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chronicangel · 6 days ago

Text

Breaking the Rules

Link to this fic on AO3. Words: 2251 Date posted: May 12, 2025 Summary:

When Aradia dies, she is visited by the Handmaid of Death.

In troll mythology, Death is a being. They say he is an imposing figure with a skull for a head, whose horns grew brittle and cracked away millennia ago, leaving his face looking strangely alien. They say he takes the eyes of the wicked when they die, and that they rattle around inside his skull so his eyes shift between every color in the hemospectrum, making his gaze paralyzing to all who look upon him. They say it is impossible to outrun him, and that he is the only thing the Empress herself is afraid of.

But Death only comes after those who run. To those who accept their fate, he sends his Handmaid.

Your name is Aradia Megido, and you are not running.

You always suspected that you would die young. The voices of the dead have been whispering in your ears as long as you can remember, and that doesn’t leave one with much optimism about their longevity. You never really let it get to you, though. You never understood why people who knew they were going to die soon chose to be miserable about it. If you were going to have a short life, then you were going to pack it as full as you could and go out with twice as many fond memories as even the Empress herself!

That’s what you used to think, anyway.

Buried under the rubble as you are, you’re having a hard time remembering much of anything. Or at least, you can’t call your memories fond. You can’t feel much of anything about them. In objective terms, you know that you had fun FLARPing with Tavros, Terezi, and Vriska. You know that you loved talking to Sollux. You know that exploring ruins made you feel like Troll Indiana Jones, and you know that watching those movies made you think archaeology seemed like the coolest thing in the world.

But those feelings feel so far away now. So small. So unimportant. Where you are, with the weight of your entire hive pressing down on your fragile young body, you’re not sure you have space for any emotions.

There’s a shift in the rubble, a noise like what gravel shifting under feet must sound like to marchbugs. And then there is light. And then there is her.

The two of you regard each other for a long moment without saying anything. The first thing you notice is that her horns are in the same spiraling shape as yours, although they’re much longer. The horns of an adult. She doesn’t have the eyes of an adult, though. Her eyes flash in technicolor, a warning of danger if you’ve ever seen one.

She doesn’t regard you with any of the disgust you would expect a higher being to look upon a young, dying troll with. She doesn’t regard you with any fondness, either. Actually, you think that she regards you with much of the same emotional numbness you’re currently feeling yourself.

“Does this mean I’m dead?” you hear yourself ask. It seems like such a silly question. How could you have survived?

“Yes,” she answers anyway. The tongue she speaks in is not Alternian, but you understand it perfectly anyway.

“Am I going to the moon?” you ask.

When Death comes to collect you, he tears the eyes from your skull, rips the meat from your bones, and leaves the skeleton buried somewhere in the earth. Old tradition dictates that burning a troll soon after they die may spare them this fate, but you always thought burial was so much lovelier.

When the Handmaid comes to collect you, she shepherds all of the dead souls of a night to the green moon like woolbeasts, where they all become a part of the Final Herd. There are some trolls who believe that this herd of the dead will serve some larger purpose—that they will have some role in the end of the world.

That’s how the stories go, anyway.

You never really believed in those stories. With the voices of the dead echoing in your think pan your whole life, it was hard to think of them as grazing woolbeasts living a peaceful afterlife on the green moon.

But wouldn’t it be nice?

The Handmaid regards you with a tilt of the head, but her facial expression doesn’t change, or at least it doesn’t change in a way that you can read. “No. You aren’t done here yet.”

You find that you are not especially fazed by this announcement, but you stare at her anyway. “Oh,” you eventually say, because you should probably say something. “Then, could you help me up?” you add. It seems inappropriate to keep lying here if you have work to do.

There’s an amused twist to her lips, and then she raises two wands in front of her, and you feel yourself being lifted off of the ground. Strangely, it does not hurt. You know your bones should all be broken from the weight of the collapse, but you don’t feel anything. You wonder if she’s using some power to keep you from feeling any pain, but you don’t understand why she would offer you that sort of kindness.

Once you’re upright, you feel her magic release its grasp on you, and then you are hovering several feet above the ground.

“Oh. Well now I feel quite silly,” you say. You do not feel silly. You do not feel anything. You think you must look quite silly, though.

You look around. Your hive is in ruins. Under the rubble, you can just see your lusus’ hooves sticking out from under the stones. You think this should probably hurt to see, but it doesn’t. You move on, and your gaze settles on another figure sprawled out on the ground. When you look more closely, you can see that this figure’s chest is rising and falling.

“You’re not here for him, are you?” you ask, and you think you really do feel a flicker of an emotion at that, though one so small and so fleeting that you can’t identify what it was. Sollux is not laid out anywhere near the rubble. You don’t think he should have to die.

“No,” the Handmaid confirms, and you nod absently. Of course not. She comes to your side, and you look upon Sollux together. “He reminds me of someone very important,” she says, though there isn’t any hint of emotion in her voice.

“He was very important to me,” you say. You do not say is, because you’re not sure anything is very important to you anymore. If anything was going to be, it would be Sollux, and as you look at him, you can only feel empty.

