Chapter Two: Girls
Contains blood, scarring, and references to cult practices.
Rose (1)
Bottles and empty glasses litter the floor of her bedroom. Some of them are broken, most are intact. Rose Lalonde is the only one who hasn't dreamt of them since turning 16. She finds the dreams too painful, and instead has drunk her way to the point of passing out every night. Her mother, afraid of what might happen otherwise, has allowed this to go on. She may not approve of it, but this Rose terrified her.
Rose is currently passed out on the bed. Her mother enters her room quietly, looking into the cool darkness to the lump on the bed, surrounded by glinting bottles. She carefully walks over the bottles, picking up clothes and depositing them in the hamper or folding and putting up the clean ones. She is methodical, far more sober than she had been and far more sober than Rose. She sighed, going to her closet and pulling out a garment bag, laying it over a nearby chair. Pulling out several pristine outfits, she packed them before once more turning to Rose.
"Rose, time to wake up! Today's the big day."
She briefly wondered if her daughter would even remember what the big day was at this point, let alone the date. Rose mumbled a response, turning over, and sending a cascade of bottles down to the floor.
"You're seeing John today," her mother told her.
She sat up as quickly as a blacked out 16 year old could. Her mother smiled at her, watching those glazed eyes attempt to focus.
"…Egber?"
Her voice sounded exhausted, pulling from the depths of her consciousness that she had slowly been drowning.
"Yes, honey. Egbert."
Her mother then proceeded to pack up her violin, and set it out in the hall with her garment bag for safety.
"John, Jade, and Dave will all be there, remember?"
"Shrider."
She slurred so easily, staring at her mother from the depths of her alcoholic state, trying to put pieces together meant for a sober mind. She blinked owlishly, before giving up and looking around in her bed for a bottle with alcohol in it, only finding empty ones. Her mother sighed, patting her head.
"Rose, go take a shower. It's time to get ready."
"….kay."
Rose stumbled out of the room to do what she was told. Her mother sighed again, sitting down on Rose's bed. At least while she was gone, she could clean the room. It's true, she could just simply stop buying the booze, force her girl to sober up, but that thought terrified her. There was something wrong with Rose.
On April 13th, three years ago, her daughter had woken up screaming, flying through the house. She demanded that her mother hand over her copies of SBurb, of a game that had never existed, failing at the beta stage. She swore at her, and then proceeded to break down sobbing. It wasn't her daughter, it was a foreign creature that had set up home in her. Her Rose had never acted this way, not even as a toddler. She had spiraled through hysterics, slamming her fists against the floor and screaming a name over and over again. She had screamed until she had gone hoarse, sobbed until she couldn't breathe anymore, and just lay on the floor.
Kanaya.
There was no record of this girl or that a girl like this ever existed. There was no "Kanaya Maryam" out there. Rose spent weeks, shut up in her room, searching for her. She spent it drinking more to fill the emptiness, disappearing from the world. She destroyed the house slowly. She broke every fancy wizard, tore down the shrine on the fridge, and burnt her books.
She covered up the paint on her walls, threw out her knitting, and only wore the colors yellow, orange and jade. There always had to be jade, no matter what she wore. Rose Lalonde became a master of the occult, a true mistress of the night. Her drunken ramblings had made her relatively famous. Paranormal researchers hung onto her every word, they followed her like she preached a new religion. She became most knowledgeable about vampires, her knowledge seeming to come naturally to her, along with her research and her findings. She disproved many myths about them, and even uncovered a few cults who practiced blood-letting and drinking.
Her violin could no longer sound happy. Its very soul had become mournful. Its very essence has become depressed.
Rose Lalonde was a shadow of the girl that she used to be. There was no light left in her. Sburb had ended, Kanaya was gone, and she never wanted to remember. She had only lost the thing that she cared for most, and nothing could fill that hole in her heart.
Rose Lalonde was the saddest girl in the universe, and no one could convince her otherwise.
Jade (1)
She is on an airplane and this is way way way way way too exciting, she realizes. There is a wish deep in her mind that she could wag her tail but it has been ages since she had a tail to wag. Bec had to stay behind this trip but he will keep her new dad safe while she can't protect the house. That is Jade Harley's job and she loves it. She briefly climbs into John's lap, but luckily he doesn't wake up as she wants to explore the plane. He has her safely tucked into a window seat, and that is probably good because it's a long way from Washington to Texas to not be allowed to play and explore.
