Jesus in Suburbia and Other Tales
Had they not lived through the events, Crowley and Aziraphale would have thought the failed apocalypse to have come too quickly. Jesus was supposed to be gone for two thousand years, so it was a decade early, or four decades and some change if going by his date of death. It was the 1990s, an era known for being a time that nearly everyone who had lived through it would like to forget. The late 80s and early 90s were an embarrassment, really – a rather bland era with a surplus of badly permed hair and buddy cop films.
Neither angels nor demons knew that the reason Hell had pushed the date of the apocalypse up to a year as blandly terrible as 1990 was because this was when the Christ was scheduled to be reborn. It was a secret that he was to be reborn at all and not just descending down upon the battlefield to sweep the Chosen off to Heaven. That he was to be born that summer to a young Indian couple living, of all places, in Upper Tadfield, Oxfordshire, was a secret so closely guarded that the angels charged with overseeing his birth were sworn to secrecy and promptly reassigned to a remote village in the Amazon so as to prevent any meddling, God's orders.
Had the Vantas family lived but a few kilometers off, in Lower Tadfield, our story would be vastly different. Karkat would have been drawn toward Adam, and Dog would perhaps have attempted to eat Baby Jesus v2.0, among other shenanigans. As it was, the Vantases had been repelled by Adam's casually racist energies while house-hunting some years back. Anjali Vantas was no witch, but she had the tiniest pinprick of magical potential inside her, and so she said to her husband, "Dear, I don't know why, but I think these people are racists. Let's just move into that house in Upper Tadfield. It's closer to your work anyway."
Venkat Vantas had shrugged and said, "Why not?" He knew better than to argue with his wife at times like this. She was calm at the moment, but could begin shouting at any sign of disagreement. Venkat, too, would begin shouting, and then their neighbors would call the police on them for domestic disturbance. This would result in many unpleasant conversations where the police not-so-subtly implied to him that he better not be abusing his lovely wife, whereupon he would grow incensed yet again and shout at them for their unfounded accusations because he would never do such a thing how dare you imply this when we were just arguing about which brand of cake mix to buy, and his wife would join in to scold them at his side. It would just be a mess, really. They'd done this so many times already. It wasn't worth all the trouble to get to the angry make-up sex.
Sure enough, they settled down in suburban Upper Tadfield, in a house that looked like every other. Venkat was close to his work at the nearby military base where he was an engineer. He had a PhD and everything, and his Very Important Government Work made him abjectly miserable. Some days he even wished he'd listened to his parents when they'd shouted at him to go to medical school.
Anjali, in those days, was a free spirit. She dressed like the 70s had never ended, with flowing skirts and colorful beads and, yes, sometimes flowers in her hair. Though not exactly of a peaceful countenance, she was adamantly anti-war and had been something of an activist in days gone by. She worked at a florist and did tarot readings in the back room. Her husband's military job was the biggest point of contention between them, but she was slowly wearing him down. Things came to a head when she found out she was pregnant.
"I don't want Karkat exposed to this toxic environment!"
"Karkat? Who's that?"
"Our son, you asshole!"
"Oh, really? You're naming him cancer? Tell me now how that's not a passive-aggressive dig, a real low fucking blow about how you think there's a nuclear stockpile at the airbase, you… you conspiracy theorist! I thought we'd agreed that his name will be Rajesh, which is a normal name that normal people have."
"Shut up! We're not talking about that now. We're talking about how this is a toxic environment not suitable for raising our son, who will most definitely be named Karkat, which is a beautiful name and I will not hear otherwise."
"Toxic how? You want to talk about toxic environments? He'll have food and shelter, access to proper education and healthcare, safety and loving parents. How is that not better than barely scraping by in the slums of Kolkata like our parents had to in order to bring us here, hmm?*"
"And he'll be miserable!" Anjali screamed. She broke into tears at this point and covered her eyes, fiercely wiping them away as she continued. "He'll be miserable because you are, because you hate your job! You come home angry all the time because you hate designing things that kill people and you know I'm right!"
Venkat could have argued back that he'd sold his soul so he could provide for her, that he'd had to take the job because someone had to be the responsible one in the family and that happened to be him since she was so set on doing shitty fucking tarot readings and crystal healing bullcrap and that he let her practice her useless fakey fake new age spirituality because he loved her and put her happiness above his own. It was all true, but it didn't change the fact that she was right.
