notes: so, this is my first homestuck fanfic, huh? what a surprise. dunno why i waited this long, i've been here lurking around the fandom for years, but it's all come to a head now. prepare yourselves for some really intensive mediocrity. and gamzee. prepare yourselves for gamzee.
...man oh man this kid never fails to kick my feelings in the balls.
warnings: violence & gore, child neglect, drug abuse/addiction, cannibalism, unspecified but glaringly obvious mental health issues, etc.
"the ocean's calling out to you
but you still can't swim
you've walked into the water
but you just fall down again
so they take you by hands
by the hair
and pull you back
and they take you by the shoulders
until everything goes black
and blue"
- ari (courfiusette), they were gifts from the sea
prologue/epilogue: heyokha boy
Like all things wise and wicked, it begins with the sea.
That is to say…what's where it came from. What's where it found you, fed you, and put you up to motherfucking rest. And what's the name, the one you'd been calling since that first day to guide Them as They willed it, the first bright shards of take cast as pickings for a lifetime's worth of give.
And that's how it was. And that's how it is.
You ain't once had no problem with these waters, no problem with where they lie or how they breathe. The brine's always been a home to you, no matter you'd just as easy be swallowed dead even on the threshold. Shit's about trust, about symbiosis and wonder, and a genesis that you will only understand sweeps down the line, murder deep in self-worship as well as any eager fool turned fleshpuppet could ever revel like a real boy.
But for now, you know nothing of using or being used, or of the killsharp danger of your kindness. So even when it takes from you your guardian and keeper, you don't have to be angry. So even when it spits predators your way, when you gotta take up arms against a brother or sister for all they don't take kind to landdwellers loitering at their gates, you don't have to be angry. You know the truth of curses and blessings, and how to seek the center of whatever's twisted in decay. Some worth is always there, in the first time you turned in desperation to those sickest greens to find they'd dim the cry of armies in mirage, or the first shoreline strife that left you with enough fresh fisher's meat bone-to-bone to last a week with surplus.
Always, always, the ocean has given you what you need. True enough, you don't know what you need―ain't a single motherfucker out there who knows―but it's taken your falls and carried your beacon and you trust it, trust it like you ain't never trusted no invertebrother, before you. And now, and now, and now: what have you got to give in return?
You might not know how to breath underwater, but you'd just as soon drown trying.
end notes: stay tuned for more!