The Handmaid hums. “He will be again, one day,” she says, and you nod again. For reasons you cannot name, this makes sense to you. “Do you need to see the Doctor?”

You regard her curiously. You don’t know who the Doctor is. He is not a figure in any mythology you’re familiar with. You look down at yourself, though, and even without her assistance, you’re not in any pain. “No. I think I’m alright.”

“Alright,” she agrees. There is a moment of silence between the two of you, one which you think might be awkward if it were any two other trolls. Then she looks at you and says, “You have a very important purpose.”

“I know.”

“You will need to stay dead for a while longer.”

“Okay.” Another moment of silence. When you look back at Sollux, you can’t help yourself. “Will my friends know? That I’m not really dead?”

“You are dead.”

“I see.”

“You must stay in contact with them.”

You stare at her, turning this over in your pan. You will be here, and you will be dead. You have a greater purpose. You must stay in contact with your friends. “Does this have something to do with the ruins I discovered recently?”

“Yes.”

“Are you the one who sent me there?”

“Yes.”

You narrow your eyes, as though this will do anything to clarify the answers she’s giving you. It’s not really as though she’s hiding anything from you. She has readily answered every question you’ve asked. She’s just been somewhat… vague. You assume there’s a greater purpose for this, so you ask, “Will I ever see you again?”

She pauses at that, like she really has to think about it. You watch her head tilt in one direction, and then the other. Finally, she says, “Yes, and no. There will be versions of me. They won’t be very helpful to you.”

“Does that mean you’ll be helpful to me?”

“No,” she answers, not quite sounding sorry about it. “I am his handmaid. I can live only so long as I serve him. My job has been to prepare your world for his arrival. To prepare you for his arrival.”

You don’t ask who he is, and you’re not sure she could tell you even if she wanted to. You’re quite sure it’s not Death, at least not as you understand him. “How did you end up in this position? Is it true that you’re a demoness?”

“No.” You think she might actually sound a little sad at that, but you can’t tell for sure. “I was a girl like you once. In a manner of speaking, I am a girl like you right now.” You give her a sideways look, but based on the amused twist of her lips again, you don’t think she’s going to explain. Her expression turns bitter a moment later. “I was raised by the Doctor to serve him. Very soon, my service will be done, and I will die.”

“Oh,” you say, frowning even though you don’t feel sad. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be,” she says, shrugging her shoulders. It’s such a casual gesture that it almost makes you laugh to see it from the Handmaid of Death herself. “I have spent more than six hundred sweeps making sure everything aligned exactly as it should. I’m grateful that my service will finally end. If she’s stupid enough to take the offer, then she can have my life.”

Your eyes flit over her face, trying to read every detail you can from it. After a moment, you say, “You’re not supposed to be here, are you?”

She grins at you now, and there’s something about it that looks so youthful. Mischievous, you think. Her eyes and nose crinkle with the expression, and you find yourself smiling back, but it’s tiny in comparison.

“I am not supposed to be here,” she confirms.

“Why did you come?” you ask. “Why, after more than six hundred sweeps, would you break the rules for me?”

She considers this for another moment, but her grin doesn’t get any smaller. Finally, she says, “We’re Megidos. We’re good at breaking the rules.”

You think that this revelation should probably affect you more. That you share a surname with the Handmaid of Death certainly has implications. You find that you’re not really bothered or even all that surprised. It seems as good a reason as any that the dead would speak to you. “What did you come to tell me?” you ask instead.

Her face settles back into something a little colder and less gleeful. She doesn’t look displeased with you. It’s more like she’s passively displeased with existence, and the grin the two of you shared was only a brief intermission. “I didn’t really come to tell you anything,” she says. “I guess I just wanted to see you.”

You blink. Somehow, this surprises you more than the revelation that you were related did. “Why would you want to see me?”

“To make sure that you could beat him,” she answers, and you see some emotion flicker behind those strange eyes. Then she says, “I should be going soon.”

“Okay,” you say. You hesitate for a moment, feeling the most you have all night (and still not really sure what it is you’re feeling). You get the same sense of hesitation from her, although you’re not sure how. Nothing about her body language changes. Finally, you spit out, “Tell me something about yourself. Anything you want.”

She blinks a few times, and she does that head-tilting thing again. It’s such a strange way to emote, you think. “When I died, I was supposed to forget. And I did, for a while. But as he told me about the history of your world, the one he wrote, I started to find holes. Things that weren’t how I remembered them. And that was how I knew I needed to find you.”

“Why me?”

“They call me the Handmaid of Death,” she says, and you’re not sure whether the fond smile she’s wearing now is for the title or something else. “But you are the Maid of Time. The only thing that can beat Death is more Time, isn’t it? And it is very important to me that you and your friends beat him.”

You think that there must be at least a dozen hidden meanings behind each of her words. You have a thousand questions. You know that you don’t have the time to ask them, and you can’t feel enough to know which are the most important to you. Finally, knowing that you should say something to release her from your burden, you say, “We will.”

She grins. “I know.” And then she is gone.

