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imhereformysciencefriends · 5 years

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Day 7: New Life

@gamzeeweek

They set the mug down delicately upon the doily, and leaned back while crossing their legs.

“Again,” they ordered calmly.

“Again, honored one? What do you mean?”

“I mean start it all over. There were some salvageable moments, some decent parts, but honestly? Just scrap the whole thing. Do it all over, from the top.”

“From the—the beginning, honored one? All the way?”

“All the way.”

“But, honored one, that—”

“I know what I’m doing,” they said calmly, taking another sip of their tea. “Now. One more time, with feeling.”

—

You are a wriggler, and you are so, so, so full of love. This screechy ass troll as is ten times your size is your favorite person, ever, in the whole world, and you are going to Climb On Him. He is your best friend, the best ever, you love him so much—

And then it is time for you to go through the portal onto the meteor which crash lands down onto Alternia, and while you don’t know it because you are just a wriggler, the meteor is made of hyper-cushioning materials that prevented you from what would surely otherwise be a disastrous demise. You are at the fringes of the brooding caverns, far from the mouth where wrigglers as went through The Trials emerge to find loving custodians. You are found by a seagoat, who didn’t really want a wriggler, but had to go near-ish the caverns anyway, because of biology. You, of course, do not know this. You just know that this is your lusus, and you love him more than anything else in the entirety of everything ever.

“No, no, that’s no good. Move the meteor so it lands there.”

“Honored one, the adult jadebloods…”

“I know, but we need to take a calculated risk here. Have the meteor land there.”

You go through the portal onto the meteor which crash lands down onto Alternia, and while you don’t know it because you are just a wriggler, the meteor is made of hyper-cushioning materials that prevented you from what would surely otherwise be a disastrous demise. You are just outside the mouth of the brooding caverns, the impact of your landing shaking the caves below. But you do not care, because you are a wriggler. You squeal happily when a tidegoat mouths at the tuft of hair growing between your horns. You chirr happily up at him, and crawl onto his back. You are happy, because you know that this is your lusus, and you love him more than anything else in the entirety of everything ever.

What you do not know, because you are still very new you see, is that a tidegoat is similar to a seagoat in the same way that rabbits are similar to hares. While, outwardly, they look very much alike, with only a difference in size, a seagoat, like a hare, is actually far more terrifying and emotionally unavailable than its smaller counterpart. They are also genetically incompatible. Who knew? Not you. You’re just a little baby.

Tidegoatdad takes very good care of you, showing you how to wade in the tidepools and how to hold a sea urchin without hurting yourself or it, showing you the good places to look for shells and making sure you’re always inside by sunrise. He feeds you seaweed and fish and occasional squirrel, and makes you do your schoolfeeds while he sleeps curled up round your back like Alternia’s most comfortable couch. Sometimes he’ll let you bodypaint on that pretty white fur and flubber of his, even though it always washes off when you two go play in the brine and waves later.

You make a friend with this neat sea-sis, a bright eyed, sharp toothed sister as can’t go much farther than your shore. Her lusus don’t like it none when she strays too far, and you understand. Tidegoatdad can breathe down your neck a little too. But that’s okay, because he’s your lusus, and you know he only does it because he loves you so very motherfucking much. You and fishsis all up and get your friendship on, and she drags her moirail out to meet you too.

That brother is a motherfucking piece of work. Even with the two of you at him, he is still so reluctant to make strides towards being a nicer person. You can’t even imagine what he’d turn out without the both of you, there to keep him in check and in friendship. You do not know that you ain’t supposed to like them. That clowns and fish don’t get along. You are a clown and they are your friends, and you keep ‘em close to your pusher always.

You meet a sweet boy online as does steal your heart, and then break it also. You keep friendship, though, after. His friendship means more to you than his heart ever could, and the two of you spit fire and rhythm as is good and right. You meet a harsh boy as does rankle his hackles at every motherfucking thing, and although you ain’t subtle for shit, he don’t ever seem to notice how you drip diamonds whenever you speak to him.

You’re awful excited to meet them in person. A wicked smart brother and sister of yours are making this game that is supposed to let you meet them and you are all kinds of holy motherfucking gleeful.

—

“See, isn’t this better?”

“It is, honored one. It really, really is. But, I worry, honored one; the plot…”

“Will sort itself out. Keep watching.”

—

The game is more fun than you thought it’d be. It’s definitely upsetting when your lusus dies, that one you didn’t stop crying on until Karkat did come to the Land of Tents and Mirth and talk you down from it. But other than that, it’s fun. You’re on a different team from Feferi and Eridan, except it turns out not really, you were all teammates all along! You think that is a very nice prank for the universe to pull on you. You are on a team with Karkat and Tavros, right from the start, and that is very fun and excellent.

