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Jade wakes up.
The fine grass brushes soft along one cheek, and she brushes her hair out of her face so she can see the sky, balmy and blue overhead. The hem of her mint green skirt is fluttering a little over her knee, and a tall sprig of purple lupine bobs in a faint breeze in her peripheral vision. They've come out to picnic in a field a ways outside of the Carapace Kingdom, and the air's heavy with the smell of sweet peaches and magnolia from a grove across the quiet river. Rose had to very gently put her foot down with the local carapacians after they tried to turn this field into a shrine after the first picnic they held out here; carapacians are super sweet, but they wanted to tear up the grove and plant sunflowers and spirograph blooms and erect a marble sculpture in Rose and Jade's honor, a habit that gets a liiittle awkward and a whole lot inconvenient when they do it to the best karaoke place in the kingdom, and then the best pastry shop in the kingdom, and then the best bubble tea place in two kingdoms, and then -
Basically, carapacians are a little over the top! The troll and human kingdoms are a little easier to handle most days, because they argue and debate and treat them like god-people, rather than just gods; consorts and Prospitian carapacians were bred by Sburb, and have a harder time of it. If the kids hadn't given them a stern friendgod talk a few years ago, they would be waiting on Jade and the others hand and foot right now. Judging by the rustle in the freshly planted rose bushes about a half mile away, there's a contingent of carapaces watching them from a discreet distance. Given half a chance, they'd rush right over to offer Rose, Kanaya, and Calliope refills and fresh food and jubilous greetings.
It's a work in progress. But it's a nice work in progress, and everyone's doing their best, without Lord English breathing down their necks. They're free of the game, free of everything, and they have all the time in this new world to relax and cultivate and grow.
Jade could summon a peach with a click of her fingers, but she doesn't feel like having sticky sweet juice all over her fingers again when she's still napping off the soft potato rolls and baked apples and pale honey-wine Rose and Kanaya brought along with them for the trip. Jade contributed some tender, juicy steak, which she's told isn't a traditional picnic food item, but she and Calliope polished them off fast, and now Jade is so full. If there's some lemonade left in the pitcher, that would be amazing. Maybe when she can sit up without her stomach protesting and insisting she lay back down for another snooze! She could ask Kanaya or Rose to pass her a fresh glass, but Jade can sense them curled up together in the dappled shade at the base of a live oak tree, Rose's head tucked on the curve of Kanaya's shoulder, and they're murmuring to each other as Rose sips her drink.
A pale grey hand appears and holds a clear glass of lemonade over Jade's face, casting a wavering shadow over her eyes. Jade smiles in thanks with a laugh, and reaches up with a touch of green burning around her fingers to hold the glass steady as she accepts it.
Aradia leans over, a wash of loose curls falling over her shoulder as she grins down at Jade with piercing red eyes. "Found you! Finally!" she says, her smile an inch too wide, a flash of sharp fang visible as she blocks out the sky.
Jade can't sense Aradia's physical presence. There's no way she should have been able to pass her a drink. Aradia can't be here -
-
- because the picnic was yesterday.
-
Jade wakes up.
There is a sealed jar of honey on her crowded dresser, and a small shower of clothing strewn around the floor by her wardrobifier. A fresh basketful of lupines hang from the ceiling by her wide window - the fuchsia flowers got cycled out onto the balcony, to make room for them. Jade kicks off the bed and takes several bounding steps over to balcony, teleporting to skip the process of opening the door. She sighs happily, snapping her pajamas off and exchanging them for a nice periwinkle crop top and skirt. Her internal clock says that it's too late to watch the sunrise, but it's still nice to swing her feet over the edge of the balcony and hum to herself as she looks out over the Troll Kingdom's capital city. It's busier here; the communal hivestems were grown in tight, meandering coils, packed in close to each other, and even this early in the morning Jade can hear the cacophony of trolls and their lusii chatting and bickering and trading rising up from the street below.
Karkat always looks a little spooked when he and Dave go wandering through the troll kingdom - he mutters about how the trolls here on the new Earth are too nice and cooperative and not-murdery, and how back on Alternia living in a city grown in a dense thicket of hivestems like this would be a recipe for casual violence and vicious power-grabbing. But things are better here! No one has to fight to survive, no one gets harassed by drones or forced off planet to fight galaxy-spanning wars, and everyone is equal. They're all still prickly and abrasive and sometimes just plain rude, but they're not scared and angry all the time, either! Without mandatory drone surveillance and culling, trolls are just trolls. Jade likes living here about as well as she likes living in any of the other three kingdoms, and she especially enjoys hopping between them to visit her friends and catch up with the locals whenever she can.
The weird dream about yesterday fades out of Jade's memory; by the time she heads into the bathroom to shake the grass out of her hair and braid it back out of her face, she can't recall more than a few shreds of it. She used to keep a dream journal back in the day, but mostly she can't be bothered unless it's something super interesting! Her dreams haven't felt particularly important or prophetic in years, and Jade's just...grown out of the habit. If her brain felt like recycling the picnic yesterday for further processing, Jade's not too-too fussed about letting it drift away. This week she's heading out on little day trips with everyone, and if she doesn't pop on over to cajole Dave and Karkat out of their apartment, they'll take all day to get ready! Dorks.
It's a shame that Terezi can't come along. Jade can't remember the last time she saw Terezi in person, actually. She left to find Vriska in the world they left behind, and all her messages and snaps come back clipped and sometimes distorted by the transition from one universe to the next. But a troll's gotta do what a troll's gotta do, Jade supposes. Ah well. They'll be meeting Jake and Dirk at the beach, and then Jade's doing the rounds throughout the kingdoms to teleport everyone else in for a bonfire at the end of the day, so as far as company goes, they'll all be spoiled for choice! She picks up her eclectic bass on the way out and captchalogues it to play later.
-
The Consort Kingdom has the best beaches. The best. Sure, they name all their cities and towns things like Nakyanak or Schundermoist or Rumbylumplewiffig and other weird consort-y stuff like that, but the village closest to this particular beach is called Rally-Izwi, but the names aren't the point of it.
What matters is how goofy Karkat looks as he rolls up his sweats all the way up his thighs and squats in a bow-legged stance up to his knees in the water, refusing to move an inch deeper into the grey-blue water. Dave's almost as silly; he takes a couple of selfies with Karkat, who grumbles about it until Dave checks to make sure Jade's not looking (she's mostly not) and ducks in to kiss Karkat on the cheek. Karkat's a lot more amenable after that and Dave manages to coax him out to a sandbar farther out, though he still shrieks when Jake and Dirk arrive and splash past them in a burst of cold water. Dirk dives into the water like a quicksilver fish, his hair streaming out behind him in a blond tangle as all the gel washes out of it, and Jade swaps into a bathing suit and teleports down through the water a few times to swim with him along the bottom. There are pastel pink and yellow ruins scattered along the bottom of a drop-off, and Dirk can hold his breath for a crazy long time as the two of them dig up petal-pink shells and spook a couple of blue manta rays up in clouds of cyan sand.
Jade surfaces and flops out on the sand for a bit to dry off in the cool light of the setting sun before setting off. She helps Jake clear some of the coarse grass and driftwood and sea-daisies away from the beach to clear the way for the bonfire later, and then leaves to do the rounds. Rose and Kanaya are ready to go; Roxy and Calliope are in the middle of changing, while Jane needs to finish a business call, ignoring the sounds of Roxy brandishing different dresses for Calliope to hang off her bone-skinny frame in their shared dressing room. They all arrive back on the beach just in time to stop Dave from singing his eyebrows off trying to start the fire - Kanaya hastily takes over before disaster strikes - and Roxy lays out a spread of s'more ingredients on a smoothed stone, brushing wayward sand away with a few brisk swipes. Jake and Dirk brought pineapple and stuffed peppers, and they're halfway through roasting as much food as they each can fit on a stick when Jade realizes that John has skipped out on them, like some kind of heinous skipper-outer. Again!
GG: john!
GG: jooohn! :|
GG: cmon, you cant stay in bed all day
GG: if you needed a ride -
EB: i know, i know!
EB: jeez jade, i'm barely even late!
GG: yeah, but if you dont hurry there wont be any food left
EB: i'll see if i can make it.