#Darla writes #Homestuck #Aradia Megido #The Handmaid #POV Second Person #Alien Mythology #Canon Compliant #Canonical Character Death

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purple-stuck · 4 years ago

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I really adore your writing! Can I PLEASE request a purple Sollux drabble? Maybe interacting with gamzee?

hey, gz. wanna hang out?

Gamzee stared down at his phone, squinting his eyes at the purple text. Somewhere in his addled think pan he thought it was strange. Sollux hardly hung out with anyone in person. He was always a shut in, especially for Purple blood standards. Only clown who'd attended less church was probably Gamzee himself and that was only because Sollux sometimes made video calls. But, ever sense Aradia... it was a miracle he still answered texts.

Still, Gamzee wasn't gonna say no to his blood brother's company. Maybe Feferi helped him cope. Maybe he went pale for Karkat, those two had always been close. Hardly mattered.

WeLl, ShIt. SuRe MoThErFuCkEr. CaN't SaY nO tO a NiCe AnD pRoPeR hAnGiNg SeSsIoN. wAnT mE tO sWiNg By YoUr PlAcE, oR wHaT?

nah. ii'm at the door. ii wa2 iin the area and fiigured ii'd a2k.

Right on cue, there was indeed a knock at Gamzee's front door. Huh. Sollux must've been right at the door when he texted. Made sense. If Karkat was any indication, Sollux had a habit of just barging into a brother's hive like he lived there and playing all their video games. Probably remembered at the last second that he and Gamzee weren't that close.

When Gamzee open the front door, he found himself staring at Captor's chest. Even hunched over as he was, Sollux was still the tallest troll Gamzee knew. The boy managed to be both lankier and buffer than Gamzee somehow. Granted, that's not hard. It'd be a stretch to call any version of Sollux Captor buff, but any purple blood with a proper lusus was going to be thicker than Gamzee.

Gamzee stopped that thought dead before it sunk in any deeper.

"At least I know I'm not interrupting anything." Sollux said dryly. "That's not the hair of someone who had plans for the evening."

Gamzee snorted, appreciating that the ribbing was good natured. Sollux didn't regard him with the same contempt, say, Equius did, so it was hard to take anything he said as an actual insult. Same deal with Karkat, really. "So, what brings you around to my hive? Feferi finally convince you to go outside?"

Sollux's lips twitched into a smirk before he jutted his thumb behind him. "Nah. I'm just picking up an old hobby."

Gamzee's eyes trailed to the cart Sollux had parked at the bottom of the steps, a chill going down his spine at the sight of faintly blue blood trailing down it's side. "Oh..."

Gamzee's eyes twitched back to Sollux, who just sighed. "I'm on my second kill, so don't worry. I don't kill in odd numbers. Plus, I've seen you making diamond eyes at Karkat and I'm not that much of a dick."

Gamzee let go off a breath he hadn't known he'd been holding. "Well, it's good to know I won't be adding to Aradia's fucking corpse collection-"

Sollux stiffened and Gamzee stopped dead. Shit. Fuck. He should know better. What was he doing bring up Aradia, fuck-

"It's... fine." Sollux sighed, bringing his hand to his temple as he steadied himself. "I'm fine. It's fine. She would've found it funny, anyways." Sollux forced a smile onto his face. "Besides, you're not wrong. She'd love to throw corpse parties for these motherfuckers in whatever rung of the Dark Carnival she wound up in."

Gamzee laughed politely and stepped aside to let Sollux in before the conversation got any more uncomfortable. Sollux plopped onto the couch, quickly propping his legs up on the table. "You got any video games? I somehow doubt you're much of a shooter fan."

Gamzee grunted, sliding him a faygo as he took his seat. "Nah. Tav got me into fiduspawn. You ever play that?"

Sollux snorted. "Funny story about that, actually. EQ got me into it. I was talking shit about it around him and he protested that NP was into it."

"Did he? Shit, man, good for him. He always kinda... rolls over around me. Motherfucker's always trying to please me."

"Well, yeah. It's NP we're talking about here. You'd complain is I started talking shit about Tavros."

Gamzee blinked. That was... oddly pointed coming from Sollux. Sure, every word sounded like a sarcastic insult when you put it in his mouth, but it sounded like he was trying to make a point. That suddenly serious stare wasn't helping, and it made Gamzee cough uncomfortably.

"Uh, yeah, I would." His eyes flickered towards the door. Towards the cart. "...Why?"

"You got any feelings for him?"

Now this was starting to get wildly out of character. Sollux was the last person to stick his nose into anyone's love life, unless it was to annoy Eridan somehow. Hell, people just being sappy around him annoyed him, which made this even more bizarre.

"Yeah, well, Tav, said he wasn't interested."

"He's not?"

"Look, bro, I appreciate it, but we don't need an auspistice. You can't mediate what ain't there."

"But you do feel something for him. You care about him, pitch, red, I don't care how." Sollux was almost looming over him now, even without standing up. Gamzee was beginning to wonder whether he should go for his clubs when Sollux sighed.

"Right, right. That.... probably doesn't make any sense to you. I'm sorry." He stood up, face not just sour like usual, but outright grim. "Let me show you what I'm talking about."

