep, and Kanaya pushed her chair back to turn and turn her comm. on. They had found early on that Trollian, while familiar, was tedious and difficult to work while they were working. But whatever reason Eridan was calling her, it couldn't be good. He hated interrupting work almost as much as she did.
"Hey, Kan. Is she supposed to be this weird purple color underneath?"
Kanaya breathed a sigh of relief. "I believe so." She cast one look back at the still eggs, then devoted her full attention to her partner. "We discussed this, remember? The grubs have a similar hemospectrum to our own, though it is limited to only a few colors and only seems to affect how big the grub will grow—"
"So purple means Castra's gonna grow up nice and big, right?"
Kanaya couldn't help a smile at his affectionate, relieved tone; he had vehemently opposed her decision to name their mother grub, but since he had designated himself her caretaker, all he had to say about it was she should have his last name.
"Yes, it does." She paused. "Why were you looking at her belly anyway? You know that moving her manually may upset her delicate structure—"
"God, Kan, I didn't flip her over!" He sounded indignant at the very thought, and she could see him pouting in her mind. "She was doin' those weird flippy things she does when she's hungry and when I came with her pellets, she was on her side doin' this dramatic diva, making a big ol' stink about how hungry she was."
"She takes after her lusus," she teased lightly.
Eridan's sputtered indignant answer was cut short when Kanaya heard a sound she knew by heart. Electricity ran through her and without saying goodbye she spun away from the comm., jumping out of her chair and striding across the short room and stand at the incubationator, her hands gripping the edge of the table. Her heart sunk as she saw that one egg had cracked, and a thick green sludge was seeping through the cracks.
"No," she whispered, her eyes flicking up to the screen. "No, no, no, no!" She tried to keep her voice low, but she screeched the last syllable as the word "TERMINATED" flashed across not one, but two sensors. Fury and anxiety made her hands shake and her exhales came in half-sobs. "No…"
She made to fall into her chair, but as she had left it across the lab, she fell with a graceless thump to the floor, almost hitting her horn on the table's edge as she went down. She closed her eyes and sighed deeply. Blackness crept on the edge of her mind, but a little voice kept them back, the voice she had come to hate.
Don't Stop Working. You Can't Stop Working.
Get Up.
She obeyed, the will draining out of her. She swallowed her tears, not wanting to accidentally contaminate something.
Put On Your Gloves.
She fumbled a bit, but she managed to slide open a drawer and find the gloves she had packed for just such an occasion. It took her a few shaking tries to get the glove on all the way, but the stern commands in her head stopped her from quitting. She finally got the gloves on up to her elbows, and after that was finished, she put on her mask.
Open The Incubationator. Carefully.
Sccchtk. The screen slid back easily, and a faint alarm went off telling her that she was letting out precious heat.
Do This Quickly. Pick Up The Terminated Eggs. Carefully.
She gently cupped one of the fallen and lifted it from the vat, very carefully and quickly placing it into the tray beside her. Practice made her movements quick and easy as she tore off her gloves and donned another pair before reaching back in and grabbing the second terminated eggs, which was so bumpy and grey as to pass for a warm stone rather than a troll egg.
Put The Cover Back On. Quickly.
She did, and after a few seconds, the alarms sheepishly stopped blaring.
Now Put The Terminated Eggs In The Cocktail.
She hated that she'd named it that. She wasted a few seconds staring at the dead eggs. Through the cracks of the green one, she could see the faint outline of a body, half-grown and bumpy. She felt sick to her stomach and was very thankful she hadn't eaten recently as she carried the tray to the chute that would take them down to the Cocktail, a churning mixture of discarded genetic material, grub bodies, and other waste products that were purged and colored and served to their mother grub in pellets.
The tray was sent whisking off with the push of a button.
Now Empty Your Stomach.
Kanaya was nothing if not obedient.
Once she had finished, the voice fell silent, its purpose served, and she dragged her chair back to sit in front of the eggs. She stared at them, some mottled, some clear, and despair closed in on her. She longed so badly for one batch to survive, just one batch.
Throw Caution To The Wind.
Her hands felt heavy as she dropped the filter around the eggs in a small circle, and she reached forward, pushing her arms through and laying her palm on one of the remaining three eggs. Its faded blue hue clashed with her grey skin. The heat of the incubationator's lamps made her skin very uncomfortable, but she ignored it.