GG: oh nooo
GG: thats what you said last time!
EB: i feel really bad about skipping -
GG: so dont!!!
EB: hehehe. i'm sorry.
EB: next time, okay? pinky promise.
GG: :(
GG: i'll bring you leftovers!
EB: sorry, i'm just about to get some sleep.
GG: you sleep more than a denizen!
EB: rude. :T
EB: don't worry, we'll definitely catch up soon!
GG: im holding you to that, buster! next time you skip, its intervention time!
"No luck?" someone asks, sympathetic, while Jade throws back her head to voice a deep, heart-felt groan. The bonfire's crackling in earnest now, casting dim red sparks into the air and attracting a sprinkling of fireflies from the lantern tree hives up on the grassy knoll. Teeny bugs ferry stolen sparks back to the tree to light up the bulbous crystal hives for the night; the more daring ones snag a few embers from the bottom of the fire pit and speed back home before it can singe through their tiny feelers. In the distance, Jade can see another group down the beach with a smaller fire - trolls, she thinks, judging by the furtive looks they're casting at the kids' bonfire with wary, luminescent eyes. They're right on the border between the two kingdoms, close enough that seeing residents of another region isn't too odd. Any second now a bunch of consorts are going to crest the ridge and tumble onto the beach with an enormous cauldron; they're just as loyal and adoring as the carapacians, with none of the subtlety or nuance. Dave always tries to dodge the nakodiles and their attempts to cook him into a hearty stew, but Jade doesn't intend to warn him ahead of time. That would take the fun out of it!
Plus, she's worried about other things. Like her silly absentee brother. She uncaptchalogues her guitar to pluck at the strings, but sets it down beside her. She's not really in the mood, anymore. "No. John...I think he's really having trouble. He never seems to have the energy to come out, anymore," Jade sighs, accepting a slice of pineapple from the tray that Jake's passing around. Roxy's sprawled out with her head in Calliope's lap and her feet slung over Dirk's; she's dyed her hair with streaks of cotton-candy pink-and-blue since Jade last saw her but the roots are already visible, and it stands out against her dark skin in messy, loose curls. As night falls in earnest, Rose's long golden dress looks like liquid amber, like the liquor she has tucked in the crook of her elbow as she deftly steals a finished s'more off Dave's paper plate.
John should be here. Urgh. Now worry eats away at Jade's mind, and she starts to crunch on the pineapple without really tasting it, too distracted to focus on any of the conversations.
Aradia hums thoughtfully, and passes Jade another plate. "Jade, please listen to me."
Jade freezes.
"I need you," Aradia continues, "to stick around. Just for a little while! These moments seem to accept interruption more easily than others."
"Huh? Or what?" Jade asks, with a tiny hiccup in her laugh. The fire wavers, and there's a staticky fuzz nibbling at the edges of her vision as she turns to look at Aradia, good and proper. Some of the details that seemed so clear a moment ago fade as her vision narrows. Definitely a dream, again - she would have noticed it sooner, but it's all so similar to the bonfire they held earlier today -
Aradia laughs and pats Jade's knee. Her eyes are manic, wide and fixed on Jade, knife-sharp teeth bared in a sickle grin. "Or you're all going to die!" she says, like it's the most obvious thing in the world.
And Jade -
-
- wakes up -
-
- with a snort, and a jolt, and she accidentally smacks a dent into the polished metal of the bar table with the flat of her palm. Troll furniture is sturdier; human kingdom stuff isn't built to handle space-enhanced, god tiered reflexes. Whoops. Roxy almost chokes on her spoonful of frozen yogurt, surprised by the sudden bang, and a group of teens bust out in a fit of giggles across the room. "An' I thought me'n Rose went hard last night!" Roxy says, once she gags and spits the spoon back down into her bowl; she reaches out and helps steady Jade on her barstool. Which is nice! But Jade doesn't really need the help - sitting up straight is a bit of a non-issue when you can fly on command. "You all night? Right, I mean?"
Jade mushes her cheeks together and rubs her eyes. She doesn't remember dozing off - she just set her cheek against the cool table for a second while she was curled up laughing at some joke Roxy made - but she must have. Blrgh. With a snap of her fingers, she rights her spilled bowl of salted caramel fro-yo. The butterscotch leaves a steaky smear on the table top, and Jade grimaces at it. "I didn't even drink anything last night," she complains, sticking her spoon into the corner of her mouth and pouting at her now-lopsided dessert. "I don't know why I keep napping so much these days!"
Roxy points her spoon at Jade with a grand flourish. "Take it from a gal with the know, 'kay?" she says, sagely. Her tone is off-set a little by how jittery-fast her words are, slurred together not because of alcohol but because she keeps talking over herself with hyperactive pep. "When you got to nap, you got to nap. Or get all kinds of caffeinated. I know you love to wake up at dawn o'clock in the morning like a chipper dipper, but there's like. Consequences to that shit." Her wisdom imparted, she starts back in on her fro-yo, crunching down with her back teeth on the glittery hard candy Calliope offered as a topping earlier.
"Maybe. I'm just worried that my narcolepsy is coming back," Jade says, with a complex sigh. A sigh of many tiers! A plurality of sighs! "I used to fall asleep all the time, but I'd wake up on Prospit, so at least I had fun and learned stuff. I don't know why it's happening again now."
Calliope raises a shy claw, her perfectly round eyes glossy with worry. "Um, I have some candy, if you need something sugary!" she says, the pale hair of her wig shadowing her face. Some days are better for Calliope than others: when it's just her and the kids, she tends to skip the heavy cosplay makeup and wig and prosthetics, but out in public, under the overwhelming pressure of the eyes of an entire world, she retreats to her cosplay where self-image fails. It's only the wig, today, which is a pretty big deal! She knots her claws in the pretty swirl of her dress at another bubble of laughter from the human teens in the corner, ducking her head over her bowl of raw meat, but when Jade shoots the teens a suspicious squint, they're still bent over their phones.
The offer is nice, but Jade takes one look at the green-and-red glitter in Roxy's bowl and shakes her head with a sigh. It looks like sprinkles made of shiny plastic, and not something she really wants to eat. She doesn't know how Roxy does it. "Thanks, Callie, but I'm good! I'll try to get more sleep tonight, I guess."
"O-okay! Suit yourself!" Calliope says, with a tiny falter in her smile that makes Jade's stomach pang. But then Calliope turns her attention back to her bowl and wraps her entire pale tongue around a gobbet of meat, slurping a little and sighing contentedly as she swallows, and the moment passes. Roxy giggles and points out a fleck of blood for Calliope to dab off on her chin, smiles warmly when Calliope wipes it off and asks her to check again, and then tries to offer her a spoonful of frozen yogurt. Calliope is game to try it, as usual, but also wrinkles her whole face at the taste of the yogurt, and she and Roxy start to play-argue over carnivorous desserts.
Jade smudges a finger through the caramel, and spins her barstool around to see where the napkins are, to better teleport them into her hand. It's kind of a waste not to finish her own bowl, but she feels weird after that nap; food doesn't really seem appealing right now.
Aradia presses a paper napkin into Jade's hand, and closes her claws over Jade's fingers. Jade flinches hard, elbows her bowl halfway down the bar counter. "Let's try another approach, then," the troll says gaily, her claws digging in a tad too deep and leaving tiny marks in Jade's skin. She reeks of ozone and wet stone. "Jade, you're dreaming."