Sollux made his way to the door wheeled his cart inside, a chill went down Gamzee's spine.

"...Bro. Did you?"

"No. Gog no. Fucking Messiahs above, hell no! I cull trolls but I'm not a sick fuck who parades their corpses around in front of their friends."

Sollux looked down at the cart, at the body hidden beneath the crumpled sheet. He seemed far, far away for a moment, like his soul had been taken by the Messiahs themselves and his body was an empty shell they left behind.

"You... know Aradia's dead, right?"

Gamzee relaxed, more confused and sad now than afraid. "Yeah."

Sollux looked at him. "Do you know how she died?"

Sollux didn't need an answer and he didn't wait for one. The purple voids of his eyes showed behind his matching glasses. "It started... when Vriska abducted me."

"I was out doing my regular, bi-wipely rounds. Looking for two bodies for Aradia to preserve in a 'corpse party'. Or, more accurately, looking to make two bodies for her to preserve."

"I'd spotted a couple of burgundies, so I went to make my move. I'd barely seen Vriska's face by the time the bag was over my head and by then the needles were in my neck. My guess is she'd paid some FLARPers to help her. I know damn well she couldn't handle me alone."

"When I woke up, I was in Vriska's hive. She looked so... fucking smug when she had me all chained up. She explained what Aradia did to her. Talked about how she'd sent some ghosts her way... and she wanted to get even."

"So Vriska was going to have me kill Aradia."

"That's when the torture began. It was pretty amateurish, but that's all it needed to be. She just needed to distract me, make a crack for her to slip into... one opening was all she needed to grab my mind."

Sollux was staring down at nothing by the time he finished, bending the metal handles of his cart with his grip.

"I still remember the walk to Aradia's hive." He said, choking back something. "I could hear her scream in my mind before she even saw me."

Gamzee's hand landed on his shoulder, snapping Sollux back to reality. Sollux pushed the smaller clown back before clearing his throat. "So, the next time I left my hive, I decided to pay Serket a visit."

Sollux threw the tarp off to reveal Vriska's mangled body. Or, what was of it.

Gamzee took at a step back. The amount of patchwork Sollux had to do to get Vriska's upper torso back in one piece would be impressive if it didn't imply how grizzly the scene must've been before he started. Tellingly, Sollux didn't even try to put Vriska's legs back together. He just dumped the soupified slop into a box and put it on the bottom shelf of his cart.

"Jegus..."

"Yeah, I got carried away."

Gamzee backed up and fell onto the couch, mostly just to get away from the smell. Sollux pulled his two swords out of Vriska's head, wiping them clean in one quick stroke.

"So... why are you telling me this?" Gamzee asked.

Sollux seemed to think for a moment, staring at his reflection in the blades. "To try to understand." He waved his blades vaguely over Vriska's... "body" for lack of a better word. "Most of this was unnecessary. She died quickly but... it wasn't satisfying."

Sollux looked at Gamzee meaningfully. "I figured you could tell me why."

Gamzee's eyes widened. "Shit, man, you mean because..."

"Of Tavros. Yeah. Vriska killed him. The army won't take someone who can't walk and he has no where else to go. That's assuming someone like, well, me, doesn't just pick him up off the streets. He's living on borrowed time on a planet like this, and that's all her fault."

Sollux looked at Gamzee meaningfully. "So... is this satisfying to you?"

Gamzee sunk into the couch, staring up at the ceiling. "Fuck, man. You can't do this to a motherfucker. This is a lot to drop on me all at once." He looked at the corpse, trying not to curl his nose at the sight. "...I mean... no. Fuck, I'd hesitate to say anyone even deserves that, but mostly it just makes me feel... kinda sick."

Sollux slumped down. "I don't get it. This should be satisfying. We should be glad that she's dead, but we're not."

Again, Gamzee was there, suddenly resting a hand on Sollux's shoulder. "...Look, man. I'm sorry I'm not any help with this. Karbro is so much better at this shit than me, but..."

"...I guess it's not really her death that we're looking for. We're looking for a way to make it so all the problems she caused never happened. And... that's not gonna happen. I've accepted that Tav's not gonna get his legs back... and I think he's accepted that too. And, Aradia, wherever she might be now up in that Dark Carnival, knows that she's not coming back either. So... shit, maybe we should just... keep moving?"

Sollux stared at him blankly, before that default grouchy snarl crept back onto his face. "That's a really shitty way to end that spiel, you know that?"

Gamzee shrugged, that some color had bled back into Sollux's face. "Well, shit. I'm no Karkat and you know it."

"Yeah, you're not. I'd still be huddled up inside without that grouchy asshole."

Sollux sighed. Not tiredly, but like a weight had been lifted somewhat. With all that off his chest, Sollux tilted his head up. He nonchalantly lined up his swords and slid them down his throat, swallowing up his blades until only the hilts remained to dangled beneath his uvula. Gamzee squinted at him curiously.

"....What?"

"Shit, man, I have no idea how you manage to talk like that."

