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heuristicallyinclined · 5 years ago

Text

Nobody Knows

Hey, so this is my first public fanfic. I have been a Homestuck fan since the early 2010′s but Hiveswap slammed me back into it hard enough to write. Cringe is dead and it is going to be angsty and indulgent with canon treated as a suggestion. I’ve been spamming some of my favorite writers in the fandom with ideas in their inbox and decided to actually do something about some of them. Most of this comes from some future angst with Mallek I sent @clusband a few weeks ago during sad Mallek hours. Constructive advice welcome.

Get some hurt, comfort, fluff, a lot of angst. A lot of background characters.

Summary: MSPA Reader reflects on their current situation and unhappiness at not being able to see their old friends again. They accept that they past they once knew them in no longer exists, but what about the present?

Chapter 1: Self-reflection and other cool ways to spend the day

Part 1/?

(Word count: 3,085 | Rated T | Past MSPA Reader x Mallek Adalov, MSPA Reader x Mallek Adalov, Past MSPA Reader x Polypa Goezee, Background DaveKat)

AO3 Links: Part One (This) | Part Two | Part Three

Being back in your hive after however long it has been brings up memories. Memories that you had spent so long aching for whenever the discomfort of that void inside of you passed. Focusing on that hollowness for too long always made you uncomfortable, but you sometimes would try to understand why that was. You tried, you really did, to the point of feeling that static so hard that your vision would go white and you couldn’t hear anything over the sound of it in your mind, feeling like you were going to pass out. You think one time you did, but it was hard to tell. Fuck.

You thought that getting them back would help, make you more content, fill it even, make you feel whole again? But you just feel even emptier and like an even more monumentally bigger fuck up. You drink your shitty, expired coffee made in the coffee machine Tagora bought you a long time ago in the mug Skyyla made you, thumbing over the Ladyy design on the handle. You smile at the idea of her making such a comparatively small mug for you. Imagining the struggle of her larger hands trying to make something usable for your much smaller ones. You feel the warmth from your drink and your memory. At least your makeshift home was too out of the way to be ransacked, that or too much of a death risk for anyone other than alien refugees to try to make their way into.

You look around you at all of the trinkets your friends had given you. Remembering how at the time, you felt so rewarded, accepted even. Trolls being, well, trolls, had a hard time opening up to others given how much of a hellscape the whole planet was. So every time you made some progress, you felt like you got the neighborhood cat to approach you without getting too clawed up.

You look over in the corner and notice the plastic bag you got when grabbing some oblong meat products for Dieman at Grub-Mart. You had some extra caegars and figured he might be exhausted after doing whatever drug that was at Ardata’s party. You figured that some sweet meat might help with the hangover. You definitely needed it.

Your teal highlighter had been covered in dust, having not been used since you decided to be a good friend and smuggle some snacks into the bookhive to support your favorite legislacerators-in-training late night, er morning, study session. You stayed as moral support, given you know fuck all about the laws of any given planet and also enjoy having your flesh remain unscorched. You feel like you learned a lot. Probably. You mostly shared meaningful eye contact and words of encouragement.

Drawings from clown children and sketches from Amisia cover your walls. So do ticket stubs from Marvus’ and Chixie’s shows. You felt an odd sense of pride in being one of the most normal people there, extraterrestrial status not withstanding. A set of indigo sweatbands from exercising with Nikhee that you would also use with Stelsa during scaerobics classes are hung on hooks. There was a rom-com with a title too long to read in your lifetime that you watched with Polypa and books borrowed from Galekh that you never returned.

You smile, but it doesn’t reach your eyes. You care about all of your new friends, of course you do! It is just that… you feel more like the universe’s least qualified guidance counselor instead of their friend sometimes. You’re older than them, so it is maybe more like a sibling or a sketchy babysitter kind of relationship. They all have kinda weird, hard lives, even the ones on Earth, so you don’t mind being an interdimensional taxi service, or a postman who delivers kids to other kids, but they tend to relate more with each other than with you. Which makes sense, and you're definitely happy they finally get to be with other people their own age, but seeing them hanging out with each other really makes you long for the people you once had the same kinds of relationships with.

