The Troll's sections of the lab had not been divided entirely at random. As far as Rose understood it, the long straw had gone to Nepeta, who had immediately selected the dilapidated, rat-infested Underlab to make her den, and so on down a chain until Sollux, who was left with the custodial and laundry rooms. Kanaya, who had received one of the later choices, had still managed her favourite thanks to her completely esoteric sense of dcor compared to the other Trolls. She had taken the executive offices and adjoining dormitory, easily the smallest section of the lab, comprising of a former waiting room, the main office, an expansive bedroom decked to the nines with plush carpeting and wood finish, and an en suite bath.
Rose found all the doors unlocked as she passed and made her way into the office, which she found unoccupied, save for Kanaya's stocked collection of clothing. The desk remained clean, polished and ready for use, not that Kanaya ever did, and the windows behind it remained locked and heavy shuttered, overlooking some part of Karkat's section of laboratory left to gather dust. Rose passed through with only enough care to notice that Kanaya had taken one of the racks away from its usual spot: knowing Kanaya, it was already in her room.
Rose knocked. "Kan?"
"Ah, yes! Come in, Rose!" Kanaya's voice came through flustered, though the door muffled sound well enough to keep Rose from seeing the full of it until she opened the door and found the room completely askew. Rose had never quite seen Kanaya's place so dishevelled, and worse, Kanaya herself. It was as though the entire suite had been tossed on its side, shaken and then returned to its original position. That was not to say Kanaya was regimental about cleaning. Rather, she liked to organize her chaos, and Rose knew this would never keep. In the past, she had always been careful not to leave footprints on a bolt of fabric or to upset the pyramid of shitty spools of thread. Now only the pyramid lay undisturbed, and virtually everything else was covered with discarded dresses and outfits. By the looks of things, Kanaya, who was presently in her work clothes, had begun cleaning up near the door, but had only managed a foot or so before Rose had arrived.
"I... uh..." Kanaya said, two blouses and a skirt in her arms as she walked away from the corner of her room that housed her recouperacoon. "...hi." She pulled another skirt into her arms. "I let my ten minutes go by and figured I shouldn't..." She squinted down inquisitively at her bed, a huge king-sized affair that Kanaya preferred to use as a chair. Its fluffy red comforter was buried under the bulk of the clothes; Kanaya snapped a dress at the foot-end corner closest to the door. "...shouldn't keep you waiting. You can take a seat." She pointed down at the fresh corner.
"Um..." Rose checked the shoes mining the path between her and the bed for a path of open space. She pushed two of them aside with her foot before ultimately deciding that Kanaya's sense of hospitality just misleading her from the proper course of action, and she began to collect them in loads, passing them over the bed.
"Oh, please don't," Kanaya said, biting her bottom lip but not stopping her attempts to clean. "You're my guest."
"I don't know if you've noticed," Rose said, handing over three pairs of heels. "But I've been in here almost every other day for a month. I'll help out." Kanaya made a face, but ultimately bit her tongue. "So," Rose said, "did you find the outfit you were looking for?"
"Am I that obvious?" Kanaya said, trying to decide how to sort the items she had in-hand.
"With fashion."
"No luck." Kanaya turned back and started to rifle through the shoes to collect the shirt Rose had accidentally been stacking them atop. She tossed it into the weaved-plastic hamper that had come with the room and began to sort the shoes into their cubbies. "I'm certain it must be on the second rack, because I was positive it was on the first. I had found the rest of the ensemble," she waved vaguely to the storm damage that was the rest of her room, "but obviously the dress is key. And now it's invisible. Transparent. Gone."
"Maybe you just imagined it?" Rose said. "Plans in your head. Maybe you still need to sew or alchemize it, I mean."
"I did," Kanaya replied, "the latter, some time after we got here. But I didn't see the point in pushing through the kitchen at lunch time just to get to the alchemizer to make another."
Rose pulled up the last of the shoes and passed them over. Gingerly picking up three shirts that had somehow made their way from the rest of the pack, Rose passed them into Kanaya's wrinkle-conscious hands. From there, she took her earlier-intended seat. Kanaya did not outwardly react to this belated compliance but Rose nevertheless got the impression that she approved.
Rose gave the problem some thought. "Do you think it might be in Karkat's?"
"...ohhhh..." Kanaya slumped for a moment before diligently returning to her cleanup. "Yes, that's it exactly."
"You should really stop hiding things there."
Kanaya, having just finished with her handful, turned back with a smile. "Seeing what you can get away with under Karkat's nose is something of a local sport."
Rose laughed, passing her some of the clothes from the head of the bed on request, and noticed for the first time that Kanaya did not seem to be wearing her makeup. It was not the first time Rose had caught her like that, but Kanaya did tried her best to never allow her face in public without at least a brush of her hair, and Rose was again struck by the chaotic impression. At the moment, her friend was far too involved to care, the churning gears of creativity working audibly as she picked up rejected costumes at random.
"I'll have to see it once you find it again," Rose said. "Sure you don't want to go hunting? Karkat's busy with his movie."
"Please," Kanaya said. "I don't think he even watches it any more, he certainly knows it by heart. We should get him to recite it for us, it would be entertaining to see just how far he can get."
Rose collected a pair of pants from the floor and handed them over. "I guess we all have our guilty pleasures," she said, smug.
Kanaya caught her meaning at once and over-indignantly snapped up the clothes and huffed. "Certainly." She collected another set of clothes from next to Rose's cleared corner, and Rose took the opportunity to lie down, watching her work upside-down. Rose was glad to see Kanaya working without any sign of the earlier discomfort; she imagined Kanaya was seeking comfort in the habit and regularity.
"I mixed up some rules about auspistices today," Rose said, as an ice breaker. "You'd have been ashamed of me." In reply, Kanaya seemed to smirk for a moment before Rose's view was blocked by a discarded blouse tossed over her face. She tried to swat it away but only ended up more tangled. "Ack, Kan-!" She struggled for a moment and found enough purchase to remove the thing and hand it back. Kanaya tried to keep a straight face as she accepted it, which Rose tried to match upside-down. A stare-off began, both trying to break the other, until Rose added: "Yeah, I feel your burning scorn."
Kanaya laughed and at once clapped a hand to her mouth, and sat side-saddle on the opposite corner. There, she set her hand to her chin for a moment, pondering, before reaching down and brushing aside Rose's bangs.
Rose reached up to catch her by the hand. "Thank you, mother," she chided, a familiar admonishment Kanaya took with her typical chuckle, though Rose noticed the unwelcome return of that morning's monitored, close-lipped smile. Not wanting to do anything to provoke the accompanying mood if she could help it, Rose flopped over to her stomach (no doubt ruining whatever Kanaya had been attempting to do with her hair) and immediately changed the subject. "I've got a question, if you don't mind."
"Shoot."
"So... Tavros and Eridan just kissed, oh... a few minutes ago."
"Oh?" Kanaya gave a wry smile and Rose could not help but suspect her grease on some of the axles in that relationship. "That's good to hear, Eridan was incredibly nervous about the kiss."
"First kiss?" Rose asked with surprise. True, she had not had her first kiss either, but what with Eridan's boasting she had assumed different for him, with and maybe prior to Tavros.
"For them, yes," Kanaya said, anticipating Rose's needs as they had learned to do so well over the internet, "for Tavros, no. You have Vriska to account for that."