Sollux smirked, grabbing his faygo off the table and chugging it in two swigs. At this point, he was just showing off. "Very, very carefully. I'll teach you sometime."

Sollux threw the tarp back onto his cart and began peddling it out the door. "I'd better get going, the sun will rise soon." Gamzee waved him off as he opened the door, pausing just before he closed. "Oh, by the way. You owe me a game night. This one derailed."

Gamzee just nodded as Captor slammed the door, knowing that was Sollux-ese for "let's hang out sometime".

#bloodswaps #drabble #sollux captor #gamzee makara #aradia megido #vriska serket #tavros nitram #purple sollux

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odditycollector · 4 years ago

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7, 14, 21, and KarSol?

7. Florist AU 14. Bodyguard AU 21. Dystopian AU After the humans win sgrub, the game dumps the troll players back onto a close-enough clone of the Alternia they remember. Sollux, faced with the utter extinction of his servers (thanks to his own (in)actions), quits apiculture networking and takes up gardening. It's not even that much of a stretch, knowing his proclivities. Jade Harley gave him some seeds for her Bullshit nonsense flowers, and those things are some serious fucking bullshit nonsense. They are only even halfway, like, REAL. I mean, they exist, obviously. You can grow them and everything. But they also seem to be largely a part of the abstracted level of the universe that allows captchaloguing to be a thing. Anyway, that abstraction level can be exploited by some well-understood process not unlike code, obviously. (See: captchaloguing.) So between that fact and the documented Alternian expertise at biological computing, Sollux can make Bullshit nonsense flowers to do whatever specific bullshit nonsense he would like. Get you stoned? Sure. Level out your personal emotional problems? He's working on it. Temporarily mask your true blood colour? Seems like the least he can do for a friend. Trans-multiversal communication? Tricky, but no theoretical reason why not. Prognosticating the future in their patterns? Once you've seen how a universe works from the outside it's fairly straightforward really. And without dwelling on the details... Once word gets out about his new project, Sollux's wares are highly in demand. It's annoying. He personally died at least 2.5 times and it still wasn't enough to get people to leave him alone. Karkat becomes his bodyguard by accident. He's visiting, playing videogames in Sollux's hive while Sollux is off debugging his plants, and when some neighbour knocks on Sollux's hive door uninvited, Karkat yells at them until they go away. It happens several times during the couple days he's over, and it's not that having Karkat on yelling duty makes things QUIETER than giving the randos flowers so that they leave faster, but Sollux minds it less. Once you learn to ignore him, there's a cadence to his screaming that is comforting, almost poetic. (Especially if Sollux has been sampling his wares.) On the last day before Karkat was planning to leave, their movie watching session becomes a makeout session. And then THAT is interrupted by someone banging insistently on Sollux's hive door and OOOOH, that is IT. Karkat stomps over in PRIME yelling mood, throws open the door, and is immediately punched in the face by a hulking, psychically endowed troll with 2 hangers on for backup. She has heard there's been some noisy guy causing trouble at the free flowers place. Karkat kicks the crap out of all of them. He'd rather talk than fight (as he keeps yelling at them) but he CAN. He has leveled the fuck up. No naturally hatched troll kid stands a chance these days. And they interrupted something important here! That's right! They had BETTER run away and not come back without a fucking appointment! After the interlopers are chased off, Karkat asked Sollux if he was going to help or what. Or what, definitely. (Said leeringly:) He was enjoying the show.

#karkat vantas #sollux captor #ramble

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nightlight-stardust-and-rain · 5 years ago

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ooooh! what supernatural creatures are the trolls? and the kids too!

Well the trolls are interesting! Because I don't know! I'm kinda thinking about it right now!

Feferi is SO a mermaid. But like squid mermaid (with her lusus and all) and like, the creepy kind? With pointy teeth and glowing eyes? She can make herself look harmless - and she usually does, because she thinks her true form is ugly. She forgot that her friends would accept her no matter what (they accept Vriska, after all) but if she feels better with her pretty form, well. She does what she wants after all.

Eridan may be a merman but hmmm he seems to not like the ocean that much so I don't know ? I think he could be a wizard (bc come on he deserves magic) so he could like still breathe underwater (with a spell) and visit Feferi ? And do magic !! He would do dramatic spells with his cape flowing or something! The most extra wizard! I think it suits him.

Equius is TOTALLY a centaur. No other way (I mean I thought about a giant or a cyclop. It would suit him I think. But centaur). And also centaurs have bows right? It suits him. I don't know what to say bc it's really simple.

Vriska would totally be those sort of spider centaur ! Like, no legs but a spider body you know? She could make webs! Nice. Also she wold be terrifying :D I don't know for the mind control but maybe it's mmmmh a blessing from a god? Like she did a bet with a god and the god lost? The god didn't like it at all but gave her the power of mind control like promised? (but the god was so pissed off that he make sure that Vriska lost her arm? Gods don't like to lose after all :/)

Terezi could be a dragon? That's way too simple but also super cool? Or maybe... She could be Justice as in literal justice? A concept incarnated ? Oh this one is good. People think she's a god of justice but no ! She's Justice itself ! She's fair and merciless ! Always find the culprit. I guess she was blind from the start because blind justice? I like it! The dragon thing was far too easy. She has a dragon though ! Pyralspite helps her to travel and hunt down criminals ! Good.

