Rose wakes up to the smell of burning.

She lies on what feels like a thin blanket spread over hard tiled floor. Her lashes flutter with the effort it would require to open her eyes, and she almost considers sinking back into exhausted sleep until she realizes the potential urgency of the smoky smell.

Awareness of the recent past explodes under her eyelids.

She snaps to consciousness. Above her is a bright, florescent light, reminiscent of bulk grocery stores and military prisons. She tilts her head to look for the source of the threat, finding only grey walls and dark corners where the light will not reach. She pushes herself to her elbows, preparing to stand (her leg is throbbing, goddammit, the pain isn't receding after all), and comes face-to-face with someone she almost knows.

"It's alright," Kanaya says. "Jade says she's preparing…Earth breakfast."

She is radiant. Literally radiant.

Rose, for one bizarre, disorienting moment, does not know what to say. Kanaya's skin is smooth and snow-pale, the serene glow only punctuated by the blackness of her gently pursed lips. Her eyes are bright and sharp, stronger than one shitty screenshot could convey. They sparkle just like a terrible Harlequin romance. A woman who can tighten throats, in more ways than one. Fangs disclose themselves demurely in a poised little smile that shines with the strength of a much stronger display. Her clenched hands rest on skirted knees.

Rose pushes herself to sitting, searching for some witty, potentially cutting remark, but it doesn't come, and that in itself is the strangest thing she has ever encountered, dark gods aside.

"Hello," she says instead.

Kanaya's hands relax, revealing fingers every bit as graceful as the delusion in the Ring.

"Hello."

They stare at one another for a moment, reveling in the sheer effort it took for them to meet face-to-face.

It's just that she was unprepared for her friend to be so physically striking. This is a normal reaction; it's not every day that your alien correspondent turns out to bear all the marble grace of Praxiteles' Hermes. It is normal to admire such beauty, to want to catch the gaze of exotic eyes that dig so deeply.

"I wasn't sure about the lighting," Kanaya says anxiously. "I am aware that humans are diurnal, but I am uninformed as to its benefits in recovery. I tried asking Strider how to make you most comfortable, but he gave me an answer that involved maiden sacrifices and I have grown enough accustomed to your human sarcasm that–"

Ah, there it is. Familiarity.

"So the rambling wasn't solely an online trait." She isn't sure if she is smiling or smirking, but Kanaya seems to appreciate the effort. "Oh, good."

She prays that Kanaya doesn't ask if that was sarcasm. Rose honestly doesn't know.

They go to "breakfast," Rose leaning on Kanaya's shoulder. She makes two mental notes, one that involves procuring a change in bandages, and the other a rather involuntary observation of Kanaya's relatively normal body heat.

No, not "normal." She has to retool her thought processes to avoid speciescentrism now. Human.

Not normal.

Jade presents them with what looks like it might once have been bacon, and Rose can't help but wonder where the girl raised by a dog got the bright idea to try cooking for their new Alternian allies right off the bat. Between this and her attempts to alchemize all the food Rose needed back on LOLAR, she seems to regard providing group nourishment as a new hobby – or duty.

Perhaps this is not the best use of her talents, Rose decides as she prods what could be either toast or an egg. No matter how hard she is trying to help. But Jade is thirteen and a little bit lost, just like the rest of them. They can give her this.

Karkat sits at the far end of the table, complaining loudly about Earth slop. Aradia is doing her best to seem curious about the food. Vriska, given a wide berth by the others, is subtly flinging bits at Terezi, who is trying to ignore her in favor of getting Dave to let her lick his eyebrow. Sollux and Gamzee are elsewhere. The rest are dead.

"It's been odd," Kanaya says, politely fiddling with her food but eating none of it. "I think the majority of us have gone a bit stir-crazy."

"I was under the impression that these were the normal proceedings of troll society," Rose says, risking a sip of orange juice.

"Well yes, but…" Kanaya looks like she's having trouble voicing what exactly is wrong here, on their tiny piece of rock in a numbed universe. "The rules should be different now. We can't afford to live as we have been taught."

"You could make that into a metaphor if you really thought it was a good idea." Rose swallows another mouthful of juice, barely wincing as it goes down. It's a matter of getting accustomed to the flavor, really.

"It would be in bad taste," Kanaya says.

Rose can't help but agree.

x

There is a plan to save John.