You had Karkat ask about your hoodie before you got your memories back and Sollux mentioned Mallek, but you got a little occupied by drones. It had been a bit since then. After taking Karkat back to his hive after a movie night with Dave, you noticed him eyeing your hoodie again.

“HEY. SO YOU NEVER ACTUALLY TOLD ME.”

Told you what?

“DON’T BE OBTUSE, I GET ENOUGH OF THAT FROM ALL OF THE OTHER BULGELICKERS THAT HAVE TRAMPLED THEIR WAY INTO MY EXISTENCE. DID YOU KNOW SOMEONE NAMED ADALOV?”

Oh, yeah the hoodie. After remembering, you were not looking forward to this conversation. You look off and let him know, yeah, you did. You trying not to make a big deal of it has clearly had the opposite impact on him.

“YOU TELEPORTED YOUR HORNLESS ASS INTO MY HIVE. IS THIS WHAT YOU’RE GOING TO BE COY ABOUT? YOU DUMPED ME ON AN ALIEN PLANET AND HAVE THE INEXPLICABLE HOBBY OF TRYING TO GET YOUR FROND STUMPS IN EVERYONE’S PERSONAL LIFE AND I ACTUALLY WANT TO KNOW ABOUT YOU AND FIGURE OUT HOW YOU OF ALL PEOPLE MANAGED TO GET A HIGHBLOOD MOIRAIL AND-”

Matesprit. He pauses and actually looks taken aback. It is odd to see him momentarily speechless.

“WHAT?” Well that didn’t last.

He was my matesprit.

“AGAIN, WHAT? SO YOU HAVE BEEN HERE BEFORE AND ARE WEARING A SIGN THAT HASN’T BEEN USED IN FUCK KNOWS HOW LONG? BEING MUTATED CULLBAIT NOT KILLED BY DRONES AND YOU EXPECT ME TO BELIEVE YOU FILLED A QUAD?”

Quads.

This information seems to break him. You see a familiar crease being to form between his brows. You then pause, trying not to get offended.

Wait, hold on, he has totally accepted you being able to travel time and space, but you filling a quad is too much?

“YOU ARE STILL PUSHING IT WITH TIME. BUT EXCUSE ME IF THROUGH THE PANBOGGLING TALES OF YOUR FUCKING ESCAPADES THROUGH SPACE THAT THEY DON’T EXACTLY FUCKING TRACK ON BEING CONDUSIVE TO FILLING YOUR QUADRANTS.”

Fair. You sigh and tell him the story before he can take a breath because as much as you care about him, this boy has one setting and it is very loud.

You tell him about taking a walk, getting abducted. Saying you were a robot and then revealing you were not in fact a robot. You hesitate during the underground river part as you walk the line between Mallek’s privacy and sating Karkat’s curiosity. You smile recounting getting pushed in the river, saved, and how he called you cute and started blushing and trying to backpeddle. How the two of you hung out later and how he made an account just to talk to you. Karkat seems to soften by a modicum at this.

You laughed at how he showed up to tattoo a stranger just because you asked. You wistfully go through the memories that led to an eventual confession and how beforehand how your moirail Polypa was coaching you and Galekh provided you with literature on quadrants. A true bro move, especially since you don’t know how a conversation on them would have gone. You guessed it was since you helped him with his pitch quad and the tattoo. Maybe he felt like there was already something going on when we were both at his hive in matching hoodies, oh yeah he was the guy who got tattooed. His kismesis was your law partner. Karkat’s brow twitched, incredulous. Yeah you don’t know how Gorgor managed that either. Maybe having an alien alive and working for him on Alternia added to his court cred. You also think that that wasn’t the only part Karkat took issue with, but by some miracle, he lets you keep talking.

