thistleverse

[thistleverse]

Chapters: 3/?

Fandom: Homestuck, Doctor Who Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Warnings: Author Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings Relationships: Nepeta Leijon/Equius Zahhak, Kanaya Maryam/Tavros Nitram/Vriska Serket, Rose Lalonde/Kanaya Maryam, Sollux Captor/Feferi Peixes, Sollux Captor/Aradia Megido, The Doctor/Rose Tyler, The Condesce/The Doctor, Sollux Captor/Eridan Ampora, Feferi Peixes/Vriska Serket, Other Relationship Tags to Be Added Characters: Karkat Vantas, Aradia Megido, Tavros Nitram, Sollux Captor, Nepeta Leijon, Kanaya Maryam, Terezi Pyrope, Vriska Serket, Equius Zahhak, Gamzee Makara, Eridan Ampora, Feferi Peixes, John Egbert, Rose Lalonde, Dave Strider, Jade Harley, Jane Crocker, Jake English, Roxy Lalonde, The Doctor, Misc. Cannon Fodder, The Condesce Additional Tags: Whostuck, Helmsman, Post-Game Series: Part 1 of Thistleverse

Summary:

“Equius!” You swoop over to where he’s calmly rewiring something or other. “Time to go! Time to go now!”

Silence. Then: “One moment.”

“No! We have to go now! 57 seconds!”

“A moment, please. I’m almost done here.” He doesn’t even look at you, absorbed as he is on his wires.

You huff, crossing your arms. In your head, time’s focus narrows, resolves more accurately. “Equius, we don’t have time for games! If what Vriska gave me is correct, I calculate that we have only 52.39 seconds until a whole phalanx of security personnel are here! You’ve done all that you can- We have to go now!”

“And this will take me 30. I demand that you give me that time.”

“Equius!

[thistleverse]

Maupin Koldin is only four sweeps old and she’s already an auspistice.

Loreta is a redblood bordering on orange with short, choppy hair who lives on the side of the lake near the mountains. Despite her caste, or maybe because of it, she’s terribly hardheaded and vicious when angry. No one pushes her buttons harder than the short purpleblood Arrich, whose temper runs as cold as his blood. He also thinks lowblooded rudeness is intolerable in the crazy wy that only highbloods have, but finds Loreta amusing enough to want her around. As he only lives ten minutes up the mountain from Loreta’s lake, she’s around a lot. It’s a perpetuating spiral - Arrich offhandedly bothers Loreta, who snipes at Arrich, who then attempts to beat Loreta into a bloody pulp, which Loreta can’t withstand no matter how courageous or hardheaded she is. Therefore, Maupin, whose hive is only a short walk from the lake, graciously runs interference between them both.

She loves the two dearly, and the last thing she wants is to lose her two closest friends. If she didn’t meddle, Arrich would certainly kill Loreta and then sink into a fun little stint of depression - possibly the life-ending kind. She’s high enough on the Hemospectrum that Arrich won’t be tempted to kill her for insubordination but low enough that Loreta won’t feel like she has something to prove - it’s like ashen serendipity, and four sweep old Maupin is absolutely enamored with it. She spends her free time diverting conversations before they can spark an argument, making them both feel stupid with disapproving looks, and knocking their heads together - every ashen move on the books. It’s because of them that she discovers her psychic abilities: one minute Arrich is reaching for his blade; the next, shadows are pouring from the corners of the room until no one can see a thing. It was a sobering instance for all three of you. They sat outside Loreta’s hive until dawn, watching darkness curl against her windows in silence.

The three had been quadranted for over a sweep when, near midnight, Maupin stepped into the lake clearing to see drones Loreta’s hive.

She hid, of course, but it didn’t matter. The drones had completed their job and were already taking off into the air. 

Later, much later, when she had managed to gather the courage to leave her hiding place, she would find the bodies of her ashenmates in the little hive. Loreta’s ribcage would be split open; Arrich’s head would no longer be attached to his body. Maupin would stand there in total darkness, fists clenched, while something wrong whispered at the edges of her thinkpan. She would shake while her outrage poured out of her body as energy and ripped the little hive to shreds around her. She would think about Loreta and being low enough to be culled apropos of nothing, about Arrich and being nobility but not enough to escape culling.

And then, long past dawn, she would walk back to her hive, wrapped in shadows and anger. There, her lusus would be asleep, tufted ears twitching. On her doorstep would be a book called Combat Magic. It would smell like ozone and death, and on the front page would be a note, written in acid green ink.

By the time dusk came again Maupin’s destiny will have changed. But staying up all day isn’t the part she will remember. Instead, she will remember sitting outside Loreta’s hive in silence, watching shadows curl around the windows, until Arrich stared panicking near dawn and Loreta laughed at him. She will remember crying in the ruins of that hive, her whole world rewritten for no reason. She will remember words in green ink:

Stupid child. Life is only fair for the Empress.

[thistleverse]

“The Condesce whips around without warning, nearly tripping or seriously maiming the Doctor with her hair.”

I’m sorry I’m not sorry