Everyone is by now convinced that he is not truly dead, as his death was not heroic. Rose could argue this point, but she would, for once, hate to be right. Besides, he had probably failed to fulfill to the letter the conditions of a "heroic" death laid in-universe by the game. So instead, she promotes the obviously correct idea that he is somewhere in the Furthest Ring, waiting for resurrection. She knows enough of the gods to realize that "resurrection" does not necessarily mean "life" and that they will need to pry him from the grip of the Ring themselves if they want to see him again. The gods recognize his importance and are drawn to his power. She has informed the others of this as well as, more recently, her run-in with Davesprite, believing that he still may be of some use if he refuses to lie down and dream quietly.

There is also a plan to sacrifice Dave and Rose's dreamselves to activate the Scratch in their own session. That one was all Rose, and is an entirely different story.

Her skin seems to be growing paler, but this might just be her imagination. She would call it "wishful thinking," except that she doesn't.

An end to the feeling of being watched would be nice, and the disturbing whispers in her dream tower that she can't avoid. Perhaps if she at least looked like the others, the trolls would stop treating her with caution ranging from the subtle to the outright malicious. Vriska particularly seems to enjoy calling her names, some of which she has apparently haphazardly researched from Earth and would be considered offensive to humans of African descent. Not that she probably realizes any of this; her insults are pasted together hastily and stretched out with all the impudence of a child. Kanaya tells Rose that Vriska is acting out because she is worried for John, and she mostly believes her, though it is clear that there are other issues at fault here.

Vriska is a Hero of Light, and in some ways must know more than her companions. Sometimes she seems the part, when she meets Rose's eyes with daring, her smile stretched into a wide display of shining teeth. She may be loud and bossy, but she knows things that the others do not, and sometimes Rose can read it in the curve of her dark lashes, the swagger of her walk through the half-darkness of the trolls' base.

It is these moments, jagged bites of clarity between overloud taunts, that cause Rose to smirk back.

Kanaya has been a great help. They often find themselves in her respiteblock, talking about vague, stunningly unimportant aspects of their respective worlds' philosophies, or prattling almost normally about clothes or books.

Rose finds that she likes these moments best of all, when they are locked up safe from devastation behind thin walls. She likes talking to Kanaya, or peacefully burying herself in a book nearby while she works on an outfit. Sometimes they read together.

Rose will freely admit that she used to look down on Kanaya. She did not seem interesting, at the start, or a good conversationalist, with very little ability to needle or manipulate. Then came grudging respect, then grateful. Friendship, even admiration. Equal footing at last.

So it is perfectly logical that she feels so incredibly, effervescently warm here.

Yea, truly, their friendship has the power to bend the will of gods.

Kanaya, without warning, flings a scarf around Rose's neck to take measurements. She ties it lovingly, fingers brushing against her neck, and smiles.

Rose has to take a deep breath and read Nietzsche for ten minutes before she feels normal again.

x

Karkat is the one who tells her that she can't come on the rescue mission.

"Because no offense, Lalonde, but your 'I am a truly psychotic speaker of death and despair' antics have been less than inspiring." He leans against Kanaya's doorframe, scowling more deeply than usual. Or perhaps he's wincing; Kanaya's room is more brightly lit than the others, especially while Rose is trying to read.

"I assure you that I am in perfect control of my faculties," Rose informs him. She is carefully dismissive as she returns to the copy of The Birth of Tragedy perched on her crossed legs. "If anything, I understand the Ring better than the rest of you."

Kanaya doesn't speak, but out of the corner of her eye Rose notices the way she shifts uncomfortably on the floor, trying to face the two of them equally.

"I shouldn't have to explain this," he says, and when Rose finally glances up she notices how determinedly his angry stare is fixed at a blank point in the wall somewhere to her left. "It's not about knowledge. It's about not getting the rest of our team killed, and you haven't exactly been a paragon of crusading white light against the writhing depths that you're so eager to face off with." His glance wavers to Kanaya for support, but none seems to be forthcoming.

"'Our,' you say," Rose snipes back with careful aim. "I wonder if this is the royal we, a reference to solely the trolls, or an actual effort to be inclusive on your part." She watches his face twist up further, angry teeth bared, and ticks a point in her favor.

"I'm not the one sitting on my ass in a corner all day, whispering about some stupid suicide plan that's never going to work! Fuck you, I'm actually trying to get your egg-brain leader back, and what do you do? Everything you can to make it more difficult, that's what you do." He shoves himself off the frame and takes a few steps back into the hall. "Fuck you. You're not going, and that's your own damn fault."