"Oh. ...oh." That detail had not quite made it into Kanaya's explanation of the second Tavros/Vriska incident. Rose reached out a hand and rubbed Kanaya's knee through her skirt. Kanaya smiled fondly, but neither made any effort to stay on that topic. Rose tented her hands and set the weight of her head on the peak. "That may change my question a little. Before I go any further: is that a sentimentally valuable interaction for Trolls?"
"The first kiss? Depends on the person."
Rose shrugged. "Generalize."
"Well..." Kanaya broke eye contact in thought and began to fiddle with her fingers, as though stitching the air. Rose covered her own mouth at that point, as she found the quirk nothing but endearing and wanted to do all she could not to draw Kanaya's attention to it, lest she stop. It reminded her of Jade's pencil-chewing, or John's occasionally head-bopping to the Ghostbusters theme regardless of whether or not it was playing: little realities that made her appreciate her friends all the more in person than she ever had away.
"For Eridan," Kanaya said, her fingers stopping with her thoughts, "it would be valuable because he had been trying so hard to reach that point in confidence. As a social construct it would be hard to pin down. I would value it," the Virgo said, with almost with a shrug in her tone, as though she expected this information to come to no surprise across the board. "The Aradia of... of my youth expressed a similar sentiment, as did Sollux. I used to hope that they might have found some satisfaction on that end, but privately..." Kanaya lowered her voice. "Privately I don't think they had yet decided where they stood in one another's lives before it happened."
"They said they talked," Rose said, straying off-topic. "Just a few minutes ago they told me they had a talk when she... recovered?"
"Yes," Kanaya said. "Aradia trolled me after the fact, but..." She sighed.
Oh no, now I've done it, Rose thought, and spoke up. "No, I wasn't asking-"
"No, I never meant to start down that track." But Kanaya's expression did not improve. "If you'd believe it, it has been more surreal having Aradia back in her own mind than when she was working entirely for 'Fate.' Even when she was a ghost, or when we were getting used to her being a robot. It's like meeting a childhood friend after a dozen sweeps, knowing she's 'Aradia' from little expressions or tones of voice, but not knowing her, or any of the stories she knows. She's grown." Kanaya sighed, but continued for a moment: "I think, with Sollux, she wants... but you didn't want to hear about that."
"It's not that I don't want to hear," Rose said. Feferi's anger in the discussion before had a staying power. "...It's that it's none of my business."
"Probably." Kanaya turned back, her eyes still sad, and she brushed her forefinger once through Rose's hair, around her ear, before Rose once again swatted her away from her compulsive grooming.
"I'll fix your hair," she threatened, knowing Kanaya would never allow it even in the mess it was in. Indeed, she got an immediate glare in reply.
"Well you shouldn't be surprised at all you're hearing from everyone," Kanaya said, back on topic. "Everyone here's still in their early-mid-sweeps. If anyone started poking around in their relationships, they'd be lining up to spill their secrets before you know what to do about it."
"What makes you think I'm interested?" Rose asked, and Kanaya crossed her arms, looking offended.
"You think I don't know anything that's going on in this lab, don't you?" she sniffed.
"Bah," Rose said with a swat of her hand across Kanaya's midriff. "Can I ask my question or not?"
Kanaya defensively covered her lower body, grinning when Rose poked at her arms. "Of course. You were talking about Eridan and Tavros' first kiss."
Rose took a moment to put everything back in place in her mind. "So, say Vriska actually does want Eridan back."
"You think that is the root of the problem?"
"There are a lot of roots," Rose admitted, and tapped her headband: "I pulled one out of my hat. Now," she said, and took the opportunity to actually sit up straight, comfortably at height with Kanaya's horns. "Imagine they're actually kismeses again. Now... what is Vriska supposed to feel towards Tavros?"
"You mean pretending all the other problems in your... hat..." Kanaya reached up and pulled off Rose's headband. She began to arrange her own hair and set the band up against her horns. "...You mean pretending they don't exist?"
"Yes," Rose said, unconsciously adjusting her own hair. Pink was not Kanaya's colour, but it would appear that mischief outweighed style. "See, with a poor understanding of polyamory on Earth, and that almost irrelevant, I don't really know what to base the relationship between Vriska and Tavros. How are you supposed to act towards your kismesis' matesprit? Your matesprit's kismesis?"
"Well," Kanaya said, "unless they're in an independent relationship, they're not really supposed to have anything to do with one another."
"Yeah, that's what I mean, they don't-"
"No," Kanaya said, gently touching Rose's hand. "Take it literally. Your hypothetical Tavros and Vriska really aren't supposed to have anything to do with one another. If you hated someone, what would your opinion be of the people that pitied them? But you can't hate those matesprits and moirails in turn. Turning On Your Kismesis' Matesprit Or Moirail Is Just A Cheap Shot It Is Deathly Frowned Upon" Kanaya's voice spilled out orderly, confident in her home ground. "Those People Pity Your Kismesis And Certainly Don't Want Anything To Do With You And if you'd rather chide or attack your auspistice than your kismesis, not only are you not letting her do her job, but you've probably got your hate wires crossed."
Rose shook her head. "I'm hearing a lot of explanation but also a lot of 'On the other hand, Vriska...'"
Kanaya smiled only slightly. "Vriska... well, I'm not trying to say that Vriska can't or shouldn't be in a relationship with Tavros. Or want to, for that matter. The trouble is our current exile in this labratory: Trolls do not normally form these kinds of interrelated groups! Do you follow?"
"I think so," Rose said. "Say I'm a Troll, and I go out and found myself a kismesis in the fleet. Not only would I generally not know his or her matesprit or moirail ahead of time, but I wouldn't want to."
"Precisely!" Kanaya smiled. "There's Not Much Out There To Cover This Situation Rose. Vriska May Not Like It But Since She Has To Live With Tavros She Might Just Have To Wing It She, Eridan, if the both of them work out, and their auspistice." Suddenly her tone shifted, from lecture to worry. "You. And you. R-Rose."
Kanaya's stammering was equal parts distressing and endearing, and Rose managed to keep a neutral face as consequence. "Kan, what's the matter?"
She shook her head. "It's nothing. I'm sorry, just something in my throat."
Rose did not buy that for one second. "...You don't want to be one step removed from Vriska, do you?"
Kanaya slowly nodded, more tense than ever. Somehow, Rose got the impression that she had not even scratched the surface. Rather, Kanaya was so distressed, and so abruptly, that Rose knew she had hit on the very problem she had seen that morning, and it was starting to get worse. She felt horrible. Rose did not like to see any of her friends upset, psychological implications shoved aside. It was something she had learned first-hand after Sburb had provided so many opportunities. Her human friends preferred the back-to-normal route: Dave's non-reaction to his brother's death, John's overcompensating good humour, Jade burying emotion in a cloth of self-imposed maturity ... but Rose had never seen Kanaya even mildly upset in person before, and did not really know how to respond.
"...Kanaya," Rose said, "...if I may..." She reached out to hug her friend.
"W-wait!" Kanaya said, a moment too late, and she gasped in pain when Rose touched her shoulder. Rose immediately pulled back, and Kanaya looked away as though ashamed.
Rose could not beat around the bush another minute: "Kanaya, what's the matter?"