You guess it’s also kind of a bummer that the world ended. But, eh, nothing’s permanent.

Now you’re chilling on this wicked ass motherfucking meteor with all your good friends (and some friends as aren’t too good, just yet, but you look forward to being better friends (and that one chica as scares you something terrible)). A pink-skinned motherfucker as your sniffsis has been up and motherfucking obsessed with lately sends you a link to some motherfuckin’ music video, and as near as you can tell, he’s making mockery of your religion?

You ain’t got super close ties to the mirthful churchful. Especially now, since the world ended. Still, it makes you kinda pissed off that this brother would send you something with sole intention of upsetting you. It worked; you are upset. So you take a walk to clear your head, even though your best bro did tell everyone to stay where he could keep eyes on them. He’s busy trolling… someone, though, and it ain’t like you’re going to get into trouble.

You meander, opening chests here or there as you pass. One has this fugly ass puppet in it. Maybe if you were actually upset, instead of just a lil pissy, you would take this motherfucking comfort item and hold it, and look in its eyes because you want the plush, cottony comfort of something vaguely trolloid, but you aren’t, so you don’t. You just chuck it in your sylladex and forget about it on a colorful capcha card you ain’t ever going to open again. Staring at the pretty colors does calm you down some. You’re thinking clear, again, and meander with a lil kick in your step.

—

“See, honored one? He’s deviating from the plot.”

“Yes,” they said, delightedly pulling a rice cracker from the sleeve. “And thus, creating a new one.”

—

You lose the kick in your step when you encounter upon a collection of cliffs in the meteor. Where you are stands tall above some other pathway, where your sweet motherfuckin’ Tavbro and that bitch as scares you so badly are. She’s mocking him with his severed legs. The legs she did paralyze in the first place. They’re going to fight.

You—

“Give him a little nudge. Just a little one. Gamzee tends to lock up in high adrenaline situations, I don’t want him to be inactive for this.”

“Yes, honored one.”

—move. Your body going seeming without your brain’s consent, at first, but once the first step is made forward, the rest follow natural as blood flowing in your veins.

You drop down from the height, one club grasped in two fronds, and you

take

her

head

clear

off.

She would’ve killed him. She’d had his lance in her hand poised and aimed at his chest. Half a second, less, and she would’ve pierced the bloodpump as you hold as precious and dear as you do. She would’ve killed him.

It don’t make what you did any better.

The tears come immediate, panic following.

You killed her.

You took your club and laid it in the head of a sister whose name you knew! You killed her!

You grasp and tear at your hair, shrieking, wailing. You didn’t mean to, you—god, oh god oh god oh god oh god oh god oh god oh god!

The guilt wells up alongside the panic and you are blind to all else, seeing only blue, blue, blue, and your own bile. You killed her! How could you do that! Her blood is on your hands, on your club, in your hair, soaking into the knees of your pants where you kneel and keen high and distressed through your gurgling tears. You do not know where you are going when Tavros lifts you to your feet with his strong and gentle hands, you do not know where he leads you. Your pan is full of only guilty panic, and the color blue. You follow where he leads.

He leads you to Karkat, back in the common room, who you rush to in the need of a diamond returned. You are sobbing and aching and panicked and vulnerable, and you need him, you need him, you need him to be gentle with you, to gentle you down, you have never needed him more in your life.

It will strike you, later, that that is exactly the kind of romantic bullshit that Karkat motherfucking thrives on.

Eridan, Sollux, and Feferi stop whatever conversation it is that they are having to stare in painful awkwardness at you, which you do not make no notice of, and Kanaya ushers them all to the warp pad out the common room, which you also don’t notice but thank her later for doing. Karkat sits you down in the chair he’d been ignoring for favor of standing to rant on his keyboard, and sits backwards in a chair of his own, right in front of you. He’s got his palms on your cheeks and a crooning shoosh on his lips and he’s got you, he’s got you, you’re going to be okay. He shushes you down and gets the story out of you in sobbing parts. How you hadn’t wanted to. How you’d just acted, angry and protective and somehow all rolled up numb, and how you hadn’t been thinking at all until after the deed itself. He asks if it’s kind of like what you did with the Black King, and you guess, kind of. You hadn’t wanted to kill anybody. Hell, you don’t never want to hurt anybody, much less kill. Karkat knows. He knows, and tells you that this ain’t your fault. Vriska was the one trying to kill Tavros, you were just acting in kind. It’s okay.