Well, Jade knows that now! Jeez! "No, really? I couldn't tell." She rolls her eyes and tries to twist her hand free, but Aradia's clamped down hard enough to make bone creak. Jade frowns, but doesn't see the point of trying to teleport free; she can sense the static again, sharp shards of black and white flickering in the edges of her vision. The last thing she wants to do is teleport in her sleep and wake up in the middle of Troll Kingdom traffic! Roxy drums her rainbow-painted fingernails against the metal, her feet swinging as she plucks a stray chunk of hair out of Calliope's eyes. Calliope is frowning to herself, her tongue peeking out of her mouth like she's deep in thought. Neither of them seem to notice Aradia's sudden appearance at the table. Jade's dreaming mind can't keep up the illusion that they're real; now that she realizes what's going on, she'd rather just wake up. The sense of déjà vu in this dream is really starting to nag at her -
"No, Jade, it's okay!" Aradia smooths the wide grin from her face. Without it, she looks younger - more tired - both at the same time, which is a weird combo. As the frozen yogurt shop starts to fizzle in and out of focus, Jade studies the Aradia that her dream keeps drawing out of her subconscious: her dark, curly hair a cascade of tangled disarray, the kind of thorny knots that takes Dave hours to comb out of Karkat's hair when he gets bristly; the yellow sclera of her eyes bloodshot with burgundy and underscored with heavy, rust-dull bags. Jade can't remember the last time she saw Aradia - before they escaped to the safety of this new world, leaving the other Calliope to swallow up Lord English in the shattered remnants of the old - but she doesn't thiiink she looked this tired? In the fleeting moments Jade ever saw her, Aradia always seemed bursting with life in the middle of the dreaming dead, alight with morbid glee.
...Huh. Jade thought the dream bubbles would have all been shattered by now. Maybe Aradia's tagged along on a stray bubble to dip into the new world for a visit. Dream bubbles are weird that way, apparently; probably only Feferi and her Horrorterrors knew how they really worked, and no Feferis, living or dead, ever made it to the victory platform.
"Please, stay a while," Aradia coaxes. "Aren't you curious why I'm here?"
Jade realizes that she probably just spent a minute awkwardly staring at dream Aradia. It took her a while to pick up on social nuance like how long a stare is acceptable after so many years alone, but just because she's dreaming doesn't mean she needs to get sloppy about following politeness scripts! "I figured it was because my dreams are weird," Jade says, giving her head a vigorous shake to clear it. A wave of vertigo rushes through her head when she closes her eyes, and she opens them again to steady herself. She puts on her best stern friend look and gives Aradia tiny frown as she teleports her hand free. "Not that it's not nice to see you, but I could really use some rest right now, okay? I'm very tired, and dreaming like this isn't very restful!"
Just when Jade thinks the black and white, wavering phosphenes eating up her vision are about to swallow her and end the dream so she can wake up properly (she feels as though she's been asleep for ages), Aradia's voice cuts, full of warning clicks, cuts through the static. "Leaving now would be a big mistake."
Jade's eyes snap open. She glares, straightening up and raising her chin to better glare at Aradia. "...Are you threatening me? Because I'm feeling kinda threatened, here," she says, folding her arms. Aradia looks exhausted, but she's still haunting Jade with remarkable persistency. Even if Jade can teleport away in the blink of an eye, that does not necessarily means she can teleport away in time. Not when there's a Time player being a meddly meddler all over the place.
Aradia's head bobs for a second - then she breathes deeply, tilting her head and horns back and baring her wrists. Her smile is as wobbly as her hands. "Sorry. Not a threat," she says, all the rattling clicks smoothed out of her voice. Then, with ominous speed, Aradia's smile sharpens into something just this side of dangerous. "Just a statement of a fact. Death isn't a particularly terrible thing, but there's still housekeeping to be done. I need you to wake up, Jade."
And...yep! Jade's too sleepy for any of that to make sense. She gives up on staying on guard and buries her whole face in her hands, mashing her eyes as she emits an extended 'hrrrmnlgl.' The frozen yogurt shop has all but collapsed in a mush of staticky background noise; the last sad remnants of Jade's dessert have vanished in the hazy liminal space between this weird dream and waking, and Jade's absurdly put out by that. There's a distant, nasty taste on her tongue, like an omen of bad morning breath to come, and Jade can't deal with that unless Aradia stops being a butt. "Hoo, boy. You're right, I definitely need to wake up now," Jade says, clapping her hands together and then waving both at Aradia. She summons up a pleading smile - she can't do perky at the moment. "I'll talk to you later, Aradia, okay?"
Aradia's eyes widen in alarm. She reaches toward Jade - too slow. Jade's already snapped her fingers. "Wait - !"
-
- and -
-
Jade wakes up.
For a second, the carnation pink of the ceiling throws her off; it's similar enough to the décor in Roxy's room that she gets a double scoop of déjà vu ice cream. The soft pink cotton sheets of Jade's Carapace Kingdom bed look peachy orange in the late morning light - she's overslept. Again. She kicks off the sheets that have tangled around her feet, and has to gently waft them to the floor with a flutter of Space when her kick nearly sends the sheets flying over her freshly potted orchids. At some point during her sleep she toed off her socks and wriggled out of her pajama pants, and the pants are already hanging off the bowed stem of a very overburdened pink orchid. Gah. Jade pulls her golden shirt down and rolls out of bed into the air, floating over the windows so that none of the poor carapacians outside can see her half-dressed. It's too late to spare the carapacians who tend to wander the players' tower quarters - Jade registers a shuffle and click of hard-plated feet on the pink marble at the top of the stairs, and then a rattle and a clink. By the time she drapes her blanket over her shoulders in a pink mantle, the carapacian who just delivered a golden tray, loaded up with raspberry and hibiscus tea and bacon and eggs, has already hustled down the stairs at top speed to avoid being gently reminded that Jade doesn't actually want to be brought breakfast offerings. Devout Culinarian is notorious for bragging about being the only carapacian fast enough to bring food to the gods without getting caught in the act and asked to stop, and Jade doesn't have the heart to teleport the carapacian back up here when the carapacian so goshdarn proud of it.
Plus, she doesn't think she got even a singular solitary wink of good sleep last night, and now she's rolled right along past tired into feeling horribly, agonizingly awake. If she did call DC back, she'd be horribly cranky about the whole thing, and Jade doesn't want that at all. After a few minutes of listlessly sorting through her wardrobifier, Jade snaps on her god tier dress instead. It's too hot for her to sulk in the direct sunlight for more than a few seconds, but shortening her sleeves and skirt into something more manageable is easier on her beleaguered, sleep-deprived brain.
Somehow, this is Aradia's fault. Jade doesn't know how the troll keeps butting into her dreams like this, but Jade can't pretend it's just her dreaming mind playing tricks on her. Not anymore. There's too much funny business afoot, and Jade doesn't appreciate the lack of explanation! With a perma-frown etching itself between her brows, Jade scoops up the tea and pretends it has caffeine in it as she drinks, in the hopes that the placebo effect will help her feel less dead from the neck up. Today - what was she planning to do, today? Augh, all of Aradia's dream muckery has Jade all out of whack! Yesterday's friend-date with Roxy and Calliope feels like it was ages ago.
Right. John. She needs to drag John out to get some fresh air. Once he's out of the house, John always has fun; it just seems to take so much effort to persuade him it'll be fun in the first place. If this keeps up, Jade doesn't know what they're gonna do - Rose has made off-handed comments about resurrecting her thirteen-year-old self's pseudo-psychoanalyzing hobby, but under that there's always a current of unease. Between Rose, Dave, and Jade, none had normal childhoods; actual therapy is a mystery to them, let alone how therapy works when most of the new world worships you.
One day at a time. Jade pulls up Pesterchum, floating down the round stairwell without touching the rest of the breakfast tray. She's sure it would be delicious, but she's on a mission, now!
GG: hey, john, are you awake?
EB: no, sorry, john's not awake right now! :P
GG: very funny
GG: i meant it last time! im coming to get you for brunch!
EB: jade...
GG: oh no you dont! no buts and no butts!
EB: i just need to take care of some housekeeping really quick!
EB: i'll come visit you tomorrow, pinky promise.
GG: you cant pinky promise me from another kingdom dummy!
EB: it's a metaphorical pinky, okay? i'm wafting it toward you on the breeze as we speak.
EB: and after i'm done here we can go find pie that wasnt made by janes dumb rebranded crocker corp
GG: are you still hung up on that?
EB: she wears a mind control doohicky around her neck and uses it to brainwash people. yeah, i'm still hung up on that.
GG: if by people you mean jack noir...
EB: that's messed up batterwitch tactics and i'm having none of it until you all wake up and smell the brainwashed coffee!
EB: ashklghlkas never mind.
GG: are nanna and dad helping at least?
GG: they can clean way better and faster than you, i bet, mr sleeps in his god tier jammies!
EB: i haven't seen them in a while.