Kanaya did not immediately reply, instead lightly touching at the same spot. She tried to rub it but apparently this caused too much pain even under her own hands, but before Rose could say another word, she lifted it and opened her lips to show her teeth.
"...Oh my god, you lost a tooth?" What best equated to an incisor, in fact. Rose wanted to get a closer look, but Kanaya shut her mouth, a look on her face as though she was already expecting a reaction that Rose had not even begun to form. Assuming the loss was permanent, Rose could understand Kanaya's mood, but it did not explain the problem with Kanaya's shoulder. Did she maybe get in a fight? Rose wondered, and began to think over any possibilities. Kanaya getting into a fistfight seemed odd enough. Rose pondered over her more violent housemates but could not come up with any reason for a fight. Karkat, Equius, Vriska...
Vriska. Thinking of Vriska shot the answer straight into Rose's mind. Not Vriska's violent behaviour, but her appearance. Rose had seen too much of her sneering face in the past few days to forget it. Hunter's eyes, uncanny speed when she put her mind to it, and those shining, not-bone teeth that had appeared suddenly on her dreamself body just overnight after Karkat had lectured her about growing too much like a boy...
"You're moulting," Rose concluded. Kanaya replied with only a glum nod. "Is that... why it hurt when I touched you?"
"Rose, it hurts to shower!" Kanaya pouted, and Rose could do nothing but gape. She could only assume this had something to do with Karkat's assertion that males and females shed differently, but could not imagine the particulars. Kanaya reached up a hand as though to demonstrate, but thought better of it and settled it instead of her own neck.
"Is there..." Rose hesitated. "Is there anything I can do?" Before the Trolls, Rose would not have hesitated for a moment, but with Kanaya things were different. Naturally she wanted to help, but as it stood, there was nothing she could really say or do. They could talk, Kanaya could make medical suggestions, perhaps, but she knew that was where it would end. Rose knew what she would do if she discovered John was hiding an injury or Jade needed someone to talk to about Human female things, but when it came to comfortting Kanaya the gestures would only crossing the moirail line, or the matesprit. Kanaya knew it too. Rose could tell by the way the offer of help was only received with a frown and and a murmur that might have been a sigh.
"No," she said. "I'm doing everything I can. Feferi helped me alchemize some cream and..." She sighed and reached up to her head and collected Rose's headband. She placed it back on Rose's head and adjusting her hair to fit. Then she smiled, but Rose was not so willing to just let the subject drop. Her friend was in pain and worse was trying to hide it. There had been little she could have done to help Jade or Dave or John as the game had been in session, less when it came to the point where all she could offer were a few kind words spat out through Pesterchum, mangled by her magic-corrupted fingers.
"Where does it hurt?" Rose asked, and Kanaya's face fell at her insistence on carrying on the conversation.
Kanaya held up her arms in defeat. "I don't know. Most my back, shoulder to hip. My heel." She pivoted so that her legs faced off the foot of the bed and tried to oscillate her foot, but that seemed to be just as painful. Instead, she set them both down, sitting knee-to-knee with Rose. She tossed Rose another forced smile, but it seemed that she had run out of ideas to lighten the mood. Rose had her own plans.
Pulling her legs up to her chest, Rose scooted back a bit and re-positioned, settling down just behind Kanaya. Before she could object, Rose wrapped her arms around her friend's stomach, careful not to make contact at any point along her back. Rose scooted up close with her lower body and sat astride, buying enough room to hold on just a little tighter, and to set her head as close as she dared to Kanaya's own, opposite her painful shoulder. The feeling of Kanaya's skin against her own was as alien as ever. It was rougher without being truly rough, firmer. Her hair was stiffer than a human's and her breathing patterns were just distinct enough to notice. Even her smell, no perfume like a normal day, was different. These traits were all things Rose had once felt divisive, when she and Kanaya had first met in the lab and had shaken hands, but now struck her as something else. Though Kanaya probably shared these traits with the other nine land-dwellers, Rose did not hug them, comfort them or sit on their desks from nine to five in a wandering conversation. To Rose, they were Kan's things. She was even a little resentful that those things were about to change, and that Kanaya was about to grow into someone new. It was her friend she held, it was her friend who cried, she knew her just by touch. She would have done anything to help her, in her mind. In deed, she did nothing at all.
And then Kanaya began to cry. She turned her head to the side to look at Rose, pale green tears forming in her eyes, and Rose saw some misery there that had no ground in the moult, something she had not even started to uncover. Rose pulled in closer, as close as she dared, and tipped her head in towards Kanaya's neck. And so she sat, eyes closed, as Kanaya's crying began to intensify, but Rose felt a hand crawl into hers, holding tigether every time it seemed she might pull away. Asking what was the matter never really crossed Rose's mind. She could not ask. If she did, she knew she would come to that petty line again between what they had and what they could not decide they wanted. This was all she could do. Kanaya trembled in her arms, crying mystery tears and cupping one of Rose's hands in her own, and it was the best Rose could do.
"I don't think..." Kanaya said, though she clung. "Rose..."
Tell her you'll help, she thought. Tell her you'll do whatever it takes. Wouldn't you? Wouldn't you for Dave, for Jade or John? But no. To throw herself in front of the problem blind lay too close to moirallegiance. But wouldn't that be wonderful? To shrug off the gathering anxiousness of their relationship and plunge into one not far divorced seemed right and simple, and only a few words would bridge to it. But it was hardly alone in its appeal. Kiss her, Rose thought as well. And oh, did that have its own steady draw, and would be so very simple to cross, and stay and linger. Though Rose would not dare risk to sit closer, holding Kanaya in her arms felt right. But at the same time, Rose knew the selfish drive behind it, and whatever Kanaya's hidden probelm was, it might not be one a matesprit could handle, and that drive bothered Rose more than it it drew. And Rose was not entirely prepared to dismiss auspistice out of hand. True, it was not one of the pitying relationships, but it was founded in the very ideas that had first brought her and Kanaya together. She could play Kanaya's auspistice, and watch her friend stand tall as she deserved, and best of all, she would never have to feel the lingering worry that Kanaya's kismesis would disapprove of her. But aren't we closer than that? Rose did not know.
Rose held tighter as she warred with her own mind, Kanaya's hand squeezed in her own. There was nothing she could do. It was not choosing her destination. It was the commitment. She looked up to Kanaya and their eyes met, paralyzed by indecision, and Rose could not take it. She had done nothing, Kanaya had done nothing, and Rose thought she had a better idea than she liked about why Kanaya had begun to cry when she had hugged her, why Kanaya had begun to shy away when they had started to discuss Rose's other relationships. She realized that if their situations had been reversed, she would have felt just as jealous to see Kanaya's life being filled without her. She could not tell Kanaya how she felt, and Kanaya was just as helpless.
"I have to..." Rose freed her other hand. "I have to..." But retreat was easy. "...I gotta go, Kan."
Kanaya's tears had begun to dry even before Rose had broken away, but still she replied only to nod her head, just barely, and then again. She raised her hand out of Rose's, feeling the need to feign a friendly wave goodbye, and Rose bolted from the room as soon as she found the button. She cut through the office and sat in the waiting room beyond, lacking the energy to take another step.