You kept expecting him to cut you off but he seemed somewhat enraptured by the tales of your romantic antics, despite his efforts to seem more interested in the you part, you were getting a feeling he was more interested in alien dynamics. You knew he was interested in romcoms so maybe this was just some new material for him, especially since quads were a new thing for you and maybe he has strong thoughts regarding the differences in alien ro-

Oh.

Oh you see why now.

Karkat seemed to pick up on the shift in your storytelling going from your personal life to human romantic customs.

“WHAT THE FUCK IS THAT LOOK FOR?”

What look? There are no looks occurring.

“TRY THAT SHIT ON A MORON WHO JUST HATCHED. THEY MIGHT JUST BE MORE INCLINED TO GLEEFULLY SHOVEL THAT EXCUSE DOWN THEIR CHUTES.” He crossed his arms and squints at you. You knew how sharp his claws were from experience, not that you thought he was going to hurt you. There was just something very endearing about him trying to intimidate you while not subtly trying to glean more information about humans without seeming interested in humans. Or a human. Yeah, this is totally about Dave. You just have to find a way to gracefully skedaddle around that little detail.

I just had a bit of learning curve when dating an alien. So it is totally cool if you don’t know much about human stuff. I know quads can b-

“AND WHY DO YOU THINK I WOULD WANT TO KNOW THAT?” He says this clearly knowing what he thinks you think. You think it would be better if he didn’t think you thinked that, considering how the tips of his ears are turning red. You think.

You have romcom stuff everywhere and seem to really like them? Learning about human stuff might make it easier for you watch human romcoms and see how good or bad they are based on social norms. Kinda like romantic xenoanthropology.

Fucking nailed it. He huffs and rolls his eyes. Or at least enough that your answer plus the sheer amount of not fucking wanting to talk about that got you onto romcoms in general. He seemed to echo Polypa’s taste and you smiled at how animated he was becoming. A few of what you watched were now classics. Others that you didn’t like are prime pitch fodder. It had gotten late (early?) and that led you back to your hive. Just sitting alone and thinking. God you hate self-reflection.

You think of your time with Aradia. How she said you were a little broken. How she said you wouldn’t remember not being able to get to your friends again and being held by whatever the fuck that was. But you did remember, as much as you wish you didn’t. Guess you were more broken than she thought. It would be easier to just think you couldn’t get back because you didn’t try hard enough. But you did, you really did, and no matter what you do you just can’t. You are a shitty meta traveler and an even shittier friend. You thought about trying again but you get the feeling that you can’t access something that longer exists. You’d probably just get stuck in some corner of the universe and be alone all over again until you suffocate.

Can you even really die or be killed in anyway that matters anymore? At least in a way that doesn’t bring up the dull pang of a “bad end” followed by getting slammed dunked back in the past, before your fuck up, by an alarmingly cheerful time goddess?

Yeah, you didn’t think so. That would just add to the conga line of your dead selves letting you know how much of a dumbass you are.

But those people, those times. They don’t exist anymore. You keep thinking back to the way things were and who they were and how you can’t travel to those points anymore. All you have is the relative now and the people who exist now. Mostly.

You finish your terrible, bitter coffee, the cup no longer keeping your hands warm. You deserve this. In some shitty cosmic way, maybe you deserve this for not being better as a friend or partner. You can’t go back to the way things were to only to the people of now. And who even know who or what that even is.

Wait.

Maybe you couldn’t go back to the people they used to be because those were no longer who they were now. That thought sends a pang of hurt through you, imagining what little hope they had crushed. God dammit. But you have to try. Otherwise it is just you babysitting some 13 year olds who are trying to discover themselves and work through their issues with some interdimensional asshole looking over their shoulders. That asshole hopefully just being you.

You put your mug down and stand, closing your eyes, you try to repeat what you did with Aradia again, the memory of them doesn’t work. You know that. But with your new friends, it hasn’t completely been the memory? Maybe more accurate to say it’s them, some part memory sure, but more the idea of the present them, what they look like, who they are. You open your eyes and glance down at the sign on your hood. A sign you have mindlessly traced so many times. A sign that when you forgot it, gave you a dull sense of grief, now that you do remember though, it has sharpened and you are reminded of it whenever you are alone for too long or even slow down. Like the rest of you from other timelines will catch up to you in the current one and you get to experience your failures all over again.