The sigh Kanaya gives once he is gone sounds truly exhausted. Her eyes close, head tilting up. "I should talk to him soon," she informs the ceiling. Rose does feel a little bit bad about that.

She has always studied body language; it's second nature by now. Usually understanding doesn't come so quickly, but it reads plainly in the distinct crunch of Kanaya's thin eyebrows, the depth her fangs press into her bottom lip. She interprets her friend's face with a new sort of zeal, and try as she might she can't ignore the message beside her.

"You don't want me to go," she says.

Kanaya meets her eyes somewhat sheepishly. "I'd rather not risk it."

And it hurts, for reasons that Rose, for all her extensive vocabulary, cannot put into words.

(She is beginning to hate the feeling that maybe years of childhood spent in seclusion with big books have gone to waste.)

"It is genuinely frustrating," she says, trying her best not to fling Nietzsche to the floor, "when what's left of two universes unanimously decides that you are untrustworthy." She feels old rage bubbling up, emotions and images that are not entirely hers, and clamps a lid down on them. Hard.

"That wasn't exactly what I meant," Kanaya says. Rose is about to ask her what, then, could she possibly mean by informing her that she is too much of a wildcard to be of use to them anymore, when long fingers brush against her cheek.

Rose starts, then lets the slight pressure guide her.

Kanaya moves her face until their noses are closer than an American-adjusted personal bubble should allow.

"I don't want to risk you getting hurt," she says, plain and open and oh god, it's true.

Rose stammers out something that sounds like "that wouldn't happen" but feels more like "Dear Lord, did you know that the color of your eyes isn't quite amber after all, but a much more interesting intersection of gold sheen and honey, and I believe there is now something wrong with my autonomic nervous system."

"I know you can take care of yourself," Kanaya says, but the sound is distant, like Rose is again submerged. "But it wouldn't stop me from worrying. Perhaps it's selfish."

For a fraction of a second, Kanaya might have leaned in. Rose might have imagined it. She doesn't know, because it takes just one fraction of a second longer before Rose launches to her feet, stumbling backwards. One more fraction, and the burning embarrassment sets in, coloring her face and filling her mouth with impressive but incoherent babbling.

Kanaya looks startled, hand still hovering where it had rested so cleanly on Rose's face.

Rose blathers nonsense about the plan, about understanding why she can't go because honestly she's not a space-time player anyway and she'll respect the group's wishes. She ends with a whopping "I should leave," and knows it really can't get any worse from there.

Kanaya's face is a horrifying progression from confusion to comprehension to humiliation.

She closes her eyes for a moment (Rose's heart is pounding), scrunches them together and when they open again the fleeting pain is gone, replaced with a graceful sculpture of a face devoid of emotion. "I understand. I'm sorry."

Kanaya has faced rejection before, Rose knows. Maybe not like this. But that one, sharp moment before she sinks back to marble twists something inside of her (where the Horrorterrors used to writhe but now feels more cavernous and empty every second) and pulls.

She shakes her head. "No, it's my fault. I shouldn't have…" Shouldn't have what, exactly? Enjoyed Kanaya's company? Kept her rattling around in her brain, a prisoner since before the grimdark set in? Traced the lines of her neck, fascinated, her eyes following the cut of her shirt against –

Kanaya is still watching, guarded. Those slim fingers clutch tightly together (they have been doused in Rose's skin, and vice versa).

"I'll see you at dinner," Rose says, and walks away.

x

Head down and face burning in the near-darkness of the hallway, she doesn't notice Vriska until she almost runs into her chest.

"Excuse me," she says reflexively, taking a step back. Her limp is reduced by now to the barest hesitation of one leg, and she barely stumbles. The troll does not move.

They face one another, Rose's face stony, Vriska's with just the hint of a smile playing along her bright lips.

"Don't worry," she says, and her voice is sickly-sweet. Heavy. "Kanaya can't help it. She has bad taste, and is just a liiiitle bit desperate." She holds up one hand, indicating that said desperation is about an inch high.

"She's rejected you," Rose tells her as calmly as she can.

"So?" Her hand goes to her hip.

"Her taste is better than you think."

She knows it's a lie as she says it. Vriska smiles with something that Rose recognizes, after all.

"Think what you want. Hey, how are your scars?"

"Let me pass," Rose says, and draws herself up to her full height. Her hand closes around an imaginary wand.

