Title: Bubble of Light
Summary: ...
Characters/Parings: Vriska, John
This is z-nadka-zak's 100th review prize thing. They requested a VrisJohn flufffic, and though this might be slightly off the mark, I hope you still enjoy.
The quote at the beginning is from Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man.
I own nothing of Homestuck and I am not making money from this.
"So I approach it through division. So I denounce and I defend and I hate and I love."
denounce
She's almost sure that she was the one to think of the quote, but it becomes impossible to tell when she's been dead for so long that she spends her dreams in a darkness that is cool and soft behind her eyelids, when her whole body has been suspended so long without gravity or location or contact that not only have the thoughts of physical nonexistence permeated her thoughts, she's begun to wonder if her thoughts themselves are existent at all.
She opens her blank thought-eyes, her dream-eyes, and turns her mind-body over to look at the empty not-place, a place where the freshly dead are dropped like droplets of water into an ocean of salty emptiness, where their fiery, bright, victorious, (regret) memories are left to blaze for a moment in confusion until they disperse, diluted into nonexistence by the sheer enormity of time and silent backdrop.
She opens her memory-eyes again and looks around to see the boy behind her, the boy with white eyes and black glasses who smiles like nothing could change and she takes a moment to wonder
John.
are you a dream or are you dead?
are you my insanity or are you doomed?
are you here in my thoughts or here in yours?
The forest around them is the one he is showing her, blue like blood and glowing around its delicate edges and fluttering with an imaginary breeze out of a faded memory.
She smiles something that she's sure isn't her own mouth, and she reaches out both hands that she doesn't think could possibly be her own, and before she can say anything with a voice that can't possibly exist for real, she falls asleep again and everything becomes dark and screaming and she starts to forget where she kept her identity.
Reality would be something she'd testify against with every insubstantial thought of her broken being, except for the fact that such a thing would prove against her. She's gone insane inside her own thoughts, blown like a dimming ember in a hurricane of void.
defend
She awakes to a torrential rain and a watery coldness that strikes a sharply detached shiver through her spine. She spasms and coughs, rolling over in the frigid mud and drawing her shaking knees up to her chest, arms flailing against the earth below her. She keeps her eyes screwed shut as her imaginary senses are assaulted with stereotypical embodiments of loneliness, tiny, unrelenting drops of water spattering against her naked back as she claws herself upright, feeling divided between this apparent reality that her mind is signaling through her (physical?) body, and the detached sense of non-existence that her mind is calmly resonating, a constant humming anchor bringing her back to the invisible reality of...
She coughs again, eyes slits now, and drags her heavy, flickering-light-projection of a body around to see what the void is breathing out this time. She sees darkness, blue like blood and glowing around the edges with rain she can feel but can't see, and a shockingly bright, warm glow through something she might've called windows in a past life.
And then she sees his face, laughing on the other side, as she stands in the darkness with mud sucking at her ankles and wind biting at her hair and water swallowing everything else and she takes a moment to wonder
John
is that you? are you there?
has everything i've done ever affected anything?
John
am i here? do i exist?
tell me, please,
please,
She watches herself, her mind detached, as her body shivers with cold guilt and trudges through the abyss only to collapse just a wind's-breath away from the window-pane, her body's breathing ragged with indescision and the question on her mind on whether and why and if?
But she's lived asleep for far too long, if living and sleeping is the thing she has been doing for all this time after death, and she watches herself as she drags herself back to her feet and punches the window hard enough to strike cracks of light in the glass and droplets of blood from her knuckles.
In my defense, your honor, I plead insanity
His gaze jerks up at the sound and stares into hers with all the shock her imagination can muster, and he stands so quickly that his chair falls to the ground in a silent clatter, and he runs from the room and out of sight before her breath can even fog the warm reality that she wanted to dream so desperately, and her last hope is shattered and her body crumples to the ground along with her mind, the two of them for once united.
In reality, she's lost. All these memories and speculations serve to stop her from anchoring herself in a place where she can exist, protect her against the further pain of loss and loneliness, but she can't. Like some small, insignificant insect attracted to the inviting gleam of light on water, she dives in only to drown.
Any emotion she feels is just another sign of her deconstruction.
hate
When her mind gathers some thoughts together again, she feels warmth, wrapped all around her in a cocoon of metamorphosis. She curls both hands into the softness around her, and blinks her eyes without opening either. Something inside her body is burning heat and fury. Her rationality knows this momentary lapse in the cold and pain will only give way to yet more disembodied screaming in the most soul-wrenching way.
And then her ears pick up something that she'd forgotten to remember.