Kanaya is like Terezi, too easy ! A vampire! But also it feels like the easy way! Like, what would she have been if she wasn't a vampire in canon ? Honestly I think she would have been a fairy. The wings! The niceness! The sewing? The "oh I'm so dead" if you piss them off! So yeah she is a fairy. In a old Fae sense ? Like she can't lie and she has to keep her promises and things like that? It's good. Also tell me that a fairy using a chainsaw isn't awesome.

Nepeta is a lion shapeshifter? Also simple but I think she would really like that. Like she can transform only partially, hence the ears and the claws ? I think she would rarely fully transform bc human form is much more practical. Also I said lion not lioness bc come on, the mane.

Karkat is so hard !! I was thinking about Banshee Karkat ! Or angel ! Banshee would fit ! They shout very loudly and they cry and they have like a thing with death! It's very good! But angel Karkat is good too! The wings! The holy thing "uh yeah this one isn't exactly holy but he's still nice". Karkat being a creature of Death or a creature of God ! He doesn't fit the stereotyps! As a Banshee he would be way too... Alive ! He would not really be into the whole "cry over dead people I don't know" thing ! He would shout constantly but not because someone is dead! Only because He Is Like That ! But as an angel he would also be strange ! He swears constantly ! He's angry ! He curses at people! He can be a total asshole ! Not an arrogant prick like some angels seems to be ! Not really good at fighting, despite the angels being the soldiers of God (got this one from spn)! Oh! New idea ! Karkat being the personification of the sin of Wrath! Like Terezi, a concept incarnated! That would explain why he is so angry all the time! Hmmm so many ideas.

Sollux would be a Naga I think? That's a good idea. But i like the idea of a hive mind? Like hmmm he's made of dozens of bees? Each one of them being him? All the bees can fusion into one body = Sollux? Mmmh good.

Tavros I was like minotaur? Then noooo way he is. I think he would be a fairy like Kanaya! But not a dangerous one like her! Like, hmm, not a fairy as we see them in the old fae tales (like Kanaya) but more like a modern fairy ? He still has to keep his deals but he doesn't works like Kanaya? Like he can lie and he can't do nothing with people's names and all?

Aradia is either a psychopomp or a ghost or Death herself. Orrr maybe all of this? She's a psychopomp apprentice of Death (the Handmaid) and when she dies she will be a ghost for a long time (bc her apprenticeship isn't finished??) and THEN she will be Death. Nice.

#homestuck #homestuck headcanons #homestuck au #Birriabirria #Dripping stardust

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riverboundao3ff · 5 years ago

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Riverbound, Chapter 1

Your name is MSPA READER, and you are currently vibing outside of the known multiverse.

Well, you don’t really use that name anymore, on account of it not actually being a name. Names sound something like Emily, or Muhammad, or Patrick, or Shamita, or a million other put-together syllables and sounds.

Names are something personal. A title is anything but.

You do have a new title, though, one you like much better.

The Guardian.

Because that’s what you became when you yoinked the timeline away from the control of Ultimate Dirk and that Director lady, whoever she was. You looked Canon-With-A-Capital-C in its ugly face, spit on it, and then bent over to wipe your ass with the fabric of reality itself. Out of desperation, love, and most importantly sheer spite, you took it upon yourself to defy fate so that there is at least one timeline where everybody gets to live happy lives. This was victory at its finest. This is what it felt like to finally get everything you wanted. Your friends? Safe. Multiverse? Secure. Hotel? Trivago.

In the vast and rich history of pro-gamer moves, you believe you might have made the most powerful move of all.

After using the Green Sun- no, sorry, the Green Sun to make your own timeline, you did what any other person would do and took a big fuckin’ snooze, curling up around your universe like a mama cat protecting her kittens. You earned it.

And, if you were being completely honest with yourself, that’s how you would have spent the rest of time.

It’s not like you didn’t want to live. No, living was good. It’s just… you were so damn tired. You’re tired of always running from place to place, person to person, era to era. You’re tired of being injured, scared, and alone no matter how many friends you made. All the gods of the Furthest Rings know you’d gone through more in like a year than most people go through during their entire lives. Couldn’t a bitch just enjoy eternity in the void?

Apparently not.

The dreams began innocently enough. Playing video games with Dave, John, and Karkat. Exploring Jade’s island with Jake and Bec. Baking with Jane. Kanaya teaching you and Sollux how to sew. FLARP-ing with Vriska.

Laying side-by-side with Roxy as you two watched the sun rise. Role-playing with Nepeta. Movie night with Eridan. Getting high off your ass with Gamzee and scaring the shit out of some teal visiting their kismesis a few hives away. Discussing politics with Feferi.

Escaping that hellhouse the Soleil twins called their home. Watching those eerie lights in the corpsefield beside Fozzer. You and Remele beating a purpleblood to death.

