Disclaimer: Bite my cape.
I fell asleep in the locker room after track practice, and it threw my entire day off. Yup, that's the excuse I'm sticking with. Sorry for the late update.
The world around you is hazy and the fragments of a horrorterror are still clinging to your conscious mind. You blink a couple times as your eyes adjust to your new surroundings, and you take in the briny substance pooling from your mouth. The turbulence of your ride effectively jogs your memory as to where exactly you are, and a candy red hue rises to your cheeks.
Great. Not only did you fall asleep on the ancestor's back, but you also drooled all over him. Maybe if you somehow cleaned it off his robe covertly, he wouldn't notice…
"Did you have a nice nap?"
You know his disposition is supposed to be all good-natured and shit, but it's palpable in his tone he's…lightly mocking you…? Whatever it is, it makes you feel uncomfortable.
It hits you that while you can't remember most horrorterrors when you wake, without the sopor slime, they're extremely graphic and terrifying. It's possible you screamed in your sleep. Or wept. Or maybe even started convulsing violently.
"It was fucking beautiful. Just of a couple treshicutioners having a good Faygo together, you know."
"Sounded exactly like it."
Shit. You did something.
"What do you mean…sounded?"
"It's just the way you…Never mind."
"You're still walking." You say, desperate to change the subject, "Aren't you tired yet?"
"Nah…You're nice and light." He cackles. If the guy weren't on your side, you'd cup his ears.
"Fuck you."
"Would you rather I call you fat?"
"I'd rather you keep your damn comments to yourself, got it?"
"There's that mouth and temper of yours again…"
"Shut up, I—" you can barely hide the yawn that escapes. You swear you can feel the bastard smiling.
"You might want to get some more rest before you try to argue again."
"No, fuck, I —" you can feel your eyelids growing heavy again, but everything in your gut is telling you to fight it, "I should not be this tired."
"Your wounds won't heal right if you don't sleep. You've lost a lot of blood."
"Not enough, apparently." You whisper underneath your breath. You're sure he heard the comment because your head is close to his ears and it would be impossible not to, but he doesn't rebuke you like he's done in the past. A minute later, he sighs.
"You can put your head on my shoulder, if you like. It can't be too comfortable sleeping with your neck back like that."
"Hell no." You say without hesitation, "That's stupid."
It only takes a minute for your breathing to slow and your head to come to rest on his right shoulder, despite your best attempts.
Karkat: Be the tealblood.
"So who are we meeting here, anyway?" You ask, finagling the yellow chalk in your fingers to demonstrate at least some skill. It seems your ancestor has all the skill, aside from drawing.
All of them.
Aside from drawing.
It gives you pleasure, rubbing it in her face.
"Don't know. My source is good, though."
"The Helmsman?"
"Damn. Forgot how intuitive we are. Yeah, it's him…uh…Pollux*, right?"
"Sollux. But right. So it's not them we're meeting?"
"No…at least not yet. We've got a limited amount of time before the Handmaid shows up, so we need to get our plan hatched first. Intel says he's the best option. He'll be here after the Handmaid."
"So is the plan to dispatch the Handmaid?"
"No. She's on our side, but we have to have at least an outline before she gets here, because the Condense will be here exactly twenty-four hours after her arrival."
"How do you know all this?"
"Prospit. Ours was never destroyed, so when all of us were supposed to die, we really just awoke as our dream selves. We didn't have long to enjoy it, though…"
"Because that's when the Condense's dream bubble came, right?"
"Yup. Blasted us all forward into time, and far away from Prospit. You have to be careful with those things if your Prospit isn't part of an active session. It's what causes some sessions to be futile. Her bubble came because she could never wake up on Prospit. Most of us did in death, even when we had no clue about the game. Because we're from a post-scratch era, no one had ever heard of Sgrub until the Helmsman's descendant."
"Hmm…so who did the Helmsman say was perfect for formulating a plan? I know you don't know their name, but maybe their blood color? That would help a lot."
"Yes, I know, I tried to ask him about it, but he said something about sworn to secrecy on Prospit. I don't reall—"
She's interrupted by your raucous laughter, and just stares until you calm down.
"It's Karkat!" you smile widely.
"Wait…the matesprit?"
Terezi: Wear the bandage. Be the cancer troll.