EB: look, rain check on brunch, but tomorrow for sure.
GG: nooo! i'm putting my foot down, john!
EB: we'll catch up then, just you and me.
GG: uh-uh! cleaning later, fresh air now!
AA: you should probably let him be :)
Jade fumbles her phone; she whips around and oh look, there's Aradia! In the flesh! Hanging out in one of the open, arched windows that look out over the carapacian capital, her legs folded crisscross on the window seat, and just 'cause her eyes are tired doesn't mean she can't look pleased as punch with herself. She smiles at Jade with a wink.
Jade puts her phone away and throws her hands in the air. "Aradia! I'm trying to do stuff!" she says, exasperated.
Aradia folds her claws under her chin, leaning forward as Jade stomps back up the stairs toward her. "Tell me," she says; she's so calm that Jade's thrown off her stride.
But now the floodgates open. Maybe if Jade weren't so tired - maybe if she weren't stuck in dreams that slur together in a bleary stream of consciousness; maybe if Aradia weren't sitting there, expectant but with an exhausted slump in her shoulders that mirrors Jade exactly - but it pours out of her, one way or another. Everything that Jade was tearing her hair out over long before Aradia haunting her became a thing. "John hasn't left his house in ages!" she says, raking her hair out of her face. "I don't think anyone in the Human Kingdom even remembers what he looks like!" Aradia nods along, her gaze intent, and Jade keeps pacing and babbling. If Aradia wants to listen, she darn well gets to listen. "Dave went by to check on him once, and all he does is wander around and microwave food and watch old movies and lay in bed with his phone! It's not okay! He's been getting worse and worse for over a year now, and I don't know what to do!"
Jade finishes in a shout; her volume rose over the course of her sentence to near-Karkat decibels. There's piercing sympathy in Aradia's expression when Jade whirls around on the step, and Jade - doesn't know what to do about that. There's a knot in her chest that tightens whenever she thinks about John's isolation these days, and now it's lodged in her throat. Jade doesn't know what else to say. The only other thing bothering her right now is Aradia, and Aradia already knows about that. If the troll doesn't have anything to say -
"Is that what you think he does, in here?" Aradia asks, thoughtful. Curious. And there's something off about the way she words that.
Jade frowns. The knot in her throat clears, but leaves behind an odd, hollow sensation in her chest. Like there's something obvious she isn't seeing, here. With nothing better to fill the hollow, unease seeps in. There is something that Aradia is just barely talking around, if only Jade were smart enough to see it. "What's that supposed to mean?" she asks, slowly, turning the words over in her head. In here? Not in there?
"Nothing!" Aradia flashes her a brilliant smile and tilts her head to the side, her eyes crinkled with amusement. "Let's talk kingdoms. What are they here, again?"
Okay, now this is just basic stuff. If Aradia hadn't seemed so panicked earlier by Jade snapping out of the last dream, Jade would be suspicious that she was being trolled in the traditional human sense of the word. But Aradia waits, and finally Jade flops down on the window seat across from her. "There's a troll kingdom, a human kingdom, a consort kingdom, and a carapacian kingdom," she recites, counting off on her fingers. Then she tries a conversation redirect of her own. "How long have you been visiting in dreams? Why hasn't anyone else mentioned seeing you?"
Aradia ignores Jade's questions completely. She nods to herself instead, her coiled horns bobbing deeply enough that Jade spots a tiny crack threading its way through the pale orange section. It looks like a thin crack, but it hasn't healed over at all. It has to be recent. "I see! Now tell me, Jade...are you familiar with cherubim folklore?" she asks.
Yet another weird tangent. Jade's supremely experienced with weird dream logic, but this is hard to follow. "Not particularly. I mean, Calliope and I talked about it a little while back, but I didn't keep up with it," Jade says, waving a hand. Calliope has always seemed more interested in asking about human and troll cultures, though she's one of the best at telling interesting stories when she gets in a talky mood.
Aradia nods, and splays out her claws. When she speaks, she puts on a voice that's obviously meant to imitate someone - the other spider troll, maybe? Jade can't remember half their names, and they never seemed particularly relevant to anything important. "According to the lore - imparted to me by various sources of questionable repute," Aradia says, at least half-joking, "cherubs speak of seven continents out of legend: Zillyhoo, Zillywut, Zillyhau, Zillywair, Zillywigh, and one perhaps known as Zillywen. Cherubs can't really conceptualize a lot of nuance unless they study other cultures. They're very asocial and territorial by default." She leans her head back and turns to look out over the city; Jade follows Aradia's gaze, but there isn't much of a view left that isn't dreamlike and surreal. Just smudges of gold and blue where the city and the sky used to be, with crayon-outlined clouds drifting past overhead. When she continues, Aradia sounds thoughtful again. "I suppose Calliope just plugged the four main species into their own individual kingdoms, fast-forwarded past the tricky bits of each civilization's development, and then couldn't imagine why they'd ever want to mingle or overlap with each other. Everyone gets their own little slot and so: no wars, no trade, no prejudice - just isolated bubbles. She's clearly trying her best, but the world-building here leaves a lot to be desired."
She's talking at light-speed, almost too fast for Jade to follow. Faster than Roxy on one of her candy highs. Not quite as fast Dave's veritable word-vomit after Calliope broke out the sugary sweets for Rose and Kanaya's wedding, but that was a special occasion, and Dave is a motor mouth at the best of times. Aradia looks back at Jade at the end, waggling her eyebrows as though inviting Jade in on a grand joke. But Jade's just...lost. Again. Urgh, this is the first time she's kept up such a length conversation with Aradia since the troll first started haunting her, but it's the opposite of helpful. Jade isn't sure why she's bothering to try to keep up with weird dream possibly-ghost logic, except that she's the dream gal! If there's something important here and none of the others have received similar dream visitations, then it's up to Jade to suss out what's going on. "What are you trying to say?"
Aradia leans in, and crooks a claw at Jade. Jade leans closer in turn so that Aradia can speak right in her ear, her voice low and dead serious. "I'm saying, it's just not realistic," Aradia says, emphatic. Her hand sneaks up to clasp Jade's shoulder, even though Jade should have been able to sense it coming; Jade jolts and Aradia squeezes her in desperation. "Jade, I need you to wake up soon. Please. Sollux is gone, and that was the last Sollux we had. We need you guys to come back, now."
The tower lurches five feet to the left under Jade's feet, and vertigo sets in like a slap to the face as Jade reels away. No - no, the tower didn't move, that was Jade. Aradia still sits on the window seat, frozen with her hand cupping the empty air where Jade's shoulder used to be; her red eyes follow Jade's stilted teleport with unerring ease, her claws slowly curling as she drops her hand. Jade can't see or sense anything physical and real around her; the dream-version of the carapace capital has almost completely dissolved into dreamy slush, and she can't find her bearings. "I need...I need to find John," Jade says; her tongue feels heavy and thick. She needs to wake up and go to John's house and - say something. These dreams are getting out of hand.
"I don't think you're going to be able to find him," Aradia says, her face sad and sympathetic and despairing all over. She floats out the window after Jade, her pale red wings dusting the golden stone with sparks before the window seat dissolves, too.
Jade can't teleport accurately while asleep, but she'll have to give it her best shot; the longer she stays here, the more terrified she is that she won't be able to wake up. How long has this dream lasted? When was the last time she was actually awake?
John. She can find him. She can. "I have to! I can't lose him again!" bursts out of her mouth, instead. Aradia reaches out, her hand brushing soft against Jade's, and Jade yanks her arm back and claps her hands over her ears. Her eyes screw up shut; there's nothing to see. Neon green light pulses, visible even through her eyelids as Jade starts to ramp up to a blind teleport. "Just stop Aradia! I need to -"
-
- wake up -
-
Aradia's voice is painfully gentle. "Jade, it's been four years. I'm worried that if you all don't wake up soon, you won't wake up at all."
-
Jade teleports to John's house.
For some reason, she appears in Kanaya's greenhouse, next to a crassula with pink, star-shaped flowers. Her feet skid a little in the gravel pathway and she starts to walk out at once, sweat breaking out under her arms as the surprise sets in.