Vriska's eyelids droop and flutter. "But that's so booooooooring."

"Of course." She spits venom into the words. "You are standing in a hallway eavesdropping on your hopeless crush. Your life is the archetype of fulfilling recreational activity."

She pictures the door down the hall behind her, firmly shut, and wonders if Kanaya can hear. Probably not; she has never been one to sit by and let others fight around her. "Meddlesome," Vriska would call it. "Assertive," Rose would counter.

They do not have this argument. Instead, Vriska tilts her head to the side, letting her crazed mane flow down and around her shoulder. "Why don't you make me move," she says, the words containing the shudder of a purr. Rose wonders what would happen if she simply tried to walk around.

She meets her glare, dagger for dagger. Heat flushes fresh in her cheeks, still not cooled from her embarrassment. Psychological war games – this is where she excels (they are much easier to think about than a sad troll girl sitting on the floor, hand extended). This is not a contest to be won head-on through metaphorical posturing; tactical retreat disguised as indifference is necessary.

"No," she says. "You are trying to spark a rivalry with me, but it's entirely counterproductive to saving John. Move or I'll take the long way around. It doesn't particularly matter to me."

Rose probably imagines the flash of color between Vriska's lips, her small pointed tongue poking loose and retreating instantly.

Vriska smiles innocently and steps aside.

x

Evolutionary hardwiring in regards to the penis. That's the explanation for this mess.

Rose is currently being productive, in the sense that lying on top of the covers and playing a game of mental battleship with her sexuality is productive.

Studies have shown that heterosexual men are just as likely to search for images of penises as they are for vaginas, and the most likely explanation comes down to evolutionary heritage. The male sex organ has long since been regarded as a means for competition and comparison, and because of this it's linked intrinsically with arousal. This does not mean, of course, that these men secretly want to have intercourse with other men. They just like looking at penises.

Although on average the male sex drive is higher than the female, is it too ridiculous to assume that there could be some sort of parallel for females? A kind of breast envy, waist envy, leg…

Oh god, she's stretching it.

When the door opens she knows it's Jade, because Jade doesn't knock. She feels weight sink onto the edge of her bed and doesn't have to look to see the concerned way her teeth worry her bottom lip.

"So," Jade says, determinedly cheerful, "you missed dinner."

Rose chooses the obvious response. "I wasn't hungry. Besides, I've missed before."

"I know," she says matter-of-factly, "But this time when I talked about bringing you a tray of something, Kanaya asked me specifically not to disturb you. Which of course means something's up, and I came right away."

Rose feels like laughing, and not entirely bitterly. Jade, for all of her ignorance of custom and personal space, is a unique comfort.

"So?" she says, sliding off the bed and forward, until she's kneeling curiously next to Rose's face. She pokes her shoulder three times, each more forcefully than the last. "What's – the – matter?"

Rose sighs with all the world-weariness of a thirteen-year-old former servant of darkness. "I think I hurt Kanaya's feelings."

Jade frowns sympathetically. "She did seem a little quiet today. She wasn't interested in comparing gardening techniques, and we've been planning to do that for ages. What did you do?"

Rose presses a palm to her forehead, closing her eyes. "I…may have accidentally indicated the possibility of a favorable response to her subtle overtures." She does not mention the squeezing of her insides now as she thinks of Kanaya sitting on the floor, rejected again after she must have thought things were going so well. She pictures her book lying open there, pages rumpled and abandoned.

"I'm not completely sure what that means!" Jade says. "But I know it's bugging you since your words got so big there. Why don't you just apologize? She likes you a lot, you know."

Rose winces and lets her hand float back to her side. "That is, unfortunately, the issue."

She doesn't know whether or not she wants Jade to catch her meaning, but after a momentary scrunch of confusion, understanding washes over the girl's face. "Ohhh. Oh."

Yes, oh, she thinks. A silly, terrible thing to ruin a friendship over: being liked too much.

"So…you don't like her?"

"I'm very fond of her." She feels like her words are slipping out from under her before she can quite catch them, leaving her hopping from rock to crumbling rock just in time. "I…we have many mutual interests, and I have a great deal of respect for everything she's done. She is intelligent, graceful, understanding…"

"But do you like her," Jade says. Rose has to look away then, because this island child's expression suggests a hunting dog that's caught a scent.

The issue, of course, isn't that homosexuality is inherently bad. Rose knows this intellectually; she refuses to live in the dark ages. But they have to repopulate. She should marry John if they want a chance of restarting the human race (sans inbreeding).