You barely realize how nightmares had invaded your mind until you woke up with Karako’s yowls of terror in your ears. You didn’t have ears anymore, though, or a physical form, so it just sounded like your favorite clown son was screaming all around you in the abyss.

Okay. This was fine. This was fine, you kept telling yourself. After everything that’s happened to you, you were bound to develop PTSD at some point. That was completely natural.

Except this wasn’t just PTSD. This was something else entirely, because even when you were awake you saw the faces of your oldest friends burning in your mind’s eye. Something churned in your gut, ancient and primal. It was a feeling you knew well, and was usually accompanied by you launching yourself into whatever stupid shit you found next. The longer you tried to ignore it, the stronger it became, until you were permanently wrapped up around yourself like the most pathetic ball of Guardian that had to have ever existed.

You knew long before you actually put words to what was going on.

Of course. Of course it wasn’t over, because why would you ever get to have anything for yourself? Why would you ever get to just rest? For the first time in… who even knows how long, you sob hysterically into the sleeves of your hoodie.

A galaxy twinkles in the outer shell of your universe, lighting up the zig-zag sign on your chest. Mallek’s lazy smile fills your thoughts. If at all possible, everything hurts even more, until you can’t even cry to let out the pain.

Did he miss you? Did all of them miss you?

Oh, God, Daraya. You promised her you’d take her to Earth sometime, and then you just totally fucking vanished from the face of Alternia. What a fucking dick move. Granted, you hadn’t meant to do it, but still!

Your traitor-asshole brain reminds you of the fact that all of them are dead now. As in, Tyzias tried to lead a rebellion against the Alternian Empire, and then they all got killed. Your traitor-asshole brain also notes that it’s all your fault for encouraging those kinds of ideas.

Way to go, you absolute tool.

Except… they don’t have to be gone. You are the Guardian of your universe, and you make the rules. It feels so wrong to even think about it, but… yeah. You’re basically a god now. You can do what you want and nobody has the power to stop you.

Which brings about a whole new plethora of fuckery. If you were to go back, if you were to rewrite history… are you any better than Ultimate Dirk? Granted, you’d do it out of love, not because you’re a power-hungry bastard, but still. Shenanigans of this level are not to be taken lightly, even by sad Guardians with absolutely nothing better to do.

You sleep on it, which of course results in you waking up bawling like a baby as you remember the best roleplay sesh of your life, which was when Wanshi proudly gave your Soldier Purrbeasts OC her full name: Twinklemoon. You had a Soldier Purrbeasts OC named Twinklemoon. That’s why you were crying.

That’s it. You couldn’t stand it anymore.

You need advice, and you know exactly where to get it.

You find her on the 8rigantine, furiously scribbling something down on a chart with a bunch of little figurines in the middle of it. You know better than to just haul your little friendslut ass up there while Vriska Serket is in the zone, so instead you knock on the hull and call up to her.

“Hello! Lady Spinneret, an old friend is in dire need of some advice!”

It takes about two seconds for a familiar spiky head to poke over the side of the deck. Vriska’s one dark eye lights up upon meeting your gaze, followed by a toothy grin that’s both menacing and completely genuine. She reaches back to grab something behind her. A rope ladder drops down and nearly nails you in the noggin, just like it did whenever you dropped by to FLARP with her.

“What the hell, bitch! I missed you!” she yells. Despite everything, you can’t help but smile. Vriska’s wild personality and no-bullshit attitude was just what you needed.

You’re very proud of yourself when you scale the ladder with ease and scramble up onto the deck without getting too much out of breath. With the amount of insane shit you’ve gotten yourself into during your travels, getting into shape came pretty easily. You’ve been told by several reliable sources that your legs are to die for.

“The 8-ball foretold your arrival. I brought snacks.” Vriska points to a bag next to her chart, not looking up from where she was drawing an impressively detailed kraken-looking thing. “Eat something before you start gabbing.”

That was sound logic, so you drag the back closer to you and start rooting around for something good. You find a bag of stinkroot chips, open that bad boy up, and start munching. Damn, did it feel good to eat something, and to also have a corporeal body to eat things with.

As you gather your thoughts, the hairs on the back of your neck prickle with the sensation of somebody’s eyes on you. You instantly look up to see Vriska staring at you. Her expression is blank, but her good eye held all the energy of a thunderstorm.

You swallow your chips. “What is it?”

“You look… different,” she says, setting down her pencil. “It’s like I can really see you now.”

“Huh?”

Vriska huffs, but she still doesn’t take her eye off you. “Before, you kinda looked like… I dunno, like somebody cut out a whole in reality and shoved the silhouette of a person inside? Like, I know what you looked like, but I couldn’t tell you the color of your hair, or what facial structure you have, or, like… dude, you have freckles.”

“I have freckles?” You reach up and touch your cheekbone, feeling the soft skin. Oh, hey, there’s some acne. Dammit. “Are they cute?”

“Sure? I think freckles are more of a human thing, so you’d have to ask John or Jade or whatever. Also you’re blonde, like Rose,” she tells you, thoughtfully scratching at her chin. “You’re still short as fuck, though. I could probably punt you off the poop deck.”