That's...not right. Something's wrong. There's no way Jade miscalculated her jump that badly. John's house is all the way in the Human Kingdom; if she's at Kanaya's, she barely cleared the carapace capital's suburbs to reach the countryside. She float-hops over Kanaya's dedicated patch of melons to reach the exit faster as panic starts to chill her.
But! Good news! Rose looks up outside the open door to the greenhouse, setting a small lavender notebook down on the wrought-iron table and beckoning Jade outside, her wedding ring flashing in the sunlight. The greenhouse is heavy with the scent of jasmine and freshly turned soil. Rose's hair looks like white-gold in the sun.
All of it feels unreal. Not Rose, not so much, but -
"Jade? We weren't expecting you." Rose calls. There's a glass of pale wine beside her notebook.
The glass panels of the greenhouse flash black and white, cracking and shattering and sealing over again in an endless cycle. Kanaya strides out from behind a spirea shrub, looking puzzled, her chainsaw still in hand.
"Rose shouldn't be drinking that," Aradia says, quietly, from somewhere behind Jade. "Just like none of you should be eating hard candy juju. You can't drown your problems in game-breaking drugs and skip past the hard parts. A delicious ex machina is still a cop out, no matter how sweet it tastes."
Jade feels something grate in her chest like glass shards, and teleports them to John's house with a stamp of her foot. "Stop it!" she shouts - then she cuts herself off. She missed John's house again, and they've wound up somewhere on the bank of a thick, sluggish pink river. It isn't cold, but there's tiny dots of white snow falling from overhead. Jade has never seen this place before in her life. "I'm tired of dreaming, Aradia! Let me see my friends! Let me see John!" she says. Her voice cracks. She needs to -
-
- wake up!
-
Jade clutches her head, feeling the hot, electric crackle of space sparks rioting along her arms. She sinks into a crouch, and tries to hold on to the sensation of the mint-green grass around her calves - the sugar sweet taste when she flicks her tongue out to lick white snow off her lips.
No good. It's all...pretty clearly fake! Jade presses her face against her knees and doesn't look up when Aradia walks soundlessly up to her. She can sense Aradia moving with perfect clarity; she's the only solid thing around for miles. Everything else is -
"I really am trying to help you do that," Aradia says. She crouches across from Jade, her arms resting on her knees. Jade can't see her expression, but she can feel Aradia's hand come up and touch Jade's hair. Just once. "Please believe that I would never take joy from tormenting you. I've tried to buy you all as much time as I'm able to rest - but time's kind of a hot commodity, these days! And there's not a lot of it left!"
Jade rests her forehead on her knees, and tentatively cracks an eye open. The illusory grass soughs away under her feet, and there's nothing underneath except a blank plane.
Waking up after spending so much time dreaming feels weird. Jade can't even guess how long it has been. Years? All the years they thought they spent growing up and growing older and growing happier? She looks up, and Aradia is the most familiar sight in a wash of static-riddled white. The troll smiles crookedly at Jade, but even more remarkably - she has weight. Substance. She looks about as exhausted as Jade feels, right now.
Jade straightens her hunched shoulders with some effort; her voice sounds hoarse. "Aradia. What exactly is going on? Are you okay?"
Because now that Jade can actually see, Aradia is covered with the shadows of old, greyed scars. The crack in her horn has healed over with a white-yellow seam, but it's only the most obvious injury; there are chips all along the outer curves. Her god tier uniform looks dull and worn, and she's favoring her right arm. It's subtle! But now that Jade is paying attention, it's pretty obvious.
Aradia's smile widens into something painful. "Heheh. You know? I don't think I am," she says, with her trademark cheer. Jade blinks at the difference between her tone and what she's saying. The troll rolls up on the balls of her feet and then back. All the sparkly dust from her wings fizzles out with nowhere to go, drifting in the empty space and clustering around her heels. She sounds ten different kinds of tired and sad under the crooked grin. "I thought I was! But I'm...heh."
Aradia shakes her head, then starts again. "Do you ever have one of those moments where you look back, and realize that you weren't really having any fun at all? All this time, I thought it would be so interesting to watch it all fall apart, yet now that it's actually happening?" She leans her cheek on one hand, staring ruefully over Jade's shoulder. "Heheheheh. All I can do is laugh."
And Jade -
- cracks. Just a little. Just enough to reach out and snag Aradia's free hand, and squeeze it impulsively. "Just - stay here, with us. You can rest here," Jade says, and even as she says it, she can feel sleep weighing heavy on her eyelids. The dream's right there, waiting for her to fall back in. Aradia lifts her head, eyes flashing with alarm, but Jade can't seem to stop babbling. She hates it. She can't stop saying it. "Terezi went back to look for Vriska, so there's definitely still a way in. You and Terezi, actually! She's been gone for way too long! Both of you, just -" she clamps down harder on Aradia's hand and bites down on her own lip hard enough to draw blood.
Because she's only been awake and aware for a few minutes, and she already misses that world like burning. Jade can feel the pull of Rose and John and Dave like gravity wells - it would be so easy to find them again and sink back into their happy ending.
But Aradia laces her claws with Jade's fingers, and shakes her head. "No, no," she murmurs, smiling sympathetically at Jade. Her eyes sink shut for a long moment, but Aradia forces them back open with clear effort. "Can't catch me that easy! It took a while for Terezi to think her way out of it, but she's free now. She's working with us. Which is good; Terezis are in short supply, these days." Aradia sighs. "Vriska talked right over her a lot. I think she's doing better, now."
Jade. Well. Jade doesn't know rightfully what to say to that! She didn't really know Vriska all that well, or at all; people who aren't Terezi always prefer not to talk about her, and once Terezi was gone Kanaya and Karkat tended to share uneasy looks before talking about anything that wasn't Vriska. She was apparently a pretty uncomfortable subject! "She wasn't that bad, surely -" Jade says, weakly.
Aradia makes a cutting gesture with her hand, grimacing. "Vriska's...a divisive subject. It doesn't matter. She wanted to be the hero, and she got exactly what she wanted. And we're out of Vriskas, too."
Now see, Jade's starting to piece together all the fragments of Aradia's visits. And quite frankly, she doesn't like the gist of what she's heard. Sollux gone, Terezi in short supply, and now all the Vriskas dead. All of them? All is an awful lot! "If you're dying out there, just come here. It's safe here where all our friends are. That's what this world is for!" she says, tripping over her words, only half aware of what she's saying.
"No, Jade. It's really not." Aradia very firmly untangles their hands. Her grin turns toothy again. "It's tempting. I'm very tired, now. But I'm afraid skipping the end of the adventure isn't for me! And I think you know, deep down, that it isn't for you."
The answer is right there. Jade and Aradia are both talking around the subject, now, which is a little silly.
Jade breathes in. "Aradia. Where are we?"
-
And Jade -
-
- is very, very awake. She can make out the hazy, two-dimensional image of her Prospit rooms floating across the white expanse over Aradia's shoulder, colored in with gold and pink crayon, but she knows it's not really there. Even if Aradia agreed and drifted off to sleep with her, Jade suspects they never would have been able to fully live it. Not the way Jade has been living the illusion, all these years. Reality is too hard to ignore, now. It reeks of ozone.
"You're in a cherub's idea of a happy ending," Aradia says, with a flourish of her claws. "We're just lucky that the cherub in question studied some of the cultures in question, or it might not even be as realistic as it is. Everyone is happy! You all get married, make new grubs, live on a thriving world full of people who worship and adore you, and no one needs to worry about the fight still raging outside your bubble. Calliope is doing her best, but to be honest? She's pouring all her power and significance down the drain."
While Aradia explains, Jade chances a glance over her own shoulder. Behind her, through the veneer of white, she can just barely make out the black and white shards of shattered reality, flickering wildly around a black hole. But - "Calliope? She hasn't done anything, though! She's sweet!" Jade says, distractedly, reaching out with her power to try to sense the battle raging outside this safe spot. The black hole sings in her space sense, though; it's all encompassing. It's the work of a Muse. Jade has to reel her focus back in before it can swallow her whole.
Aradia shakes her head. "She was returned to life to play more a role than this; instead, she's trying to hand you all victory without any effort, and it's not working. I'm afraid of burning out Feferi trying to contact her directly. She's the only one we've got left, and also my own timeline's Feferi, so I'm a little attached!"