Rose tried to clean the tears from her face, but they just kept coming. She took several deep breaths to calm down, which helped for a time, but knew there was no way she could stay here. She had to leave Kanaya alone; she really had no right to stay. She eyed the stuck door that led into the disused halls and maintenance tunnels of the lab, and then she turned to the transportalizer. The Gods were waiting for her. She could almost hear their whispering in her heart, and she hated them for it. She could hear every taunt, and each one made her somehow less afraid. Let them, she thought. I'll show them. I'm not going to let them run my life just because I'm having a bad day! And so she stepped onto the pad.
Yet she found herself in an empty void, and there were no Gods to taunt her. "Where are you?" she shouted in their language. She had expected the one that disguised itself as Dave's brother to tease her about wanting to be with Kanaya, or the one dressed as the Dignitary to garble the whole affair into looking like some holier-than-thou outburst. She wanted to shout them down so badly that she almost expected one of them to taunt her about that instead. "Don't you have something to say?"
"At your service," said the god, and all the shades appeared at once. Dead faces, lost faces, familiar faces and strange appeared in all directions, speaking in one voice with a resonance that shook Rose to the core. Her ears rang, her nose bled and her stomach roiled as the voices spoke in screaming harmony. "After all, Rose, I'm only here because you want me to be."
Rose was ejected into the transportalizer room, where she stumbled back into the wall, reeling from metaphysical pain and a very physical bite on her tongue. There, she was immediately sick on the floor. For a moment, in her nausea, she understood. Almost every mystery was clear, like a puzzle that had only been missing a single piece, but it dissolved into its component parts in a moment and from there to useless sand, and Rose tossed them aside. A god with a thousand forms. She didn't care that she knew him, so she forgot his name. A god pretending to be many gods, the only voice she had ever heard from the first time she had spoken to them to today. She didn't care why he was misleading her, so she stopped wondering. The only god in the whole cosmos that was not indifferent to them, tiny germs in a grander scheme that used to sleep in bubbles and asked petty favours, and this one had instead singled her out and pursued her actively. That final thought was the first of many that did not even touch her consciousness. Rose only wanted to lie down and wait for the world to stop moving. She wanted to call Kanaya her friend, her girlfriend, her moirail and smile again. She wiped the blood away from her nose with her sleeve, and wished that this long and ugly day would end.
"There you are! I've been looking all... Oh!"
Vriska. She had just appeared out of Aradia's portal, no doubt checking the Human's rooms. Vriska looked taken aback by Rose's appearance, and Rose was in no mood to humour her.
"What do you want?" Rose asked, slurring the first word as she tried to stand up straight. She forcefully wiped the tears from her eyes, for what little good it did.
"Did you just...?"
"Vriska!"
"Hey, I just came to talk!" Vriska's coming-to-talk voice was just below shouting, given the situation. "Maybe you should keep in mind: since I wasn't there, I don't have anything to do with whatever the hell is up with you!" Rose shot her a death glare, so she got back on topic. "John told me that Eridan asked you to auspistice for us."
Rose felt like she was going to be sick again. "Oh god, not again. Vriska, he doesn't speak for me. It wasn't my damn-"
"I like it!"
Rose braced against the wall. "You... you what?"
"I really do!" Vriska rolled her dice in her hands, licking her lips and thinking deep, and looked even brighter when she was done. "I mean, this is the most proactive thing he's ever done! Ever! He's got over his stupid kissing thing, he's growing up hot, and... and..." Vriska thumped her fists together as she tried to put a finger on the last point, and made it with a dramatic finger-gun in Rose's direction. "And he totally went behind my back to do it! Underhanded, unbelievable! He's a new Troll!"
Rose could not believe it. Was Vriska even taking in her immediate situation? She had reacted to the tears, or maybe the vomit, but she showed no sign of adjusting her behaviour to match. She was wrapped up in a sudden happiness, almost gloating. In fact, yes. Definitely gloating, Rose thought. Her smile a little too malicious, her tone a little too cutting. Maybe it was just a part of her imagination, wanting to find a target for her sudden onset of rage, but Vriska served admirably.
"And you... can keep him that way, c8't you, Rosie?" Vriska said with a lick of her lips. "Whaddya say?"
Rose could not believe her. Vriska's antisocial tendencies had rubbed her the wrong way from time to time, but as she understood Vriska was mostly improved from a darker past. But rational thought was no longer the order of the day. When Rose had cut between Eridan and his chance to be an idiot because of Feferi, she had been doing it mostly out of sheer desire not to see his stupid hero act another time. He was an idiot she was keeping in line. She had felt an urge towards playing guide to Kanaya, and while it was leagues from wanting to restrain Eridan, she knew that auspistices could occasionally have a caring relationship toward their mutually-hating charges. But here, with Vriska almost spitting in her face, she hated her, and she understood, for the first time, just a touch of what an auspistice was really for. In that moment, nothing in the entire world would have made her happier than to have her boot hovering above Vriska and Eridan both.
"You want my help?" Rose shouted, finding her strength. Vriska began to grin, licking her teeth, and nodded. "You want my help? Okay: here's my terms."
"Wait," Vriska said. "You don't get terms!"
Rose spat, bile and the iron tang of blood. "Oh yeah? Well how about this? I'm not an fool, Vriska Serket. You have twenty-three game levels on me. I know it, and I think you know it too. In fact, I think that's why you're here!" Vriska's smile turned to a scowl, and Rose went straight up into her face. A little part of Rose realized just how foul her breath must have smelled, and that part was proud of it. "You think you can pick an auspistice you can just ignore and get away with anything? Not a chance. I want you to show me you're actually going to listen. Then I'm in."
"Oh, suddenly it's inter8sing!" Vriska grabbed Rose's hand and yanked Rose closer show she was not intimidated. Vriska held their linked hands up, almost as though they were sharing a pledge. "Lay it on me."
Any intimidation Rose felt was shoved aside. It was time for business. "All right: one! I want you to find a moirail. Someone level ninety-nine, just like yourself. So not John, Vriska! You're a menace." Vriska tried to look flattered. "And if I can't curb you, someone else had better."
"Fine," Vriska said, and pointed past Rose's shoulder. "She's my moirail." Vriska feigned a gasp. "I guess she never told you!"
Rose turned her head to see if Vriska was pointing where she thought she was: yes, straight at the jade green Virgo symbol. Rose's emotions toward Vriska roiled. Help her, kiss her, guide her, hit her! Rose was impressed she managed to keep her self control, and acted to the east of where she would much rather be if only for an instant. "Oh my god," she said instead, back on the clubbed path. "You actually are this deluded, aren't you?" Vriska did not look a mite offended, but as Rose continued, emotion surfaced: "Vriska, you and Kanaya haven't talked in two months! What, did you think you were doing so perfectly that she had no moirail advice for you whatsoever?"
"I..." She whispered, and Rose barely caught it. "But..." She said something else, whispered it under her breath, and it sounded as though she had said: "...Fussyfangs..."
"Oh, please say you really did think you were that perfect," Rose interrupted. "That would make my terrible day." It was mean-spirited, and Rose knew it. It was horrible, rubbing the salt into what was clearly striking Vriska as a wound, and it was exactly what Rose was supposed to do. Vriska's response was immediate and, most importantly: pointed her straight back towards Eridan.
"All right, deal. I can find a better moirail than her, no problem."