You hold yourself tightly to ground yourself. Self-flagellation won’t get you anywhere, you’ve tried, you know this. So again, you close your eyes. You focus on your hood, the sign on it, the person it belonged to. The Mallek he was when he gave it to you vs. the Mallek he knew he didn’t want to be. The one he would have to be to survive. Your throat tightened at the thought of not being able to find him because he couldn’t do it and what if they got him an-

You slap yourself to stop catastrophizing.

Focus!

Adult trolls get bigger and their horns and claws grow with them. Their skin hardens and darkens as it does. You can’t tell if them molting was a joke someone told you or if they were serious so you don’t think about that part. Their blood color shows more through their eyes as they age. They wear black with their sign incorporated on it when they get spaced. You think back to the cerulean pirate you saw with Konyyl. Something like that. Okay you were getting somewhere. You could tell by how afraid you were to get there. You begin to get a headache, like your mind is a rubber band that you are trying to stretch to fit around something it shouldn’t.

Mallek said he would be a soldier or a spy and would be stuck ordering around lowbloods. No longer able to use his hacker skills how he wanted to. You imagine him, larger, older, more tired. Probably has more piercings and tattoos. You smile a little, despite yourself and the tension you feel continuing to build. He would likely play along, do what he had to do to do what he wanted to do. But at that point what would that even be? You imagine he would never truly stop messing with the system or hacking. His natural curiosity wouldn’t let him so he would be trying�� something quietly on the side. He was sympathetic but you didn’t know how deep he would or if he would go down the rebel route, maybe just try to deal with his own corner of the universe.

Going along with what is expected seems to be the easiest way to keep under the radar. He has always been partial to not getting culled. Even when it was just the two of you, you knew it was a conscious effort to let his guard down around you, often requiring a change of scenery with you jokingly asking about if you would be needing goggles. Jokes often broke the tension of being afraid to be known with him.

Despite his projected cool, you knew he was an anxious person and preferred to be alone. You could see that being warped to fit the expectations of being a cerulean. You remember from conversations you had early in the morning, with ordeals approaching, you had some rare moments of verbalized vulnerability, of him exasperatedly going over what ceruleans are supposed to be with the unspoken and mutual understanding of what he was actually like. The coolness that he projected could morph into coldness, him wrapping it around himself tighter than any armor the empire would give him. Put some distance between himself and his team. You couldn’t see him being casually cruel, but definitely keeping people away through attitude and fear of his caste. The band tightens. So does your throat.

He hates having people over him and likely would at that start. Probably would be trying to do well so that he could use his performance and caste to be given his own ship and team so he could get some breathing room away from his superiors. Just be another team that does their job without question or issue in order to keep the space around himself. You realize that at some point during this, you started hyperventilating. You consider doing the breathing exercises Konyyl taught you, but at this point, you were tired of trying to be okay about it. You wanted to let it out in some way or another. You wanted to feel.

You thought of you, your disappearance. How that would have impacted him probably trying to find you, keeping himself up more than usual, blaming himself and then being taken off world. The not knowing would upset him the most you think. Would he even want to see you? What if he mattered to you way more than you mattered to him and you just showing up makes things worse? Another pang of guilt hits you for making things harder for another person again and you taste metal. You grit your teeth and refocus. The whole picture might never actually be known to you, but this is likely as close as it gets. You see this in your minds’ eye, the assumed idea of a person who may or may not exist, based off of who they used to be. Was this accurate, would this even do anything? Your hands clench around the hem of your hood and you drop to your knees and your leggings scrape the wood on the floor of your hive, eyes still screwed shut with tears pricking at the corners, breathing quick and heavy, jaw locked.

You try again.

The bands snaps.

And your head hits a cold, metal floor.

#homestuck #hiveswap #friendsim #mspa reader #mallek adalov #hs mallek #mallek x reader #my writing

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