“Thanks.”

“You’re welcome. Congrats on not looking like a hole in reality.”

You finish off your chips and flop back to stare at the night sky. With all the time you’ve spent on Alternia, you can now name a lot of the constellations. Right now, the Empress’s Trident poked up at a forty-five degree angle behind the pink moon. “I think I know how we can overthrow the Alternian Empire.”

Vriska’s pencil falls out of her hand.

You continue. “Have you read any records on a rebellion that occurred about… like, fifteen sweeps ago? I don’t know the exact date.”

Vriska’s mouth opens and closes a couple of times, and then she nods. “I sure fuckin’ did. Sollux did some of his mumbo-jumbo and got me some documents. He called it an early wriggling day present, but I know he wants to help my little… agenda. How do you even know…?”

“Because I helped encourage the right people to do it. I was there, Vriska. Those kids were my friends, and now they’re dead.”

She’s silent for a moment. “The leader was a teal named Tyzias.”

Your eyes are hot with tears. “I knew her. We met because she tripped on the sidewalk while carrying a shitload of her homework, and I helped her pick it all up when it went everywhere. She had a matesprit named-”

“Stelsa,” Vriska mutters. “Holy shit. She worked closely with some jades who lead their little army. They caused a hell of a lot of damage to the Empire before it all went down, I’ll give them that.”

Neither of you speak for a long moment, which you appreciate as you try and hold your messy self together. The longer you think about your old friends and all the good times you had with them, the more you’re certain about what you want to do.

They deserve to be here.

Your blood pressure spikes just thinking about it.

It’s Vriska who puts your thoughts into words. “You want to go back and help them win the rebellion.”

“Yeah.”

“That’s fucking crazy.”

“Yeah.”

She scooches over to you so she can stare down into your soul. “If we combine our resources and collaborate back and forth between the past and the future, we can make it so less people die. We could even take out that pathetic bitch of an Heiress they had back in the day. With your powers…”

“It’s possible I could compact time itself to create a world where we… where we can make things right. We could even help Feferi…”

You can’t bring yourself to say it in case you jinxed something, but by the look on Vriska’s face, she knows what you mean.

“It could work,” she breathes.

Slowly, you sit back up. Your heart was pounding so hard you felt it in your skull. “How do you think the others would feel about it?”

“Oh, they’d shit themselves,” Vriska snorts. “A full-scale rebellion across time and space?”

“True.”

“But it could work!” she repeats, staring into empty space.

“And they’d have a huge advantage they never had before. Me,” you say, talking to yourself more than to Vriska. You’d created this universe with your own power. It was time to protect it. “Vriska, I need to go before I chicken out. Tell the others what’s happening and that I’m sorry if this all goes to shit.”

“Wait!”

You look back at her as she grabs your arm, claws digging into the fabric of your hoodie. “I… you need supplies. No frickin’ way you’re going anywhere without at least a hydration flask.”

You know what she’s trying to say, and your chest fills up with all the warmth of a bonfire. God, you love this absolute bitch of a kid.

Vriska drags you to your feet, and then you’re both sprinting for her hive.

Amazingly, you don’t die trying to keep up with the cerulean as you charge up the stairs to her respiteblock together. You’re still out of breath by the time you reach the top, though, but Vriska’s already grabbing a backpack and tossing shit into it.

“Get me that jacket off the door,” she orders as she tosses in what looks like a small medical kit. You obey and throw her the jacket, the black leather one with the bright red hood.

She then waves you over, and you slip around her desk to see what’s up. In her hands is a black sheath, with a matching handle sticking out at the top.

Vriska pulls the sheath off to reveal the blade: a brilliant silver-blue metal that nearly glowed in the darkness. It’s incredibly beautiful and very scary to look at.

“I’ve had this thing forever, so I’m giving it to you, okay? Don’t fucking lose it. Press that little gray button at the top of the handle to heat up the blade. Good for starting fires and cauterizing wounds.” She shoves the jacket into the backpack and hands you the dagger.

“Vriska, I don’t know what to say,” you begin, but she smacks you.

“Shut up and strap it to your belt. You better come back soon. I want a detailed report on everything. Single-spaced,” she snaps.

You grin. “Yes, ma’am. I should be back, in like, ten nights. Maybe eleven.”

“Ten,” Vriska growls. “I’m coming for your ass otherwise.”

“Noted. Tell everybody I said hi.”

“Obviously.”

You reach into that little part of yourself, which in turn reaches back out into that chaotic river that is the flow of time. You throw the anchor down and wade upstream. It’s a little rougher than usual, but you won’t let that stop you. There was no turning back now.

Time travel is always like trying to hit a moving target, but you have great aim, and when you find what you’re looking for you feel your face split into another huge smile. There’s nothing different about this part of the river than any other, but you know. When it comes to the people you care about, you always know.

Everything feels more real to you than it has in years. Two moons shine even brighter in the sky, the chilly air stinging your face, and you’re no troll but it still feels like you’re going home.

You open your eyes.

“Ten nights,” you say to Vriska, and you let yourself fall through the current.