"Good self confidence," Rose said. "Too bad there isn't a better one to find." Defending Kanaya like that treated close to moirallegience, but Rose switched topics fast to keep both her own mind and Vriska's off balance. "Second, and listen close: you're going to apologize to Aradia for killing her."
Vriska burst out laughing. "I'll what?"
"Oh, you heard me," Rose said, and, still joined at the hands, she advanced, pushing Vriska back a step. "My job's to stop you both from running around hating everyone and their matesprit. You want to prove that you'll listen to me? You will make nice with the person you killed and who killed you back. For some reason, that sounds like something you just might hate, and that makes her a threat to your kismesis. Am I right?" No response. "Until then, I'm not your auspistice, and I don't even care. Deal?"
Vriska had not stopped laughing, even during the demands. "W-why..." she managed. "Why are you so interesting all of a sudden? I mean, what the hell did Kanaya even say to you?" Rose realized she should have expected that. Certainly, if she was entitled to take shots at Vriska, retaliations would be inbound. But Vriska was finished, and decisively so: "Deal!" She shouted. "I'm in!" She broke their mutual grip and headed off towards her own transportalizer. "You'll see, Lalonde. This is going to be a cakewalk. I'll see you tomorrow."
Rose was left alone in the transporter room, heart pumping and adrenaline flying, now enraged. Somewhere beneath her burst of energy was all that mass of feelings that she had picked up in Kanaya's, but her urge to go hide in bed and wish the day had never happened had vanished, replaced only with a wary apprehension regarding the conversation that had just occurred. She had to do something to vent off her frustration, and she started by taking out the ever-ready cleaning kit that John had passed out to them weeks prior, and mopped up her mess.
As she worked, her anger began to fade, and she became once again aware that the only real way out of the room was through the transportalizers or the maintenance tunnels. She was a mess, and she knew it, but there was no sense in staying, so as she packed her things away and she opened the hatch leading to the tunnels. It would be a longer trip, and she would have to bear the weight of her feelings with every step before she found her way to anywhere or one worth visiting, but she was not about to face the God alone again.
Even though they were well within the bounds of what the Trolls and Humans liked to pretend was waking hours something about that "day" seemed to have set their internal suns and moons far earlier than intended. Tavros stayed awake during the entire third movie thanks to Equius' constant repair work, but both he and Eridan fell asleep at the start of the fourth, and had to be helped back to their respective rooms. In a reverse of his usual, Gamzee had never bothered to return from the kitchen. Karkat found John back on the couch, waiting for him when he returned from lifting Eridan back to his recouperacoon. His Human couch-buddy said something about Vriska wanting to talk to Rose. Karkat did not really care about Vriska's goings on, so long as she was not going on armed. Besides, Rose was with Kanaya and, Karkat hinted, probably not going to come out just to see Vrsika. As for the rest of their group, Sollux and Feferi were probably still fighting and no one had seen Strider for ours or Pyrope since she went for lunch. A half an hour into the fourth and final movie of the series, Karkat's beloved favourite, Kanaya arrived.
"...uh oh," John said at once upon seeing her.
Karkat looked up, trying to ignore the sound of Aradia and Equius bickering in one corner of the room as he made some adjustments to her left arm. Kanaya, in Karkat's professional opinion, looked like absolute shit. Nepeta's sad groan was enough to communicate the mood for all of them.
"Oh Kanaya," Jade greeted. "Didn't it work out? I'm so sorry."
"Karkat," Kanaya said, sputtering, and ignoring the Humans entirely. "I couldn't tell her... anything! It just lodged in my throat!" While John and Jade looked a little snubbed at being ignored, Nepeta treated Kanaya's preference it entirely in stride, and glumly began to fiddle with her tablet, making an ugly update to her charts. "I just... I..." She looked him in the eye, ashamed. "I just screwed up."
Karkat groaned. "Ugh, just.. come here you big..." he spread his arms and she immediately fell into them. "...Stupid."
"Karkitty," said a voice from the floor. "Maybe you should..." Nepeta pointed over her shoulder toward the feuding kismeses and Karkat gave her a nod.
"Just... come on," he said, and guided Kanaya back to the transportalizer.
"So, what?" Karkat asked. "I figure you're a talker."
"A what?"
"You know, you want to talk about it." Karkat shrugged. "Some people want to talk about it. I'm not one of them, you don't see me shooting my mouth off." "Of course." "Besides, it doesn't really work. Those two Humans were trying to talk their way to Strider all damn day and it didn't do them a thing."
"I'm sure..." Kanaya said, as though to counter him, but she could not find the energy. "I don't... I don't even know if I understand what was going on in my head enough to talk about it."
Sollux sat in the dim of Feferi's bedroom, waiting out alone with a knotted heart. Feferi had not ultimately locked him out, but she had made a point of switching off every set of lights from the transportalizer to her door. He only found his way through thanks to memory and a few bumps to the shin, and now he sat at the edge of the pool she kept as her own, feet bare on the wet edge of the pool and surrounded by rusted exercise equipment of all shapes and purposes.
Feferi surfaced, the underwater lighting casting surreal shadows over her face as the only set in the room. "So..." she said, staying off in the middle of the water.
"FF, I'm sorry," Sollux said at once, before she could say another word. "And if you want to keep being mad at me, that's fine, you've got every right. I was just trying to find a chance to talk to you, and when Karkat went a little crazy with it I just... I didn't do a thing."
Feferi listened, to his relief, though she sunk down to her eyes as she took it all in before returning with the first of what Sollux figured was going to be many questions.
"You... really didn't tell Terezi to trip me?"
"Holy crap, no! FF..." Sollux crawled forward to the edge of the pool and clutched the edges. "If you think I'd do anything to hurt you then I'm really... I don't know what to say!"
"No, wait, no!" Feferi swam up to the edge of the pool to face him. "That's not what I meant! Ugh, I guess I'm not very good at this either." Her face fell, and she began, once more, to sink. "I mean... I guess that is what I said. I just wanted to know why you didn't want me to talk to Aradia! If you didn't want them to stop me, why didn't you... Sollux, why didn't you tell me what was going on?"
"I..." But Sollux was Sollux in the end, and his emotions gave way to offended logic. "...ii wa2n't goiing two insult you by ju2t telliing you, you know" Sollux knew she would hate that but it was something he could not help: Feferi knew his emotional and logical sides were both part of the same coin but knew as well that she hated the way he would jump between them. Well, what was said was said.
He felt a little better when she only took the shift with a grunt of annoyance. "Sollux, I'm not that smart, don't you get that? You're the smart one." It was hard to tell if she was being serious or if she was levelling the field between them for their talk. It was something he was not fond of, which levelled the field all on its own.
"FF, if you weren't as smart as I think you are we wouldn't still be together. I'd have scared you away a long time ago." Feferi shook her head, and used the gesture as an excuse to look away. Sollux sighed and lay down on the edge of the pool. "What's an array?"
"What?" She had to check to see if he was being serious. "It's a... I don't know! It's one of those things you get when you type the square brackets."
"Uh huh."
"It's a whole bunch of variables in a list."
"Yeah, and what's a function?"
"Sollux," she protested, but he reached out and touched a finger to her lips. "...it's a block of commands you can put somewhere else."
"And did I have to sit you down and tell you either of those things? Ever?"
Realization dawned. "I..." Feferi laughed. "You really think that's special?"