She could tell herself that this is her only objection, but it would be a lie. Besides all this responsibility, her fragile human psyche betrays her, filling her with fear of the unknown. Social rules inspire effort to avoid the outsider label, the freak-of-nature lifestyle. She's internalized it, she knows, swallowed it whole without giving the world permission to feed it to her.

For one remarkable moment, Rose Lalonde decides to be completely sincere.

"I don't know what I like."

x

Kanaya is late to the last planning session for the rescue mission. She strides in with all of her usual grace, ignoring Karkat's reprimands, and takes up her place on the opposite side of the room from Rose. She isn't shunning her, exactly; Kanaya is above such childish games. But she doesn't pay her any more attention through the meeting than she does anyone else. Her mouth is pursed uncomfortably, and for the first time since the humans reached the Veil she wears the broken shades.

Karkat kneels on the floor, scribbling additions to his messy diagrams while Sollux sits across from him, watching nothing and no one. Terezi leans on Dave's shoulder like she was born there. Gamzee slouches to the side while Jade nervously tries to start up a conversation, and Vriska and Aradia sit on opposite sides of the circle, wings displayed. Rose thinks of competition and comparison again.

It takes about four more minutes of yelling and cackling before the meeting starts. They proceed in relative peace, discussing specifics and backup plans and preparations.

Eighteen minutes after that, Rose is standing and shouting. This is not her usual tactic. In fact, it couldn't be considered a tactic at all. To be perfectly honest she is extremely angry. It has been building for a long time.

"One of the chief factors that convinced me not to go was that I'm not a space-time player!" she snaps, the rest of the circle eyeing her warily. "I'm not allowed to go, but she is? I'm not allowed to break rules and commit mayhem, but she's forgiven?"

She gestures towards Vriska like flinging acid. The troll crosses her arms, a slow smirk growing on her face.

"Rose-" Aradia tries.

"John is my friend. I can help. I want to help. She's killed one of you and you trust her over me!"

Vriska sighs, stretches, and stands. No one else moves.

"It's not that they trust me," Vriska says. Her lips are twisted, raised more than usual to bare her canines. "It's that I'm waaaaaaaay too useful to leave behind."

Rose whirls on the rest, looking for a contradiction.

"I'm sorry, Rose," Aradia says softly. "But…well, I don't think she has to tell you how much of the luck she has."

Vriska makes a small, satisfied "huh" noise. Like she's surprised, the pompous brat.

"Then let me come too," she says through gritted teeth. Vriska beams at her, fingers twitching at her sides, pressing into her hips.

Terezi shakes her head, and Rose knows she's lost.

"Sorry, Ms. Lavender Gumdrop." She puts two fingers to her temple, face unusually serious. "I know what happens if you go. My view of the Furthest Ring isn't perfect, but I know that no matter the outcome you'll go grimdark again if you come."

She almost tells them she doesn't care, as long as they get John back. As long as they start treating her like she's useful, as long as –

"Good luck," she says, words like steam. "May none of you be caught in their nightmare pits."

She moves to go and feels a hand pulling on her shoulder. White and shining. She stops for a moment, raises her eyes to the ceiling.

"I'm sorry," Rose says, and means it.

She leaves without turning around.

x

She's on the roof when Vriska finds her.

"Don't you have anything else to do? Preparing for a rescue mission, perhaps?" Rose asks. She looks out into the endless expanse over a low wall, not bothering to glance up at the girl while she talks. She is not used to losing control of her emotions. It has to stop.

"I don't really need to," Vriska says, leaning against the wall to her left. "I'm the best we have."

"It's funny. I've been told that you care about John. Apparently someone was misinformed."

That shuts her up for just a moment. Rose barely has time to take a breath and tally the score when Vriska casually says something completely unforgivable, a nasty dark twist to her words that wasn't there before.

"I didn't see you protecting him when he died. Wooow, way to fail your leader."

Deep purple edges her vision. She envisions shadows turning around her ankles.

"Listen, you-" She whirls to face her, only to find that the distance has been closed. Vriska slams her hands down on the wall on each side of her body, her face too close, their legs pushed together, their chests –

"You're different from John," she purrs, breath like stingers, teeth like a shark. Rose feels a shudder run down her back and raises a hand to strike. Vriska grabs her wrist, nails digging into her skin like spider bites. "You can hate."