Sound.
Her name.
"Vriska?"
The voice is soft, his voice is soft, and it makes her heart throw itself repeatedly against her spine and then down through her guts and away, triggering that rocking, seasick feeling that she's on a ship and she can't quite tell which way is down, gravity spinning her around in this soft warmth until she's dizzy and her mind is scrabbling for a handhold on her imaginary body as it continues to twirl away.
And then she coughs and gasps, lungs expanding like wings, wings expanding like wind, and her body throws itself upright, eyes open, mouth open, light boring all the way into the darkest corners of her thoughts. She grabs at the fabric restricting her arms and body, tries to tear it away, but they're blankets and a sweater that's a blue lighter than any shade of blood.
"Vriska?"
Eyes wide, she throws her hair out of her face and stares at him, breathing heavily with fear and hatred as his heart-melting smile burns her memories into oblivion. Why did she have to torture herself like this? Why did she have to bring him into it, always him, always out of reach, with his eyes blank, and
"Oh man, Vriska, I'm so glad you're okay!" He smiles and leans forward to embrace her around the shoulders, his nose pressing into her mess of damp hair.
No, this time they're full and alive, and she hates it all the more. She knows she's done it all wrong. She knows she deserves this death and this pain and this emptiness. She knows she can never meet him in the flesh. But why can't she just die in peace? Why can't she just float away and let her memories disappear, her thoughts vanish into the ether like smoke on the wind? Why does she have to torture herself with
this
fake
John!
She shoves him away and he stumbles back, falling to the floor and looking up at her with wide-eyed shock, glasses slightly askew and hair ruffled, and she's struck with guilt again, a guilt that puppets her hands to cover her face, draws her knees up to her nose as she breaths raggedly into the soft blankets, trying to block out all the sensations of warmth and happiness with which her dreams are bombarding her tattered sanity.
"Vriska?" His voice is so sad, and it hurts all the more. She feels his fingertips brush her elbow and she screams,
"Don't touch me!" in a voice that hasn't been used in endless sweeps of time, that cracks halfway into a sob.
It's silent then, until she hears him stand up and walk slowly away, and then the faint glow of warm light around the edges are sucked away with a soft click.
How she hates herself and her non-existence.
love
After a long stretch of darkness and dreams that feel even more fake than usual, she returns to the un-memory of the fake-John when the light comes back on and she dreams that she awakens again to the sound of his voice.
This time, her body feels even more tired than before, and she doesn't protest, doesn't say a word when he sits beside her, passes her a warm bowl of something that her nose senses like food, and she lets her body eat the stuff until it's gone. And then she lets the bowl fall to the floor, where it breaks into two pieces and the spoon clatters away and her wretched mind feels a tortured sort of satisfaction at seeing the sad look on John's face.
"What's happened to you, Vriska?" he asks, as he picks up the broken pieces and sets them carefully aside.
Her eyes stare at his face, looking for something to tell her this is a dream, but these death-dreams are always too realistic, all the way to the end when they stop and suddenly she's torn away to another nightmare where her dream-body runs cackling through the afterlife slaughtering everyone she's ever loved.
She shrugs. Should she bother?
He starts to put an arm around her, hesitates, and then does it anyway. Her frayed thoughts are quelled slightly at the touch, and for a second she almost feels like she might not be dead anymore.
"You try spending forever with only your crazy thoughts for company," she says, and leans into his touch, resting her head on his shoulder and closing her eyes. Was it a bad thing, to want this to be real?
"You're alright now, Vriska," he says quietly, "I've got you."
She tries to laugh, but it just sticks in the back of her throat like half-formed vomit, and she coughs and shivers.
"I've been dead for too long John."
Her mind dozes and wanders as this John talks to her, tells her about how the game is over and everything will be alright, and one part of her starts to believe him, catching onto the words as though they are the only things that will save her. The rest of herself watches the scene unfold and waits for everything to unravel.
"Vriska?"
She opens her eyes and look up at his face. He looks older, eyes slightly sunken, light laugh lines around the corners, and the two parts inside her begin to wonder
John
is this reality?
please,
John
i wish you were real
He kisses her forehead and his lips are warm against her skin, and something inside her starts to unravel, tightly woven strands floating apart after being soaked and drowned in water. Against her will, her thoughts become woven into this dream, somehow less detached than she thought was possible, and the whole of her thinks that maybe, just maybe, her luck has turned and reality exists again.
And even if she's still dead inside,
at least the two of them here are warm together,
inside a bubble of light protected from the unending rain,
and she's somehow really awake again,
and alive.