"It's basic but I didn't have to lift a finger. You could totally get into this if you wanted to You're ahead of KK with just that and he's been trying for years."
She giggled. "That's neat! I'd like to say you could be a diplomat-" Sollux cut her off with a snort of his own laughter, which only seemed to encourage her. "I guess I haven't been a very good diplomat myself today, have I?" Feferi hung her head. "Couldn't talk to Aradia, couldn't talk down Terezi... I just wanted it to be a SURPRIS-E!"
"A surprise?"
Feferi just nodded. "I should have just done it, I didn't think you'd all get it so... confused."
Only a few minutes before, the idea of Feferi breaking up with him over this whole debacle had made Sollux bark out his fear in front of the human, of all strangers. Here, inches away from Feferi, smiling, his fears were easily set aside. For now she was still his matesprit, and no matter what she might have in mind, he loved her. "FF..." His composure slipped, maybe a mood swing or maybe just the weight of things falling down on top of him, and he wrapped his arms around her. She rubbed her cheek up against his, arms wrapped tight and his hand dipping in and out of the water as she breathed
As their emotions calmed, Sollux tipped his head and kissed Feferi gently on the cheek, to which she responded with one of her own, then along the edge of his lips, and then towards but stopping just before. Both their eyes closed, she whispered: "Come into the water."
Sollux's eyes fluttered open just in time to catch the grin that had started to form on her lips. "W-what?"
Before he could even think of stopping her, her legs went up to the edge of the pool and she pushed off, pulling him in with her. He sputtered back to the surface and the sound of her laughter, and tried to meet her with a splash. She shrieked and dove. Having lost track of her in the dark of her room, Sollux growled with frustration and checked his glasses for damage. Finding none, he dealt with the only thing he felt he was able: getting rid of his water-logged, heavy shirt. Feferi breached a few feet from him, wet hair hanging haphazardly about her face, and bit at her knuckle as she watched him as though appraising. "So..." she asked. "why were you all so eager to keep me from Aradia, anyway?"
Sollux was not so involved in what was going on at that very moment to ignore the loaded question. "I... Well, 'we' all sort of figured you were uncomfortable about the whole... her being my ex and me killing her thing. I mean, I would be."
"And... so?"
"Well... bring that up is hard for me to relive and for Aradia..." Sollux rubbed at the back of his neck as he treaded water. He was not sure he wanted to approach this so directly. "It got out of hand."
Feferi frowned. "But why didn't you just talk to me? I mean, I could have just not brought it up, it wasn't like I was just going over there to make her cry. She's a robot!" But now that the facts were in front of her, Feferi did not waste one second working out the last of the puzzle. "Oh holy carp," she said, to Sollux's surprise and utter fear: giggling. "You have no idea what I wanted to talk to her about!"
Sollux fled back from the splashes, but had little room to flee. He was completely aghast. "well ii diidn't thiink ii wa2 that wrong I..."
Feferi cleared her throat and righted herself, taking hold of a lock of hair and spinning at her side. She approached him elegantly and stuffily, as though walking through the water. "Sollux Captor, you big stupid boy, I think you need to get to know me a perch better than that!" Her smile broke through her tone and he felt the blood rushing to his face in a yellow-faced blush to be ashamed of.
She was almost up to him at that point, and he reached out and pressed his hand to her stomach, drawing it along her side and up to her back where he pulled her in towards him. "Really?"
"Sollux Captor, you just got a whole bunch of Trolls to believe you when you were totally wrong!" Feferi reached up and tapped him on the nose. "I think you are a diplomat. We have to turn those powers to good, mister!" And she pulled him in to a kiss, her hands anchoring them to the wall he only pulling back when they realized a strand of her hair and gotten caught between their lips. Feferi started to giggle. "You have no idea what I really do want with Aradia, do you?" Sollux shook her head. ")(-E)(-E)(-E)(-E)(-E... I didn't realize t)(is was going to be FUN, too! And I'm just getting started! And you can help!"
Sollux rolled his eyes, not that she could really see, and kissed her on the cheek. Feferi pulled ever closer, and ran her leg up his own. "You know..." she cooed. "This is exactly why Karkat told you to lock all our rooms."
"fuck KK" Sollux muttered, and spun the both of them about to swap places with Feferi. "becau2e a2 a matter of fact, iit wa2 my iidea two lock the pad2 I'm the only one who can run the locks."
"Why would you... oh!" she gasped as he cupped her face in one hand, and returned a mischievous smile. "O)( you're sneaky when you're on game."
"Y-EA)(" he said, and met her lips again, the water splashing up gently against the edge of the pool in the dark of night.
"You know, Terezi's a fucking talker. Sometimes I think she expects me to rattle on about every single thing on my mind, but I know when to keep my mouth shut."
"You should..." Kanaya's urge to mediate kicked in past her malaise. "You should probably talk to... her..."
"Oh, okay," he said. "You're a normaliser."
"What? Karkat, what are you talking about now?"
"I mean you want things to be normal. We can do that. You can lecture me about my relationships for an hour and I'll enjoy every goddamned minute of it, won't I? I mean, isn't that the point in the end? To get back to normal?"
Dave watched the skies disinterested. His thoughts were indoors, so he forced them out by sitting out, atop some huge heating unit plugged into the side of the lab. It kept him warm as he kept guard, but there was no sign of Jack, or of his or Aradia's past or future selves. He had already been out to fight Jack twice since he had been forced to let Rose die in the dead timeline, and he was just starting to let in the hope that he might be able to sleep tonight.
"Hi," said a voice to his side, and he turned, surprised, to see Aradia sitting next to him. He could not believe it. She was made of metal and was sitting on metal, and getting there could not have been very stealthy. How had she gotten there? Was he really that distracted?
"Evening," he said, conversationally.
But Aradia did not say another word, and Dave had nothing to really say to her. They looked out over the blank sky for danger together. Dave did not know why she had come. She had never come to watch with him before. Normally they split the job so that the other could pretend to live inside the lab. Today she watched with him.
A half an hour passed, in silence. Aradia kept her watch with multiple spectrums, and Dave frankly felt inadequate for just using his bare eyes. His thoughts wandered back indoors, and he was forced again to return to the present and the perfect still of semi-timeless space. When he did, he found a metal hand outstretched before him, and in it clutched a toasted sandwich with some sort of jam in between. He accepted it with a simple "Thank you," and Aradia nodded to the sky. And they sat, and they watched. Dave ate his sandwich in peace. Time, their servant and master, ticked by in that strange way it managed in timeless space, and Dave felt, for once, at ease.
When he had almost finished his sandwich, he spoke up. "...Terezi 'broke up with me' because I said she was just a friend. I didn't know that was bad."
Aradia looked up, though Dave did not meet her eyes at first. When he did he found her open, but aloof. Her robotic body mimicked a sort of caring passivity, and at first he wondered if it had done its job wrong.
"So... no thoughts on this?" he asked.
Aradia shrugged. "If you want me to insult her for not telling you she had feelings for you, I will, but I don't really think you want me to."
Dave tossed aside the remaining crust of his sandwich. "What happened to 'You're allowed to be sad, you know?' I'm pretty sure that's what you said."