She leans forward (like Kanaya might have leaned forward, but not at all), and then stops, her open, taunting lips not quite brushing, edges pulled into a black smile. Vriska's eyelashes lower. She breathes, and Rose feels it in her own breast.

Rose's thoughts, fleeting as panicked as they are, threaded through with anger and confusion and curves pressed against her waist and a strange tidal wave of sadness, can be knit into one cohesive "fuck it."

She closes the gap.

Her kissing is messy and inexperienced, but it has teeth.

Rose is on fire. Her mind is fever-burning, smoke and hot air filling her mouth and her lungs and searing goose bumps down her arms. Vriska's arm wraps around her, fingers splaying then digging on her back, clutching her shirt. Her own hand presses into Vriska's shoulder, creeps towards her neck and her hairline and her sharp, scorching face. She does not taste like anything metaphorical. She is moist surging heat.

It takes approximately one minute before Rose realizes how deeply wrong this all is.

She leans back, drawing with her Vriska's low moan as she tries to recapture her, shining wet blue lips so close again, teeth –

Rose pushes against her. Vriska ignores it at first, sweeping in to reforge their connection with her own burning, searching for the savagery in Rose's blood.

Rose pushes harder and digs her knee into Vriska's stomach.

It takes her another second, but she finally draws back, face still painted with open-lipped pleasure.

"This isn't," Rose manages in a gasp, hyperaware of Vriska's hand on her chest. "I'm human."

Vriska laughs, a high, screeching thing that grates on Rose's ears and her heart and her inflamed lungs. "That's what you're worried about? Really?" Her other hand creeps up to the back of Rose's neck, cups it harshly, ready to pull her back in.

"No! I meant…this kind of romance isn't in my nature," she says, gathering firmness. She shoves both hands away.

Vriska doesn't even have to say out loud why this claim is ridiculous in context. She just gives her a patronizing smile and leans back in (Rose will never know if Kanaya leaned in, there on the floor when her book fell as she stood).

Rose's angle is precarious, bent back against the wall with bodies pressed so tightly, but she manages a rabbit punch to the neck. Vriska recoils to cough, just for a second, and Rose darts sideways past limbs and horns and heat heat heat.

"Consider this-" (whatever this is, she doesn't know, she can't think, it's not what she wanted) "-terminated." She goes to the stairs, refusing with all of her strength to look back.

"It's not my fault you rejected her," Vriska calls. "And it's not my fault if you're too stupid to stop rejecting."

The roof is cold. There should be brittle wind, but the atmosphere is thin and impossible as it is, and breathing is hard, breathing –

Rose does not rise to the bait. She does not rise.

x

The rescue team is set to leave in one hour. It consists of the space-time players and Vriska. Rose is going to see them off, and she is going to wish them luck and give them lots of good advice for dealing with the things that once pressed close to her mind, oozing between her neurons like tar. She is going to jump right off of her bed and go to the lab, because they might have questions and it would be incredibly unfair of her to let a bad (terrible awful shattering) event in her personal life dictate whether or not she helps rescue John in any way she can. She has lived through the apocalypse and the death of almost everyone she ever loved. Her teenage angst can wait.

She is going to jump right off this bed immediately. This minute.

Her legs are jelly and she feels phantom limbs pressed against her back.

And it isn't only that she's shaken by what's just happened. It isn't only that she has the distinct impression that most of her allies aren't interested in her help in rescuing her friend. Or that she's reeling from the revelation that yes, alright, it's safe to say there is some attraction to the same sex here and this makes her a liar to poor Kanaya, who –

Oh god, Kanaya. What the hell is she going to do about Kanaya, in all of her conundrum complexities? A devastatingly polite nuclear reaction with the power to rend everything in half and stitch it lovingly together again. Kanaya the brave, the beautiful.

Stop that.

To be quite honest, as gigantic as these issues may seem, they are nothing, nothing compared to what she has done and what she still has to do. She is ashamed of herself for even considering them problematic in context, no matter how poetic she yearns to wax about amber eyes and glowing skin.

There is another thought, coiling and uncoiling somewhere in the bottom of her chest. It's half-formed and born of her desperation to think of something, anything else. A dangerous little thing, it hides between organs and the spaces where gods used to pulsate.

She is afraid that if she goes now, throws herself into saving John as much as she wants to, she is going to entertain this thought. She is going to do something rash. She has made enough ill-planned moves for lifetime, and she needs to regain her previously impervious impulse control. This wisp of an idea, uncollected and skirting her edges, throws their plans to the winds. She can't, as simply and cleanly as that.