They made arrangements to move back to London. Venkat quit his job, and when he did so, all his dreams of the perfect suburban life with his wife and child disappeared. Strangely, he was not so sad at the prospect.
And Karkat Vantas, the Second Coming of Christ, was all of two months old when he left Upper Tadfield mere days before the apocalypse came and ended at the military base where his dad used to work. He would never know much about those days except that they'd used to live in "some Podunk town, it's on your birth certificate" before they came to London and opened a restaurant.
He would, however, come to resent his father's shouting about medical school because it wasn't as if going to a fancy fucking graduate school had made his father happy, so why should it be any different this time around? Karkat had been set, from about age six onwards, to be a romance novelist.
Young Karkat Vantas had, for as long as he remembered, been in love with love. He loved everything about love and would punch other kids in the face if they made fun of him for it. He was also kind (in his own abrasive way) and had a way with words**. Loving, kind, and eloquent – perfect qualities for the prophesied Savior.
One of the angels who had overseen Karkat's birth tracked him down years later after secretly taking a "break" from her South American posting. She was appalled by Karkat's… everything except the three above-mentioned qualities. And she almost made contact with him, in order to correct his perceived deficiencies, when she was promptly demoted and reassigned to Kazakhstan, God's orders.
Yet more years later, Karkat met Sollux online, struck up a friendship based on video games and mutual antagonism, and promptly proceeded to nag at Sollux like an overbearing guardian. The nagging was actually good for Sollux who, under Karkat's supervision, began to take his depression meds more regularly if only to get Karkat off his back.
"So I got a job," Sollux said one day. They were chatting over a rousing game of Mario Kart.
"Yeah? Finally decided to leave your man-child cave?"
"Oh fuck you. Like you're one to talk, basement-dweller."
"Hey. Above this basement is a house that is connected to a restaurant where I work, though I suppose that is an entirely new concept to you, fucking slacker. And that's on top of going to school."
"Like I said, fuck you. 'Creative writing' isn't school. At least get an English degree, goddamn basement-dweller. Meanwhile, I'm being a productive member of society."
"What part of 'I work' did you not understand? I've been working since high school, asshat. Think your stupid new job can top that? I bet you stock shelves at Tesco."
As much as he enjoyed trading barbs with Karkat, Sollux was more interested in rubbing it in Karkat's face that he had ascended to the ranks of the white-collar. "Ha fucking ha. I'm working in IT now, at Reynholm Industries***."
"Is that supposed to mean anything to me?"
"Nah, it's just some company run by a bunch of corporate dicks. You know, like every other company. Except stupider, because they hired me without a degree."
"Wow. Uh, congrats on finding a really dumb boss, I guess?"
"Pew pew, motherfucker." He launched a slew of red shells against Karkat's Toad.
Sollux went into work the next day in an uncharacteristically good mood. It was also this day when he would first be called to fix a computer on the eleventh floor, Sales and Marketing, and then met Eridan Ampora, who would consequently be nicknamed Sales Douche.
Eridan was actually the most tolerable of the lot on the eleventh floor, which was why he was affectionately burdened with the capital letters. Everyone else was just a sales douche – no capital letters, a statement of plain fact.
"I got rid of the virus," Sollux said after fixing Eridan's computer. "Next time just run a scan after surfing so much porn, geez."
"You new?" Eridan asked. "Wow, that lisp is adorable."
"Oh my god, fuck you. Are you seriously hitting on me two minutes after we just met?"
He was, and continued to do so every time they met thereafter, about once every two weeks or so. In retaliation, Sollux began stealing Eridan's sandwiches out of the fridge in the Sales and Marketing lounge. He would nonchalantly plant himself by the water cooler after scarfing the sandwich – usually tuna, sometimes seafood salad – and watch Eridan flail about as he failed to find his lunch.
Eridan would eventually round on Sollux, crow triumphantly about having apprehended the heinous sandwich thief, and proceed to hit on him some more.
"If you liked my cooking so much, you coulda just asked. Come over sometime and I'll make you a real fancy spread, a feast like you've never seen before. You like lasagna?"