The only Feferi left. Right. Ha. Jade tallies that up along with the other hints Aradia has given, and comes up with a number she doesn't like. "But you're all still out there. You've been out there," she says, mostly to herself. Her head starts to droop, and she covers her eyes with her hand. Can Rose still see her from here? Or has Jade just vanished from the dream reality altogether? Will they even miss her?
Jade's shoulders hunch inward as her breath catches. "Hmrfl. But I. I can't," she says, curling up around the spike of pain sliding into her stomach. She can't meet Aradia's eyes, but the world seems rosier the longer Jade squeezes her eyes shut.
Aradia's voice breaks. "Jade, please. You're so close -"
Jade lashes out with a flare of green - Aradia raises her hands in time and the burst of force parts around her hands, but the impact blows her hair out of her face and slams her back three feet. Jade rockets to her feet, shaking, burning like a star, woozy with terror. "I can't! I can't lose all of them again! I don't want to be alone again! Do you know what it's like, spending years all by yourself - it's lonely, it's so lonely! I just want my friends!" Her tears sizzle off her face almost as soon as they escape her eyes; she's running too hot, ferociously hot, and the white plain starts to bubble and warp under her. Jade can't tell if she's shaking, or if the world is starting to shudder under her feet.
Aradia shields her face with an arm as she rises up off her knees and steps toward Jade. "You won't be alone. I promise," she says. Her smile is horribly sad.
It's not enough. "You don't know that! We're all alive in here, and you said you're dying out there!" Jade yells back, gesturing uselessly behind her. Aradia takes another step forward and Jade panics, another flare of force bursting out of her control to try to push Aradia back. "What if one of them dies and that's it! They'll be gone, and all that's there to replace them is some ghost copy with totally different memories?! People aren't interchangeable like that!" The very thought is terrifying. She's dreamed four years of living happily with Rose and Dave and John; the idea of losing all that -
Aradia's eyes look wet, but she scrunches them up and smiles the hardest smile Jade has ever seen. "I know. Sometimes, you just have to keep living, anyway."
All the fire runs out of Jade at once; she slumps and staggers, covering her face with her hands. Green pulses between the blackened scorch marks she's left in the floor, like radioactive blisters, just visible between her fingers. "I can't," she says. Her eyes feel scorched dry; the thought of tearing up again makes her ache.
Aradia touches Jade's shoulder, then her cheek, tentatively. The pads of her claws feel fire-warm against Jade's skin - which is great! Because she feels...very cold. There's nothing out here to warm the space between universes anymore; just a black hole swallowing all the heat and light, and cracks endlessly looping around the singularity, knotting what little is left of reality in an ouroboric chain and locking the black hole in place.
"I'm sorry," Aradia says. She's not smiling anymore.
Jade wobbles on her feet, and then slumps forward. Aradia's arms come up around her while Jade buries her face in Aradia's warm shoulder. Jade sniffles when Aradia rests her chin on Jade's head - and then realization hits her. "Oh no. Oh, no," she says, one last sob hiccupping in her chest as she starts to laugh. "I've turned into her, haven't I? I'm a limp, soggy green noodle."
"Her?" Aradia asks, politely.
Jade raises her hands and very carefully hugs Aradia back, her hands pressing in the crook of Aradia's shoulders where her physics-defying wings emerge from slits in her shirt. The faint movement of Aradia's breathing feels wonderfully real against Jade. "My dreamself sprite. Augh, and I hated listening to her! It was like she was just...stuck. And now here I am, weeping and whining because I want to stagnate with my friends more than I want to face reality. We were always exactly the same." Well. Jade probably should have expected that! She'd criticized Jadesprite's weeping sooo much at the time, but Jadesprite was still a Jade. She's her own harshest critic.
But Jade's awake now. And falling back into that dream - no matter how much that part of her that wants to be able to rest - isn't tempting enough to override that visceral frustration she felt all those years ago while trying to talk Jadesprite into facing reality and being useful again.
Eurgh. Jade thinks she owes Aradia an apology!
Aradia chuckles, tipping her head so that her cheek rests on Jade's hair. "Only a little bit," she says, a smile in her voice. Then she pulls back a little, smiling lopsidedly at Jade. "You, John, Rose, and Dave are the cornerstones of this. It began with you, and it needs to end with you. We need you to wake up, more than anybody."
Jade clears her throat; her mouth and eyes are achingly dry. She smiles back at Aradia, a little shakily. "I'm sorry it took so long."
It's a sobering thought, actually - four years. Four years of living in a dream, while Aradia and the others kept fighting out here. And there weren't a lot of safe places left to fight from, even before that! Reality has only shattered more since then. Jade has intimate knowledge of just how long three years can feel - that was almost a quarter of her life spent isolated on that ship while crossing the Yellow Yard, by the time she hit sixteen - and four years of fighting for your life, on top of that? When do they find time to eat or sleep? Starving and sleep deprivation aren't exactly just or heroic deaths, but -
No wonder Aradia looks exhausted. There's a heavy loop of curly hair hanging in the troll's face, but Aradia seems to be too tired and relieved to do anything about it; Jade tucks it back behind the troll's ear on autopilot, before the thought that it miiight be a little weird to do that pings her a little too late. If it were Karkat, he'd throw a (very justified) fit about troll physical boundaries, which Jade suspects are very similar to human physical boundaries but with more pointy horn body language to account for. Thankfully, Aradia huffs out a quiet laugh, leans her head forward, and presses her forehead against Jade's. Which is basically the same thing as giving Jade the okay to tweak the wayward curls on the other side of Aradia's face back into line. Troll hair acts weirdly; even with Karkat and Kanaya's cropped short, according to Rose's reports Kanaya spends a great deal of time prodding her hair until the strands shift and arrange themselves to her satisfaction, only to have it go wild in a thorny thatch the instant she draws a chainsaw to trim a shrub with extreme prejudice. Karkat, in his own rude words, 'could not give less of a fuck about bristly hair living its own fucking life, Harley,' and that was the end of that conversation! Aradia has a heck of a lot more hair than either of them, and apart from the hair right around her face, most of the long curls are full of rigid, thorny knots. Jade accidentally combs her thumb down one of the knotted curls while fixing one of the loose strands, and it takes some picking before the hair relaxes enough for her to keep combing through it.
"Heheh. Not a problem," Aradia says, full of cheer. "Though I should warn you that this grooming is very nice. Very soothing."
Which...is a hint. Jade snaps her hands back with a tiny wince. Well, she hecked that one up! Ask before messing with someone's hair. "Oh! Uh, whoops. I'm sorry."
Aradia shrugs; she hasn't let go of Jade, so Jade can't step back out of the hug. The hug, in fact, continues to transpire. "Well, I wasn't saying no. I'd just rather not get complacent while we're still in Calliope's sphere of influence. She could stitch me into her narrative very easily - an old, eccentric friend, who escapes the death of the last world by the tips of her horns!" Aradia frees up one claw to tap the point of her cracked horn, with a tiny wink and a quirked smile.
"Huh." Jade thinks it over. Twice, to make sure! Living on an island with only a radioactive dog and a stuffed grandpa and dreams for company does not good social skills make, all the time, but Jade thinks she's caught this one. "...But not a no?" she ventures, tapping her fingers together.
An even more exaggerated wink, and Aradia laughs, her face open and bright again for the first time since - since Jade can remember. Not manic, on the edge of panic, or sad, or desperately cheerful. Just laughing. Jade can't help but laugh along with her. "Ask me again after we win!" Aradia says, holding out a hand as she swallows one last giggle. Jade takes the offered hand and gives it an experimental swing. "I'm done with dying," Aradia adds, with a note of rock-steady surety in her voice. "I intend to stay alive, and see this through to the end."
Jade nods - now they're cooking with petrol. "I still won't leave without John," she says, but it's not a protest. Just a statement of a fact! She'll go along with Aradia personally to pry Rose and Dave and the others out of the dream by their butts, if need be, but John...Jade's too worried about him, still, alone in his house. Maybe it's a Harley-Egbert thing, getting depressed and shutting down in isolation. It's hard. It's hard, and Jade can't leave him alone like that.