Diluted, candy red tears escape from your closed eyelids and trickle over the bridge of your nose in searing rivers. You keen like a wounded animal and curl in on yourself, seeking some modicum of shelter from the heartache threatening to overwhelm you.
"Terezi..."
A palm resting on the crown of your head strokes through your matted hair and you can hear someone murmuring a mantra of soothing words. You open your eyes and see the great void of paradox space streaming out in front of you, but your perspective of the null sky is obscured. You ache, sore and bruised, with your muscles screaming to be stretched or for the nice, soothing sopor slime of a recuperacoon. Your side throbs sullenly from where it was bound tightly to stop the flow of blood. And your head...
Actually, your head feels rather warm. You're resting against someone's leg. A thigh, to be precise. Your eyes widen, and your breath is stuttering to a halt. There's only one other person who could possibly be here with you.
"Hey, fuckass?" the term doesn't sound like it's teeming with animosity, much to your crippling disappointment. You sound drowsy and pathetically weak…who even talked you in to sleeping? You ordered yourself not to do that. But if there ever was a reason to sleep, you'd prefer it to be rebellious of past you's wishes. Current Karkat is looking pretty good right about now.
"It's okay, Karkat," he soothes absently. It sounds like a familiar, well-practiced litany. "It's okay. You'll be okay."
Damn. The bastard thinks you're still in the middle of a horrorterror. What the hell does he think he's doing?
He shooshes you when you try to talk to him again, because it comes out a garble of constants with no vowel tyranny. He paps you, because maybe you're the only one who's against vowel tyranny. He keeps up the pattern afterwards, shoohsing and papping…shooshpapping, even when you stop trying to protest. Man, are you up the belfry. You honestly don't think you'll leave the top of it anytime soon.
In a burst of strength, you push yourself away from him.
"What kind of wriggler do you take me for, fuckass?" you shout at him so loud, it reverberates against the soundless rocks littering the meteor.
Your side is smoldering again with pain, but it's dormant compared to your outright indignation. Throwing yourself against the gravel felt more than justified to prove your point. His eyes widen a bit, making it clear the message got through to him, and good thing, too. You'd hate for that stunt to have been in vain, because the white hot pain, while not sharper than your anger, is certainly a worthy adversary.
He stands up, rising to his full height, and you don't like the way he's staring down at you. There's compassion in his gaze, empathy in his shaded eyes, and there's a sprinkle of that damn understanding mixed in too. What does he think he's understanding with that sad, sad expression? You want to punch the older troll right in the jaw and watch him bleed. Maybe then you'd finally know he's Sollux's ancestor for sure.
It also bothers you how his dark shadow envelopes you, how he takes a step closer as if to miraculously cross the gap you've worked your whole life building. It's not even really a gap. It's a chasm. A chasm that he thinks is a gap, that he thinks he can cross with a running start.
As he moves closer, you scurry away as fast as you can, despite your injury. You probably look more pathetic in the heap you threw yourself in than when you were asleep in his lap, and whatever message he got when you flailed away from him, obviously wasn't enough.
You stand up with faltering strength and bring yourself into an almost-adequate fighting stance. It takes a second to realize that he has your sickles, and another to compromise using your fists. You clench them tightly, as if cocking the barrel of a gun. You aim for his jaw like you fantasized earlier and fire, but he's out of the way much faster than your arm can swing. You stagger back and try to find your footing, but the bandage that falls off your side and the blood that flows down your leg as generous as a waterfall is a bit too disconcerting. You manage to flail your fists like a mace before your knees grow weak and you sink back to the floor. He's there in an instant, that bastard, and is checking your wound while softly rebuking you. The biting urge to punch him still hasn't completely dissipated, but for now it's eclipsed by the searing pain.
Then he tries to pick you up bridal style, so you punch him straight in the face. But he doesn't give you the satisfaction of the hit with a single drop of blood. He stands still for a moment, retrieves his cane, then sets out walking.
You don't stop cursing the rest of the way.
AN:
OMG what is this monstrosity. I feel do disappointed in this. But, you know. Review, if you want to.
(Hint: You want to.)
*I was reading Hoshi wa Utau and Saku was all "Hey, look, it's the constellation Pollux Castor!"
I see what Hussie did there.
*This is from last chapter, and I forgot to write the explanation. That sentence is a light hint to the "OUR L1TTL3 MOM3NT" thing.