"Are you trying to seduce me?" Dave asks.

He stands just inside her doorway. Glasses: check. White suit: check. Unentertaining line of a poker face: also check. Looks like he's ready to go. In the short time she has known him in real life, Rose has done her best to learn his body language, but the only sentiment she can catch here is impatience. Something about the set of his shoulders and the way his hands are shoved so obstinately into his pockets.

"I thought you'd never catch on," she says, and props her head up on a fist.

He looks like he's about to say something in the same vein, but changes his mind. "Genghis Khan wants you in the lab. Something about not being an emotional bitch who's too wrapped up in girly mind games to rescue a troll-ordained matesprit." He tilts his head to the side, which at least gives the illusion of a smug little smirk. "I was all, whoa bro, why're you so down on yourself, that ain't cool."

Rose doesn't smile. She sits up and swings her legs over the side of her bed, pausing to collect her composure. She and Dave are similar in more ways than readily apparent, though they have each spent their lives honing different aspects of their personalities. If it takes her the slightest bit longer to put up the façade, Dave doesn't mention it.

"I suppose since there's not the most infinitesimal chance that you'll be able to succeed without my advice, I'll humor his authoritarianism."

"Yeah okay but what are you really going to do?"

Rose looks up. Dave has not moved an inch.

"Interesting. Since you obviously suspect me of disregarding his orders, why don't we skip the I-know-that-you-know-what-I-know game."

Dave crosses his arms over his chest. "I dunno, I'm not some freaky tortured genius" – it's a lie and they both know it – "but I know you wouldn't just sit here."

Rose leans back to prop herself on her hands, fixing him with a flat look. "What if that's exactly what I'm going to do?"

An eyebrow rises past the rim of his shades. "Okay Rose, I totally believe you."

She is honestly annoyed now. "Your synesthetic friend knows I'd go dark again. I am not without precognitive ability, even without a crystal ball, and I feel the truth in this prediction. It'd do us no good."

"Wow, just vague enough to be intimidating." He turns to go, pressing a hand to her bedpost. "You know, it only takes one sucker to set off the Scratch."

The two of them are more alike than not. Sometimes they exist on eerily similar wavelengths.

"Is that so?" She stands to follow him, resting her hand on the opposite post.

He leaves without bothering to reply.

She twists her wrist back and forth in front of her face as they walk somberly down the hall. Her skin is growing lighter more rapidly now, rocketing back to pallor like the gods have cut their losses.

The niggling idea is still there. She turns it over, examines its underside.

x

Karkat is still shouting insults and last-minute instructions in the lab. Rose wonders if, among his many obvious inferiority complexes, he too is chafing under his inability to go with the others. Not much room for Blood in a place where veins run with ink. Terezi, Gamzee, and Sollux would be equally useless. Once the rescue team enters the pitch of the Ring all advantages of precognition from the outside will also be null and void. Terezi looks uncharacteristically grim, leaning on her cane and staring absently at the ground. Perhaps she sees something she does not like.

Kanaya stands behind her, facing the opposite wall with arms crossed. She has by now washed and repaired her "work clothes," dressed in her sturdy red skirt and black top instead of the variety of colorful dresses she has a penchant for wearing with very little provocation (when they were bored in her respiteblock she had let Rose wear the red one with the leaves, soft and light and stitched from better times).

"About time," Karkat says when he finally notices her. Kanaya looks up, somehow startled, and Rose feels a now-familiar twisting sensation when they make eye contact. Or rather, when Kanaya sees her. Rose can't meet her eyes past the cracked glasses sitting obstinately on her face. They seem to swallow up any expression she might have been wearing, replacing it with a flat, grim determination.

Rose finds she hates them with a surprising passion.

"I'll answer any worryingly repetitive questions you all have in a moment," she deadpans.

Vriska stands close to the corner, still not accepted back into the group circle. Rose goes to her side, aware of each set of eyes on her back like small needles. Except for Kanaya's; past the shades she imagines she can't feel hers at all.

She cuts Vriska off before she can even begin to smirk. "My refusal still stands," she says, keeping her voice low and pointed. "There is no time to try and convince me of what a fool I am. You are malicious, untrustworthy, and utterly without moral or behavioral codes."

She looks up, rolling with the momentum before she loses willpower. "It's because of these traits that you are useful. There's something I need you to do."