Aradia flashes a grin. This one is a little...sneaky. Cocky, one might say! "Oh, that shouldn't be an issue. We reached out to him a looong time ago, and he's been helping us where he can. He could sense something was off; this particular ending didn't satisfy him. Heirs are hard to pin down!" She smooths her hair back between her horns, while Jade spends a few quality seconds making incoherent mouth noises in disbelief.
Then Jade clutches the air uselessly and starts glaring around them, trying to pinpoint where John is in all this colorless dreamspace. "Oh my god, John! He couldn't have said something? I'm gonna kick his butt!"
Aradia pats her on the shoulder, but the reassurance is tempered by the fact that she's still got a teeny hint of smug in her smile. "He tries. Unfortunately, it tends to slide away from you like water off rain boots. He'll talk Rose through it, for example, but right when she catches on she'll become distracted, and take a sip of her drink, and fall back into her routine." Aradia snaps her claws and a heavy red phone pops into her hand from her sylladex. "He's probably still diverting you. I'll let him know we're coming," she says.
Jade summons her own phone; she can't quite make her face less grumbly, but...gah. At least this means John must be alright? "Urgh, I'll let him know myself. So dumb," she mutters.
GG: john!
GG: john dumbass egbert-harley!
EB: oh no, not the full name!
EB: hey, have you been talking to aradia?
GG: yes!!!
GG: you dummy, i was worried about you!
AA: shes awake now :)
AA: she figured it out remarkably fast!
EB: i can see that. :P
GG: how did you figure all this out before the rest of us?!
EB: i don't know!
EB: something was weird about...everything. so when aradia appeared it kind of made sense.
EB: and i couldn't just let things stay the way they were once i realized we didn't actually resolve anything.
EB: i must have messed something up with the retcon...
GG: so what have you been doing in your house all this time?!
GG: agh, were coming over!
EB: whoa, be careful! i think -
AA: see you in a sec!
Jade snorts and looks up from her phone. Aradia's smile is absolutely radiant - or maybe a better descriptor would be 'shit-eating.' Jade musters a pout, but it doesn't last long. She's starting to jitter and shift her weight from one foot to the other, ready to get moving. Now that she's awake, she feels way more energetic. "Okay. Plan. We go get John, then we snap some sense into Rose and Dave. Then we'll be able to leave the way you came, right? Or the way Terezi did." How did Terezi manage that? She must have thought her own way out of the dream ending, but not been able to reach back in. Jade always wondered at how Terezi's messages never came back legible...her best working theory used to be distortion from the black hole, but now she's not so sure.
"It may take a few attempts," Aradia says, her smile dimming a little. "Rose and Dave are both very happy; John was the most discontent, so he realized first."
And if it took this much effort for Jade to wake up and smell the apocalyptic coffee percolating outside their door, she can only imagine how hard it's going to be to wake Rose and Dave up. It's tempting - it couldn't hurt to let them stay happy, right? - but they can't afford to let them get stuck here. Jade breathes in and settles herself. "Well, now we'll all three be trying to squash some sense into them. It'll be fine," she says, with a firm nod of her head. Aradia nods back. "Now, let's go!"
Aradia laces their fingers. "Heheh. By all means," she says, falling in step beside Jade.
And Jade raises her free hand, and -
-
- snaps them to another part of the dream.
It's not hard to reach John's house, now. His neighborhood is just how Jade remembers it; green lawns stretching as far as the eye can see, all the houses vaguely similar, blocky white structures. The trees scattered on each lawn look older and wider, lush with fresh summer growth. The streets are weirdly empty; the wind skims between the suburban rows, carrying the faint, distant sound of reality through the streets. When John and Jane first moved in here (before John went quiet and Jane moved up in the world) Jade recalls seeing a lot more humans milling around. Apart from the excitement of having a god low-key move in next door, the people here seemed really sociable and friendly! There's usually always a kid or three playing in the front lawns or biking along the sidewalk.
But reality sounds like the thin, tinkling note of shattered time as it echoes outside the dream, and every single door is firmly shut to block it out. The prolific, soft clouds rolling overhead are filled with wildly flickering black and white cracks.
Calliope perches on John's doorstep, her claws trembling, folded together over her knobby knees.
Jade has spent so long lost in the dream that she doesn't remember what John's house looked like before, but she's pretty sure that the last time she visited, it wasn't surrounded by a defensive tornado. Calliope's sundress flutters out almost at a ninety-degree angle in the tempest, and if she was wearing a wig when she arrived, it is long gone. When Jade and Aradia land on the sidewalk, hand in hand, Calliope lurches to her feet with obvious difficulty, hugging her bone-thin arms to her chest as she struggles to walk toward them against the wind. Her eyes are perfectly round and wet with unnatural gloss, and when she looks up at Jade's face, they widen further still. She mentioned once that cherubs can't really cry, but she looks close to it right now. Jade's not sure what her expression looks like - she's filled with determination. It doesn't matter how Calliope realized they were coming here; what matters is that they're getting John. No ifs, ands, or buts about it!
"Jade. Hang on," Calliope says, her voice reed-thin and faltering. She stumbles a little on the pathway, and then stops dead. It would be easy for Jade to teleport past her, or for her and Aradia to drop their hands and go around.
But Calliope...is sweet. Despite everything, she's Jade's friend. And Jade...can't believe that Calliope did any of this to be malicious. There's just no way. Jade can feel Aradia tense up: her grip clamps down tight on Jade's hand when Jade comes to a halt, and Jade squeezes back just as tightly. "Sorry, Callie. We need to see John," Jade says, as gently as she can.
Calliope balls her hands up in her skirts, stricken. "B-but - he refuses to see anyone! He's been ignoring everyone for so long, and I was worried, and just a minute ago - you were burning, weren't you? I couldn't tell where you went -"
Then Calliope flinches, and takes half a step back. Her eyes flick up and down Jade in a quick scan, her tongue poking part of the way out between her perfectly pointed teeth. And then she shakes her head slowly, so slowly, and Jade's heart hurts. "Oh. Oh no," Calliope whispers, distressed, trembling like a leaf in John's breeze. "You know."
Well. There it is, the unsaid thing - as plain as day. Jade smiles, but in her head she's reassessing Calliope - recalculating just how strong the cherub must be to keep something like this running for years and years. "It's time for us to go, I think! If Lord English is still out there, we still have a job to do," she says, very firmly. For a second, it's...difficult. It's hard to look at the shock and hurt in Calliope's face and not want to soothe the hurt away. But nothing is real here except Aradia, warm and solid at Jade's side, and Calliope, and John, hidden somewhere deep in his nebulous not-real house, and Jade can't pretend anymore. "I really am sorry, Callie. But it's time!"
Calliope shakes her head faster, her eyes welling up with tears that can never spill over. When Jade sets her jaw and starts to circle around her, Calliope takes wide steps backwards to stay level with them on the wandering path up to John's door. The whirlwind intensifies as they approach, but Jade steadies herself and Aradia with a careful adjustment of their mass relative to gravity. "This is - aren't you happy here? I'm not terribly experienced with in-person socialization, but I thought...I thought we were friends. I thought I was helping!"
She looks distraught. Jade has to bite her lip and close her eyes for a moment - too long - her eyes feel so heavy - and it takes Aradia's soft, quiet tough between her shoulders before Jade can pull herself together. She shoots Aradia a grateful look, and Aradia smiles back. Jade watches Aradia's face as she answers Calliope. Which is probably a little rude! But it's hard to look away, right now. Even when she's a little bit of reassuring and smug at the same time, Aradia has a very nice smile. It's something about all the teeth. Jade can't quite quantify it yet, but Aradia smiles often enough that her eventual sample set should be pretty substantial! "You tried, Callie. But look around!" Jade waves at the suburbs around them - it all feels unreal, sure, but she can still sense the Human Kingdom spreading out around them. This Earth has never felt small to Jade's space sense, and generating a pseudo-reality the size of a planet must have taken a ton of effort. "How did you even make all this? It's amazing, but..." She trails off. "It's not real. We need to help everyone we left behind, even if it hurts. There's still a fight to finish."