She's not all dog, but she's not all girl. She's terrorized psychologists enough that her Dad doesn't bother finding her new ones but they love giving her drugs but she's smart and gets them out of her food like a smarty should. She sighs, settling down, when the nerves of distress reach her and she knows that her brother is upset. She turns to his face, hurriedly wiping away the tears that pool from underneath his eyelids. It wouldn't be good if their teacher caught him crying. It'd be very bad indeed. The two of them were almost not allowed to go on this trip, and it had taken months of being on her best best best behavior in order to be permitted. She knew it was more her fault than his if he hadn't been allowed to come, and John needed this.
She knew that she couldn't help John the way that she used to, even though she wanted to. He was caught in a dream. Most nights he cried, and she did too. She looked out the window again, imagining how good the strong wind would feel on her head. How good it had felt, standing on the helm of a ship, blasting through the void as she watched the nothingness race by. Jade Harley was still smart- she was incredibly clever and her mind was still hard wired for science.
She turned to John, hurriedly wiping away more tears as her doggy nature faded, leaving the cool, calm, and collected 16 year old girl in its place. She sighed. John's dreams had been slowly getting worse over the years, but nothing compared to what had happened the last few weeks. She, of course, was already ahead of him in her own dreams, but knew she just couldn't tell him what the answers were. It wouldn't be fair to him.
John had really suffered, and so had she, but the two of them had suffered in different ways. She sighed, looking down at her hands and lower arms. Now that she wasn't as tan, the scars on her body were harder to see. She couldn't actually remember any of her time on the island after the hard reset of their game. She had simply woken to her consciousness one day, strapped to a bed and having John there, his head resting on the bed. His hand had been over one of her own heavily bandaged ones. He had fallen asleep there, and she had really wondered who he was for a moment.
There had been growling and barking until he looked up, alarmed, and in that ridiculous just finishing puberty voice of his, she remembered him.
"Jade!"
"John?"
Jade wondered what she had done on that island for those two long weeks. While Sburb had returned to her memory, those weeks never did. She had been there for weeks, healing, trying to get better, and John had convinced his father to not only take her in but adopt her as well. She had left the island- warm, familiar, and now incredibly foreign to her- and had moved to her new "home" in Washington. It was cold, it was rainy, and it felt caged. However, there was something there that she needed, far more than she had needed Bec, for Bec hadn't kept her sane.
She needed John Egbert.
Her own memories of being grimbark seemed skewed and confusing. Her time serving her master, The Condescension, felt foggy. She wanted to remember, she wanted to forget. One thing was certain. She couldn't remember the trolls very well. She weirdly remembered The Condesce and the alpha kids, but trolls?
There were no trolls that were right. Maybe it was because of her now partial colorblindness, but she just knew there should be grey. The idea of grey consumed her, and it kept her up at night. It ate at her like a cancer. It was a particular shade of grey, different than the others. This one was special.
She smiled to herself, pulling out the stuffed animal of a crab and petting it. It had become a sort of comfort object to her. Like most of her stuffed animals, it showed hints of her chewing on it, though she had at least taken care to use patches to fix him back up. She really wanted to grab a snack right now and eat some Snausages, but that was out of the question. She knew better than to actually eat them in front of people, especially their teacher. She glances back to John, who is sound asleep, though he still looked sick and tired.
She knew she didn't look much better. Her body felt foreign to her, it felt painful, and she didn't like it. It was thinner than before, taller as well, and now, it was covered in scars from running wild on an island. She didn't look like a wild animal, but she was one.
Now, she had to do what she knew to do as a sister and John's service dog. He needed to get to Dave Strider, who would be able to understand him more than she did. The clever girl faded as she saw a bird flying below, and she was once again way way way way way too excited to be trapped in a window seat on a plane somewhere on her way to Houston. She reached into her bag, grabbed a milk bone, and quickly ate it before anyone could see her. Her butt kind of wiggled as she wagged a non-existent tail and her crab dangled out of her mouth.
Jade Harley thought herself to be a very good dog indeed.