"Well you are, but since you don't seem to care to, I don't see any reason to drag it out. It sucks, this Terezi thing..." Dave blinked behind his shades. To hear a robot say that something "sucked" undercut every piece of bad science fiction Egbert had every hoisted on him. In a way it made it easier to remember that she was a Troll. "But you can handle it."
She smiled and turned back to the sky. Dave was left overcome and strangely proud that she thought of him that way. John and Jade had pounded up and down his door trying to talk and bribe, but it seemed that all he had really needed was that, simple and to the point. He didn't know how he felt about Terezi any more - he certainly wouldn't have admited anything one way or another, but thoughts ran away on him - but the painful idea of losing her as a friend in the first place had gone entirely. Aradia had been tactful, concise, hell, downright...
He stood up. "Aradia." She looked up, her body language casual, and he smiled as smooth as he could, which was a fair bit. "Wanna go for a walk?"
And she returned his smile with a smirk. Her music boxes appeared at her side, and she hovered up to level with him. "...I wanna go for a run?" And with a moment, challenging him with her eyes, she took off into the air, towards time.
"Oh hell yeah!" Dave said to no one in particular, as he pulled out the timetables and started after her. There was still no sign of Jack. Good, the fucker had better stay away. Dave had been waiting all his life to meet someone else this cool.
"Look, Kanaya, am I reading this wrong? Tell me what happened, lecture me about Terezi, but don't sit there and mope. Why are you even here?"
Kanaya shook her head, curled up in a ball by her clothes in Karkat's not-very-secret secret room. "Because..." But she did not seem to have an answer. Kanaya's tears had been rejuvenated in the computer room, at the sight of a caring face. "You're my leader. You're..." a waver returned to her voice. "You're strong."
Karkat heaved a mighty, leaderly sigh and crawled over across the room to sit next to Kanaya. "Does your back still hurt?" he asked as he settled down.
"Yes."
"Then don't take this personally," he said, and reached over to pull her over sideways with a grip on her behind. Sniffling still, she leaned over and laid her head against Karkat's chest, and a peace settled in over the secret room, save when she shifted a touch head and accidentally brushed him with the tip of her bent horn.
And even Karkat was able to keep the quiet, for a few minutes at least. "Should have guessed." he said. "You're one of this unbearable quiet-support types. I-pity-you-so-here's-a-hug-you-wuss. Fuck, you're a sap."
"Rose tried this," Kanaya said. "It's like she knew. It was perfect, and I just wanted to tell her, one way or the other, but I just didn't..."
"Yeah, I get it," Karkat said. "But I don't think I need to remind you that the plan was to just fucking tell her how you feel. You know, I don't think you got us all together for advice just to ignore it. John and I don't agree on much, but when me, him, Jade and even the cat-wearing Mistress of Subtlety all reach the same romantic conclusion, you probably should have rolled with us. Then you can get all the fucking hugs you want no awkwardness required. Until then, you're stuck with me. Think about that why don't you."
Kanaya nodded, and Karkat felt fairly confident that he had gotten through to her, and began to go off on a tangent. Not out loud, of course. He started by muttering a few things under his breath, something about John that he really would rather she not catch. She let it slide, thank goodness, and curled up against him.
"Any other types, Karkat?" she asked, interrupting an excellent jab at his past self. Karkat scowled down at her.
"Fuck, really, what am I, your pity dictionary?" She laughed (Karkat chose to take that personally), but he put his mind to it all the same. "Naw," he said. "...well, maybe. But like, for Humans. You know, something weird."
She chuckled. "Weird. How weird?"
"Really weird," he replied, the first in a few general insults that soon had him levelling his verbal firepower against his past self yet again. As he did, Kanaya seemed to slowly drift off toward sleep. A few more minutes on, as Karkat was wrapping up his argument, he turned up the volume: "...I can be quiet," he said, having long strayed off subject. "I can be loving. I don't get why people think I can't."
"Shut up, Karkat," Kanaya muttered. But she smiled as she said it, and gave him a squeeze. Her horn dug into his chest again, but to be honestly, it only bothered him a little. "You're our leader. We all know you could take care of anything."
"Especially if I find it personally humiliating."
"Especially."
Throughout the lab, the day was dying down into proper night. Even though the last movie was only half over, Equius came from his fight with Aradia to pick up Nepeta, reminding her that she had promised him that she would clean out her sylladex of "filth and meat." She surrendered without a fight, waving forlornly to Jade. Jade waved back and took a seat next to John, sad to see Nepeta go but happy for some time alone with her best friend, who she distracted from time to time by tickling his feet. Eridan and Tavros lay in their own recouperacoons, dreaming sopor-muffled dreams and smiling in spite; Vriska lay awake in hers, plotting and strategizing and smiling all the broader. And as the lab began to sink into the quiet of their mutually declared sleeping hours, Rose found one last bastion of sound as she emerged from the tunnels. Though it struck her odd, even preposterous to hear it, it was definitely laughter.
"So, so, the lusus says 'Well I don't get it,' and the other one says 'Holy shit, a talking Uberduck!'"
Gamzee's uproarious laughter greeted Rose: she found him practically falling over himself against one wall of the cafeteria, and found Terezi watching and shaking her head.
"Gamzee, you don't get it!" she said with a smile. "You haven't got one of them yet."
Gamzee shook his head, unable to otherwise communicate as tears streamed down his face. "Ducks... are so...!" But they never did learn what was so funny about ducks, and Terezi laughed on her own, though into her palm. Rose could not believe it. The atmosphere in the kitchen could not be more different than the one she had left, more different, in fact, than the entire rest of the laboratory. But there they sat, like some cackling island, oblivious to the moods of those that shared the lab. When Terezi saw Rose standing there, lost, confused and still deeply hurt, it seemed to take her a moment to realize there was no reason for her to be laughing too. But comprehension overcame humour in seconds and she waved Rose in. "H3Y" she said, showing her toothy grin. "Gamzee said you might come."
Rose was not really sure how in the mood she was to see Terezi. She still remembered the scene in the lab too well, and was not willing to relive it, but something made her step forward and into the light, right arm clutched awkwardly in the left. Terezi's grin was unnerving. Was this Gamzee's doing? He had said he was going to cheer her up, but really? Gamzee and a bunch of heavily-peppered hot dogs?
Gamzee calmed down at the sight of her. "Bra, T just told me about Eridan telling you off about Tavros. Dude's completely fucked."
"Oh?" Rose had almost completely forgotten about Tavros and Eridan in the noise of the afternoon. "N-no, that's not it. I had a talk with Vriska and... with Kan."
"Oh, is that how it is?" Terezi frowned. "I thought she..." but her tone changed at once, impossible and dramatic as though gravity itself had reversed. "Well, you came to the right place! This is the lonely hearts club! W3'R3 G3TT1NG THROUGH OUR H34RTBR34KS TOG3TH3R" And then she grinned.
Rose was not sure which part she found more ridiculous: that the Terezi that had knocked her on the floor early that afternoon was willing to address "heartbreak" or that... "Gamzee? You're not heartbroken, are you... heartbroken?"
Terezi looked over at Gamzee, who did not seem to understand the question. "Hm, you're right," she said. "Gamzee, you can't be here if you're not heartbroken!"
Gamzee took this news with obvious disappointment. "Aw, fuck man, I forgot!"