Kanaya wanted to say something to bring the little grub out, to tell it how much she hoped for it, but her mind was too shot and her heart too wretched to come up with anything.
"Please survive," she said simply.
The heat and the many sleepless hours dragged her down, and Kanaya's eyes slid closed. Against her will and against her own orders, Kanaya began to lose consciousness, and all she was aware of in her sleep was the barely-there thump of the egg beneath her palm.
Kanaya had gotten somewhat used to the horrors that assaulted her mind since they had run out of sopor. The violence that assaulted her psyche was softer and quieter and played more on her fear of failure than any sheer violent urges. She saw Eridan's dead body, the crushed bodies of their grubs, the still corpse of Castra. She saw a barren Alternia with the ground soaked with the blood of the few survivors, and their ghosts screamed her name for allowing their race to die out. They held her deeper and stronger than she was used to, perhaps because she had been away from her dreams so long, but she was no less hypersensitive in her sleep and she was woken up by two things: first of all, her fist was closing around the fragile shell of the egg, and second, the egg was moving.
She didn't come to wakefulness with as much speed and grace as she would have liked and there was an absurd lack of drama or fanfare when she blearily raised her head, blinking crust out of her eyes, and found that instead of an egg, her fingers were curled around the slick, wriggling body of a live grub.
Kanaya's heart took a moment to accept the shock and she straightened up slowly. Her breath began to come in short, ragged gasps. Her hand had fallen into the vat, and her skin tingled where the nutrient-rich liquid touched her. The heat had left her skin feeling dry and brittle, but the little blue wriggler in her palm seemed to bask in it. He wiggled about, his little claws digging into her skin and holding her tight. He soundlessly opened and closed his mouth, doing the closest he could achieve to a cough when some of the concoction he had been incubated in got in his mouth. She tried to move, to turn him to see him better, and he let out a high-pitched squeal that left her ears ringing, and she fell still.
"What do I do?" she whispered, her voice hoarse and barely audible from sleep.
Let Him Soak In The Vat. He Still Needs The Nutrients. He Is Small.
That was a lie, but she let the voice say whatever it needed to in order to keep her sane. The grub was larger than she'd expected them to be.
She let herself stay in that position for at least an hour before the grub began to squirm and she decided that he was strong enough to move. It didn't take more than one look to know that the others in his batch had terminated while she was asleep, and so she released the filter with no qualms.
Her hand was sticky and she trailed nutrition solution all over the table, but a strange urge took over her and she held the grub as close to her as she could. He let out a flow of gibberish, clicks and trills as he got used to using his vocal cords in open air. She responded in kind, humming to him with no words attached.
Only after he bit her fingers did the true weight of what had just happened hit her. She almost stumbled back, and as it is, he let out a cracked screech of protest when she shot up out of her chair.
"I'm sorry, dearest," she murmured, and walked as if drunk to shakily punch her comm. "Eridan," she whispered, her voice still hoarse. Her throat was closing up and she could hardly believe their luck. "Eridan…we've got one."
She was too scattered to say anything else, and it took all her strength to drag herself back to her chair.
Stop Dawdling. Wash Him.
They had waited a long time for this to come, and she and Eridan had set this room up to prepare for anything that would need to be done to make sure the grubs would grow up right. They had a whole slew of instruments in the hatch room, such as small ablutionblock, a profiling station, etc. Elsewhere in the facility, there were chambers they had set up in a poor mock of the caverns every grub had to survive, but she was hesitant about putting their grubs through that test. Who knew if they would be strong enough to survive it. This lab had been a colonization outpost before they'd found it, so there was a reserve a few miles out where there were lusus naturae that they could pair up with each grub.
Kanaya was very careful with the grub, using the gentlest of sponges and motions as she washed the sticky embryonic fluid from his body and made sure to get what was left of the vat off of him. While the nutrients could do him only good, at Eridan's suggestion the concoction was also laced with sopor, and she didn't want to risk him getting a premature addiction. She had seen what that could do to a troll, let alone a helpless grub.
Measure Him. Weigh Him. Check His Vitals.
Kanaya did as she instructed. Despite her expectations, the grub was too small, but only just. As she went through the motions, she waited for him to stop moving, for him to blink and never open his eyes, for the soft rise and fall of his middle to cease. But it didn't. An hour passed and he moved on. She waited for his energy to wane, for his voice to quiet, for his claws to stop pressing so insistently into her skin. But they didn't. He grew more aggressive as the minutes passed, his voice grew stronger, and his claws began to draw blood. Pride and joy flooded her being.