Terezi interrupts you, one point. On the trail of something or other, she has that look about her when she’s playing investigator-detective and is on the hunt. Don’t say nothing, though, just takes a picture of you and Karkat, hands on teary cheeks, and leaves with a bright cackle.

You stay with Karkat some while after, and when you ask for a hug he gives you one.

Then your phones buzz and Feferi wants you all to come up to the roof. Some sort of excitement is happening with the horrorterrors out in that far off ring, and there’s something to do with the humans?

Nepeta congratulates you immediately on your new diamond when you get there, looking all atwitter. You think it is real motherfuckin’ miraculous of your sister to know all these things about you without your even telling her, like woah. It just happened. Karkat tells you that the two of you are still holding hands, and then Nepeta tells you that Terezi sent her a photo. You are happy to realize that you are, in motherfucking fact, still holding hands with your best beloved, even as he starts screeching at your sisters who do make to laugh at him, while Equius stares on all uncomfortable and sweaty. He offers his congratulations too, stiff and awkward as that brother is always getting to be, and you smile at him a gratitude for his thoughts.

Tavros is near the lip of the roof, staring out into the vastness and the darkness. You want to go to him, but want to let go of Karkat’s hand less, so you stay put.

When the green sun shows up, and three siblings with it, you are well and truly motherfucking dazzled.

Tavros is there to greet Aradia when she returns to life, and you can taste their joy at their reunion. Dave and Rose, them human fuckers, are here too now, which, sick. You have no idea how that happened, but shit if you ain’t excited about it. More friends.

You lose track of happenings real motherfuckin’ quick after that. A green portal opens and a bucket flies through and hits Karkat straight in the horn, and then a whole bunch of people do a whole bunch of things to make the portal bigger and also faster(??), and then there’s a giant ass golden ship flying alongside the meteor as is moving very quickly, and two more human motherfuckers as can come be friends, plus their human Lands of whatevers and whatevers, so you will be able to play around in them and get grist and fraymotifs and shit so long as Jadesis is up and willing to shrinkify you, and you are very unaware of so many things as happened to make this your reality but you are well and truly happy for it.

Seems to you that everything is going to work out just fine.

—

“This… is really good…”

“Yes,” they said proudly, “yes it is.”

“But, honored one, I’m still confused. With Gamzee, you know, happy, how will the circle complete?”

“That circle was stupid anyway,” they said with a wave of their hand. “We’ll simply close another circle instead.”

“Yes, honored one, but how?”

They shrugged. “We shall have to see, won’t we?”

—

The three human years on the meteor go by in a rush of memories that are both happy and not. Life be like that. You are good friends with all gathered there, by the end of it. Dating five boys in a set of full quadrants and chilling with Feferi as you always used to do, on the beach. Aradia, who Sollux and Tavros and Terezi did convince to stay, likes to braid your hair and take you on adventures through the Lands, John is a hilarious motherfucker and Jade is a sweetheart. You improve on fighting by battling imps, learn new fun things to cook, play board games and FLARP without the fatal part and make piles of horns and pillows and empty soda bottles wherever you do please to.

You also, though, get a visit from a different you. An older you. A you with scars you don’t recognize, and Aradia’s music boxes in his hands.

He tells you that there is a task you must do. And you can do it now, or you can do it later, but you gotta do it. You’ll come back right to this time, when you’re done, Aradia’s music boxes won’t fail you, and then you’ll give them back to him and he’ll go back when he’s from.

So you take them, and do as he tells you he did.

You go to an egg all spiral-colored, watch it hatch and cradle the snake as slithers out.

Cherubs grow fast, you learn. Way, way faster than trolls and humans. It ain’t gradual. It’s sorta… all at once, and then nothing for a while, and then spurt! All at once again. You only get to cradle a baby for a few perigees, most. The child is a little longer, but you’re not there for even a full two sweeps before they surge up into adolescence, which will apparently last many sweeps after this.

You set up the two computers while Callie is awake, and ensure she is and always will be in contact with her friends, the neon colored motherfuckers as you haven’t met yet. You also get her contact with your future self, so she won’t be so lonely and fatherless as you would hate to leave her. But you’re not even an adult yourself, and you wonder at why the universe makes you do this while you are so young.

Caliborn claws you up when you tell him it’s time for you to leave, and you do not give him your future self’s contact. If your future self wants to talk to him, he can come here and update Caliborn’s computer his own motherfucking self.

You do love him, though. Bratty as he may be.

Just… you’ll love him more in memory.