"I'm not stupid enough to go to your house. I bet you're so desperate you'd drug the wine."
"Lemme take you out to the Ritz then. Heard they got a great sushi restaurant there."
"Fuck no, you big sleaze. I'm a delicate flower who needs to be wooed with graphics cards and shitty internet memes."
The thing about Eridan, Sollux thought, was that he was a caricature of himself. He acted like a corporate douchebag because he thought that was the way he was supposed to be. He truly, legitimately thought he had to be an asshole to others because of his position as a manager; he thought it was his duty to make sure others knew he was a snob. Sollux had remote access to his computer, though, and knew that the "real" Eridan liked pirates and wizards, and also once upon a time wanted to be a marine biologist. And not in the way that little kids want to be marine biologists after watching Free Willy or Dolphin Tales, no, Eridan had been a marine biology major until something bit his ass and he switched to business instead.
He was, as Karkat would probably say, a pitiful wreck. So slick and put together on the outside, so desperate for approval on the inside. And if Sollux had been about to give in to the date on that fateful day Eridan turned up dead from a disastrous fling with his psycho ex, well… No one had to know.
Karkat woke up one morning in his teenage years, at the height of puberty, with a stiffy and the knowledge that he was the Son of God. Rather than being elated or feeling that he was responsible for righting all the wrongs of the universe, he instead grew yet more resentful of life in general. The world was full of assholes who shit on the beautiful things non-assholes created. The former category included his Father; the latter included his father.
He had no intention of dying for some other assholes' wrongs, or of being publically tortured to appease the wrath of an absent spiritual Father. The father he had now was good enough, thank you, and said father would never ask his son to do such a horrid thing how dare you imply that he would condone child abuse when he and his son were just arguing over whether brownies or lemon bars were better for a bake sale.
Karkat, much like Adam, chose to lock away most of his powers until it was time to use them, if that time ever came. He was hoping it never would, and he had almost managed to convince himself that his claim to godhood was just a stupid childhood delusion. The time, unfortunately, came when his best friend Sollux, now a demon, screamed and his bees went wild.
Karkat reached for the reservoir of power within his soul and said, simply, "Stop."
Sollux paused. His bees settled. The other occupants of the bookshop froze as well, looking at him in awe, like they'd never seen him before. He supposed they hadn't, not like this.
"Stop," he said again. "We have enough time to stop them. Let's come up with a plan."
Contrary to his outward calm, the bit of Karkat's mind that remained fully human was panicking in ridiculous ways. Among other things, he thought of how Jesus Rajesh Vantas was in no way the kind of name anyone would have thought up for the supposed Savior. Also, the Lamb of God was not supposed to smell like curry.
*Geez, Anjali, check your privilege.
**This skill was most often abused to form long-winded, graphic and unpleasant insults. It had first gotten him into serious trouble in the sixth grade when, on his then-popular MySpace page, he wrote, "Mrs. Baker is a horrible teacher and a saggy old bint who's only still alive out of sheer spite. The school administration should put her out of her misery, but they won't because they're fucking two-faced cowards whose consciences are more lacking than shit in a gaping asshole after a huge enema." Karkat was the school hero for a full month after he came back from his week-long suspension.
***While the company itself was located in an impressive downtown skyscraper, the IT department was highly understaffed and, ironically, located in the building's dingy basement. When Karkat found out, he expressed his rage with a convoluted metaphor involving a shitmonger and a sloth defiling a marital bed. In a true feat of loquaciousness, the rant lasted for a full ten minutes without ever directly using the word "hypocrisy".
A/N: Reynholm Industries is from "The IT Crowd", which is a brilliant show, btw.
Karkat's dad remains firmly an "OC who's not very important to the overall story", though I couldn't resist throwing in a Kankri reference. Just think of him as a strange amalgamation of Kankri, giant screeching crab monster, John's Dad, and some normal human guy trying to make ends meet. The perfect father figure for any burgeoning religious icon.
There are probably no non-Homestuck readers, but just in case, uh, yeah. Karkat is Jesus. That is a thing that is pretty much Homestuck canon. I'd planned for it to be the case here as well, ever since Karkat's introduction. It was never intended to be a secret.
Indian atheist Jesus who smells like lamb curry is a thing in this fic, okay? See you guys in Hell.