"That's quite the wriggler you've got there."
The only thing that kept Kanaya from spinning and leaping towards Eridan was that she had precious equipment in her hand, and she didn't think she could stand to leave the grub for one second.
"He's made it this long?" The seadweller crossed the room, and as he went he did all the things she had forgotten: he turned off the incubationator, disposed of the terminated eggs, turned off the comm. and actually saved the grub's data to the computer. "He may actually survive."
"Don't be so pessimistic," she prodded him.
He came and stood next to her. She had put the grub in a small area they had set up to watch the grub's first few days before they were sent to the caverns or to the Cocktail. It was a mock landscape, with a few plants and animals and insects they had decided were safe enough, but not too safe. The grub hissed and mostly just wriggled about, not having full control of his limbs yet. Though she hadn't seen them right away, his horns were slowly starting to fill in and harden, changing from a clear squishy mess to hardened bumps on his head that were bright yellow against the patch of black fuzz on his head. He seemed to be amusing himself for the moment by rubbing the sensitive growths on the moss near him, which involved shaking his entire body until his head found contact with something. He was still making a host of strange noises, some of which sounded suspiciously like curse words, and his voice was starting to gain in strength.
Kanaya was more and more happy with their decision to keep the grubs out of the caverns. They would likely be delayed in their growth, and who knew what would happen.
Eridan leaned in close. "A blueblood." He sounded a little disappointed, and Kanaya knew that one of his material must have been in this batch. Narcissistic as it was, though, she couldn't say she couldn't relate to his hope that one of the grubs would carry on his bloodline. She wouldn't object to holding a jade grub in her hands. "What'll we do with him? Stick him in the caverns?"
Kanaya took a deep breath. Even though she was still high from euphoria and her mind wasn't quite working right, she knew that she had to put that aside. This was the first time a grub had made it this far, and she wasn't sure what they had planned after this. But Eridan knew that he shouldn't try and take charge, and he seemed to get off and stepping back and watching her flounder.
"We'll…we'll keep him here for a few more days," she decided. "If he looks like he's ready, we'll…" She could barely say it. She really didn't want to put him in the caverns. "We'll see," she decided.
"Cool."
They watched him for a few moments, and then Kanaya couldn't hold out any more. In a stunning display of weakness, she went slack and fell against her moirail, her cheek resting on his shoulder and her horn tucked behind his fin. Eridan wordlessly wrapped his arm around her shoulder, and they let out a huge sigh in unison.
"We did it," she whispered, and he very carefully nodded. "He survived."
"Yeah. He'll make it," he said, his hold on her tightening. "He'll be the first one to make it."
Kanaya smiled lazily, not tearing her eyes away from the (literally) wriggler. As usual, Eridan's mere presence put her somewhat at ease. In addition to calming her nerves, it gave her something to worry about besides her own anxieties. Usually. Right now, though, she suspected he was going to call on his weird ability to say just what she wanted to hear.
"Look at him, he's strong. He's big. Who was our blue donor again?"
Kanaya pursed her lips in displeasure, not sure how he could have forgotten. "Zahhak." She didn't like the freakish blueblood very much at all, but they were in no position to turn down any donors, especially not based on such petty reasons as simply being a creep.
"Oh. Of course." Eridan sighed deeply. "Not who I would have preferred, but I suppose we can't be picky, can we?"
"No we can't."
Kanaya really didn't want to leave the grub alone, so she just had Eridan pull up another chair to watch with her. After a few whispered arguments, he convinced her to get some sleep, assuring her he'd watched over their little wiggler while she was out. She gave in, but before she took the sopor shot, she had something very important to do.
"I'm going to name him first," she insisted.
Eridan rolled his eyes. "C'mon, Kan, not that again. I mean, namin' the mother grub was one thing, but we don't even know if this one's gonna make it that long an' I don't think…" He trailed off, staring into her face and seeing his defeat. "You've already named the damn thing, haven't you?"
She didn't deny it. She just turned to the tank and leaned on the table, staring at him. As if sensing her stare, the grub twisted his body to look at her upside down from his perch on a branch. She smiled softly, vaguely aware that Eridan had inserted the syringe into her arm while she was distracted.
"Horuss," she decided fuzzily, and the sopor carried her off to a planet full of wriggling blue grubs and piles of wands made out of pipes and wires.