You leave, just out of their reach, the keys that your older self gave to you when he handed you the music boxes. You dunno what they’re for, but whichever one of them leaves this place will have something to do with them, you think?

You hug Callie one last time, and head out.

Back on the meteor, you are so, so, so happy to see your friends again. To them, you weren’t even gone a whole hour, but you have not seen them in some sweeps and you have missed them terribly. But this is your role, you guess, like seeing dead bodies is Dave’s, or wrecking reality is Rose’s, or being really cool is Terezi’s.

You don’t let Karkat go for a motherfucking week, purrbox up and running the whole while.

When you do arrive in the new session, everything goes sideways so fast you’d be real motherfuckin impressed if you weren’t one of the things going sideways. Still, between the… how many of you are there? 18? 19? Somewhere ‘round 20 of you, you get it figured out. You don’t wanna really fight any bosses, so you get to chill with the Mayor, who you are all in pretty collective agreement is the best, and Callie! Who’s here! And wearing a ring she got from Roxy, who is a very nice girl who you approve of very much! You hug Callie very tightly and she tells you how much she’s missed you. You’ve missed her too, for all it hasn’t even been a perigee on your end, and the three of you sit and chat (mostly, Callie tells you about her life since you’ve left, and you listen). You’re there when the Mayor’s girlfriend arrives, and she is a very scary lady who you respect a lot.

A lot of things happen all at once, shortly thereafter. All the bosses are defeated, and a lot of people are fraymotifing, and then Feferi and Terezi bring Vriska back to life, and Terezi punches her straight in the face and shouts some seriously pitch black inches at her, and Vriska… changed, when she died. She apologizes and everything, swears to be better, for Terezi, for everyone, and you do not know what is going on there, but hey, if killing her was what it took for her to be a good person, then, you guess you’re almost glad you did…?

That one guilt had been the single worst part of all these last three years, for you. Something as haunted you eternal, no matter how much you jammed with Karkat about it, no matter how all your friends forgave you of it. But to see that in the end, it was for the best, well. You are finally able to let that go.

There are many people on the lily pad. You are one. And you, collectively, have won.

You go through the door, and you obtain your happy ending.

—

“....”

“Dear, are you crying?” they asked gently.

“Yes, honored one. I, I’m just, so happy. He deserves this. They all do.”

“They do,” they agreed, smiling warmly. “Now, how about a soft epilogue?”

—

You’ve been god of this new universe for two sweeps, or four years. Aradia does a lot of time shenanigans, while Dave don’t touch time shit no more. Kanaya likes to meddle and fuss with the past, with the Mayor’s help, and a democratic, socialist society rises up with their efforts and everyone all lives together in joy and happiness. Sometimes people try to sorta… fence themselves off by species, but that is a very dumb and silly thing to try and do, and it never actually keeps at that way for longer than a year or sweep.

You are happily retired from all fighting and magic Rage bullshit, and spend your days happily with your quads and daughter, who is now the same age as you, pretty much. Callie hands you the keys you left her brother and her, at one point, and you borrow Aradia’s boxes and head back to your younger self, since you gotta complete that circle, and a bunch of other circles that you had no idea you actually played a part in. Apparently you’re a pretty involved dude, for all you feel you don’t do a terrible lot. Lots of moving pieces out of your awareness. But that’s fine, that you’re just a domino in a line, you’re happy to be, because what you do sparks a deep joy in you, and you can’t imagine your life going any different from how it’s going now. When you return to your time and retirement, you’re happy to see past!Callie as a contact, and strike up correspondence with your daughter who isn’t the same age as you.

Rose starts up talk with John on going back in time and fighting Lord English when he is young—

“Mm, yes, this is exactly the sort of nonsense that simply will not fly. John doesn’t have retcon powers since there was nothing to retcon, which means the house juju has been successfully removed from the narrative. We cannot be having this.”

‘Yes, honored one. Oh, how about this?”

—and a little protective curl of Rage flickers up in the part of your soul that is magic. You tell them that Lord English might be a bitch and a bastard, but the little one is still only just Caliborn. And Caliborn, for all the scars he gave you and the headaches as didn’t fade for hours after he went to sleep, is still your child, even as you know he is your child that grows up cruel and perverse and pure, straight up, motherfucking evil. They leave him be.

“Oh perfect, well done!”

After that, there is… nothing. No more Game nonsense, no imps or demons or gods. Just you, and the family as isn’t yours by any blood or relation, but is your motherfucking family, by choice and emotion and deep, unwavering love.

You are an adult, and you are so, so, so full of love.

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