"No, it's good, I H4V3 4 PL4N. Trust me," she said, teeth in his face, "I'm a lawyer." Terezi cast a look over her shoulder to Rose and giggled unwittingly. "See, Gamzee, we just need you to go through heartbreak! You wanna go out some time?"
"I... wHuT?"
"Oh Gamzee!" Terezi said, and she swooned into him, lucky that he was cognizant enough to catch her as she slipped into the high-faulting tongue of theatre. "My love for your beautiful painted face grows with every passing hour!" She thrust a victory fist into the air. "Our love shall pierce the heavens!"
"Bro, what the hell are you-"
Terezi's character abruptly shifted to later in the play, and she turned about and grabbed him by the collar. "Where have you been? Don't you know I wait up for you? Why do you hurt me like this, my love?" She took a step away from him and clasped her hands above her the pump of her collapsing and expanding vascular system and jumped ahead to the grand finale, eyes glistening with stage tears. Rose was a bit to upset to laugh as she hammed it up, despite Terezi's best efforts, but it was getting harder and harder as time went on. "Gamzee, don't you see this is all I can take? You have to draw the line! I... have to draw the line. Me or the sopor, Gamzee!" A dramatic about-face and accusing, lawyerly finger-point. "Me or the sopor?"
Gamzee, who was either catching on to the game or had simply been that offended, lost his confused mask and stood up straight, arms crossed. "Terezi, if you're going to cut me off from my sopor, I think we both know how this has to end."
Rose could not believe what she was watching, and she was finding it hard to keep focus. Gamzee harrumphed and turned his head away, and so did Terezi, and then she returned to her normal self and clapped. "4W3SOM3 W3'R3 4LL M1S3R4BL3 NOW And you know what that means!" She reached out to Rose and tickled her knees with her pointer finger, but when she did not respond, Gamzee, back to himself as well, did instead.
"FuCkInG HoT DoGs!"
"Fucking hot dogs!" Terezi agreed, throwing her pointing hand into the air.
They both led a bewildered Rose into the kitchen, which had all but exploded since she had been there last. Ketchup lined one wall in what looked roughly like a happy face. Discarded hot dog buns lay staling on opposite sides of the room, some of them stuck to the walls, and the sink was overflowing with pots and pans. Each time Rose noticed a successive mess, Terezi and Gamzee would just laugh harder. Ultimately, Gamzee guided Rose to the one, giant pot still simmering on the heat.
"...Holy crap," Rose said when she saw it. "How many..."
"Well," Gamzee said, philosophically. "Let's say I was in the room hitting the multiplier to make four hot dogs, two each for me and my bro here. Now, I'm not really sure what happened-"
Rose was. "You made forty-four hot dogs, didn't you?" Terezi shrieked with laughter. "...Why did you cook them all?"
"Rose!" Terezi impatiently jabbed her on the shoulder with a foreclaw and held out a plate with two hot dog buns on it. "C'mon, get ready and pick toppings!"
She was so excited that Rose could not help but smile a little at her eager insistence, and did as she was told, shuffling off to the fridge as Terezi and Gamzee began to talk in the corner, giggling about a message they had stuck to the fridge in incomprehensible Alternian magnets.
Rose opened the fridge to find chaos, chilled. All the same, it was probably the most organized part left of the kitchen after these two had gotten to it, but that did not mean she could find anything she wanted. Terezi and Gamzee had set no less than three completely empty ketchup bottles immediately in the way of the top shelf, and Rose could not find a single container of mustard. She began to remove things and stack them to her left, but stopped as a particular item caught her eye.
A squeezeberry, ripe and fresh as any of the others Gamzee had shown her earlier in the day, if smelling a little like the meat it had been stored aside. Rose pinched it at the fat end and its jelly squirted out of the other and dribbled down her fingers. She laughed in spite of herself, Terezi and Gamzee's giggling infectious. She looked up, half-ready to share the joke on the tip of her tongue, when she remembered exactly who served as her audience. Terezi caught her look, and Rose tried to hide the berry, worried that provoking memories of Dave would ruin Terezi's peculiar good mood. But she had forgotten with who she was dealing. Terezi smelled the squeezeberry around the fridge door, and to Rose's surprise began to sputter with laughter afresh.
"Pfft... Rose. Rose. 'Just HOW HIGH...'"
Rose could not help it, and they said it together. "HOW HIGH do you have to BE..."
She had to do it. She had to. And so did Terezi, and Gamzee. Squeezeberry on one dog, grape jam on the other, and they discovered just how easy it was to suppress one's gag reflex when one was busy making fun of someone else for being unable to hold down. But there was no way it could end there. Whipped cream was next, then ice cream and humus. It took a while, but for Rose, as it had Terezi, the laughter began to overcome her wories and replaced the bad taste in her mouth with the literal bad taste of processed meat and fruit. Every once and a while, some grown voice would hiss at Rose for what she was inflicting on herself, but her inner child shouted it down. Indeed, to Rose's surprise, her inner child was very loud at the moment, and not so inner as she had supposed. And so it was her fault, though she would never admit it, that they started the bread fight, flinging baked goods at one another in the luxury of infinite food.
Out of alchemized bread, they kept at it, full of energy. After an hour, Terezi and Gamzee had taught Rose a round of an Alternian grub's song Gamzee had startd to hum. Rose returned the favour with a drinking song, which for her mother had sufficed as a children's song. After another hour, Rose had tried to spin Terezi's cane with the buried experience of three forgotten rhythmic gymnastics lessons some time in her past, dropping it to the ground after every second spin. Terezi, in turn, nearly set fire to a bench with one of the things that popped out of Gamzee's inventory, and they put it out with dirty hot dog water. It was the most fun Rose had had in two solid months.
Gamzee, on request, explained his crazy clown religion in detail (they both understood it far less than they had before, and Terezi swore some of the details had changed). Rose recounted how she, Jade and John had clustered into a memo scrambling to figure out exactly what they were expected to say to Dave about his new pride and joy. Rose laughed at the story of how Terezi met Equius for the first time, and how his attempts to be polite and formal were mangled by Nepeta pouncing up for a piggy-back. Terezi laughed at Rose's attempts to get Jade to tell her her name, which had taken almost a month and a half thanks to narcolepsy, confused conversations with her dreamself, and sheer misunderstandings. Gamzee laughed at everything.
In time, they were the only ones in the entire lab making the slightest bit of noise, and an ugly day came at last to its formal end. They were not the only ones awake. One had settled in to cure her open wounds in the comfort of a silent other, wrapped in warm arms in a quiet hideaway. Some had found their answer in openness, and set aside their misunderstandings to embrace a mutual understanding and growing passion. Others had slipped away from the lab to find their old lives unchanged by one unfortunate incident, their personal identities durable and strong, pulled back on track by a helping hand and ready to be built anew. And the luckiest of all were those that found something left to laugh about, to remember the durability, passion and support of life and others all at once, eating stupid things and telling stupid stories in the impossible comfort of new friends.
This chapter has been edited a few times, but I still have the original. That in mind, if I'm going to sit here and pat myself on the back for anything in this fic, it's predictions. Dave's reaction to his brother's death? Rose being unable to communicate (1) while grimdark (2)? Ding, ding, and ding, this chapter came out in December.
But I lose a point as well: there was still a lingering reference to Rose's wands having magic, put there before Andrew clarified that all her magic was rooted in the Horrorterrors.