"Oh -" Calliope lurches to a stop. She ducks her head, shudders running all through her skinny frame, and starts to dig into the impossibly deep pockets of her dress, pulling out fistfuls of loose paper along with her writing notebook. Roxy tried to talk her into a tablet or something similar, but Calliope has been using the same notebook as long as Jade can remember. Jade lingers, even when Aradia starts to shift uneasily, while Calliope flips through the pages; her claws hook too deep as she turns them, and the fragile paper starts to shred in thin strips. She flips the book down so Jade can catch a glimpse of diagrams and long paragraphs marking up the page. Tons of Calliope’s bright, cartoony, colorful scribbles cover the first page she holds up. All the while, Calliope talks, her teeth clattering audibly throughout. "No, no, it's okay! I accounted for that." She holds up another page too fast for Jade to make out more than a blur of color, and what appears to be a carapace-style moon. "See? Humans and trolls are tricky, notoriously tricky, but I have some experience with writing scenarios that should introduce realistic conflict into the setting." She rips an entire page out and keeps turning with the stray sheet impaled upon her claws. "I must admit it's going to be harder to manage the moon, but then it'll get blown up right away! The important thing is - more depth! More engagement!"
"Callie. Callie, stop," Jade says. They're so close to John's door now, but she stops and touches the back of Calliope's hand. The wild flurry of page-turning stops at once, and Jade can feel Calliope vibrating with distress; her breath sounds funny and short, like she's hyperventilating. If cherubs can do that, Callie is definitely doing it.
Very carefully, Jade closes Calliope's notebook for her. After a few more hard, shuddering breaths, Calliope looks up, and only once she makes eye contact does Jade continue. "I appreciate all the effort you're putting in. But roleplaying a life isn't the same as living it," she says.
And now she wonders how she missed that Calliope looks exhausted, too. It probably comes down to the fact that she's a cherub; Jade has a handle on what humans and trolls look like when they wear themselves down to nubs - Karkat does that basically on a daily basis - but there's no one else in the world like Calliope. That seems to be just the way Callie likes it, considering how cherubs get super territorial, but it means there's nobody to compare her too. But if Jade pulls up a memory of Calliope from when the two of them first met, Jade's sure that Callie's skin looks duller and faded, with a few subtle patches of peeling skin where she almost looks like she started shedding and got stuck halfway through. A lot of it is stuff that could be concealed by makeup or a wig - both of which Calliope already wears most of the time.
Jade hasn't been on top of her game, lately! But she's paying attention, now. And Calliope is just as tired as the rest of them. "But I don't want to be alone," Calliope says, staring down at her notebook without seeing it. Her claws are shaking harder than the rest of her. "I can't do anything to help you guys while you're out there! I'm useless!"
"Then you'll just have to come with us!" Aradia says, cheerfully.
Jade blinks. But that's nothing compared to Calliope, who flinches so hard her whole body jerks up, her eyes scanning Jade once - twice - and only then fixating on Aradia. Which makes no sense, since Aradia has been there this entire time. It's like Calliope just...didn’t register her presence. Jade gives Aradia a suspicious squint, and Aradia does her silly wink, linking her arm with Jade's and pressing close to her hip.
Meanwhile, Calliope breaths, "You are here. I thought someone was sneaking around. How did you do that?" She sounds more surprised than hostile. Almost fascinated. She stares at Aradia like she's seeing a ghost. This is probably exactly what Aradia wanted.
Sure enough, Aradia cocks her hip to one side, giving Calliope a short wave. "Heheh, I do try. This is the first time you've come out to greet me," she says gaily. "And I personally think you're on the right track!"
Before she can finish the thought, however, a loud bang! bursts out. Jade senses the door of John's house fly open, but the sudden noise as the wind slams the door against the wall makes her jump. Aradia barely pauses long enough to arch an eyebrow, unfazed; Calliope gives a tiny shriek, stuffing her notebook away and spinning to face John as he charges out the door. "Hey, you kids! Get off my lawn!" he yells, waving a very battered broom over his head.
An Heir charging toward you in a wave of his own element should be at least sorta intimidating. Except John has changed his god tier outfit so that his pants are white and blue Wind symbol boxers, and he looks totally ridiculous. Jade smacks her face. If this is what his dream neighbors have been dealing with for the past few months, she does not blame them for battening down the hatches! She floats John off his feet with a tiny flicker of space power, and John runs in place for a few seconds before he catches on and starts kicking his feet. He could probably just float forward on the wind, but when he tries to do it, Jade just flips him so his legs stick up at a ninety degree angle to the rest of him. It's John's default tantrum pose, and he automatically flops down, defeated. "John, you dork! We're talking, jeez!" Jade says, folding her arms.
John grumbles at the sky. "Yeah, I know. She keeps trying to talk me into staying. When she hangs around here, it's harder to see what's real," he says, snapping and pointing an accusatory finger at Calliope without looking away from the flickering clouds. He lets his head loll back toward the floor, and even upside down, Jade can see his hair is almost entirely cowlicks right now. The dummy probably hasn't seen the right side of a hairbrush since isolating himself. Just a few minutes of walking through John's windy thing has left Jade's hair a wild tangle that leans mostly to the right; John's hair will probably never lay flat again.
"What are you talking about?" Calliope says. But when Jade looks back at her, Calliope's looking at Aradia, not John. "I'm...I know I'm being selfish. But -"
Aradia laughs, sincere and deep in her chest, and she lets her arm slip from Jade's long enough to tap Calliope's notebook full of drawings and stories. "You're trying to inspire and create a whole new reality. That's not selfish, that's just pre-emptive musing!" she says, while Calliope's grip on her notebook tightens. "You've jumped the dual white wand/gun, though, and started building while there's still a force of utter destruction knocking on your door. You don't have enough to work with to make it real. Not yet. We need you, though. We need all of you to come back," she adds, smiling at Jade.
John hmphs, rolling over in the air so he can make a silly face at them upside down. Calliope hugs her notebook to her chest, and stares at Aradia as though she's seeing the sun for the first time. After a second, she laughs. It's a tiny, snuffling sound, but it's there. "I'm really not at my best today," Calliope says, tremulously. She sniffles and straightens, her wet eyes meeting Jade's. "You're right. I'm sorry."
And just like that, the world starts dwindling. The suddenness of it makes Jade wobble, and she grabs Aradia's hand to balance herself as the illusion starts to melt into a white plain. The white, blocky walls of John's house unfold like a house of cards and form more of the floor. Calliope lets out a shuddering breath, and closes her eyes as the suburbs vanish in a wave of existential white-out. Some of the color swirls through the empty space and rushes between the pages of Calliope's notebook in a crackling whirl.
Aradia crows, laughing over the loud rustling sound of this reality vanishing. John yelps and rights himself so that he floats with his knees folded over the endless, blank expanse. His hair is totally a mess right now - but he remembers to fix his pants, finally, so Jade decides to wait before ragging on him about it. Kanaya, though, Kanaya isn't gonna let any of them live down what John's whirlwind has done to their hair.
Reality unspools. Jade shakes off the overwhelming suddenness of it all, and snaps to attention. Kanaya. Right. Rose, Dave, Kanaya, Karkat, Roxy...there's still more than a few real people scattered around in here, and they're about to have everything vanish under their feet. The life they built in this place wasn't real, but Jade can sense them hundreds and thousands of miles away, all the same. Distance is weird here, but real enough that it would take them ages to converge on this particular location. John's house is close to reality - closer even than the spot where Jade burned through her tantrum - and somehow Jade thinks that John did it on purpose. Even as she thinks that, John starts floating past her on the wind, his eyes fixed on the blinking shards of reality just past the event horizon of this white space.
Jade clicks her tongue, and John blinks out of his trance. Awake or asleep this whole time, he still looks disheveled. Which means that great, they're all flying into this battle at less than 100%. Jade waves, which gets Aradia's attention as well. "I'll go get the others, give them a heads up before everything disappears," Jade says, though she thinks it's probably too late. Calliope is working pretty fast!
"Yeah, they're gonna be super weirded out," John agrees, scratching his chin. He pulls out his phone, and Jade sees that the screen is cracked like a spider-web. "Oh, yeah, Dave's already flipping out."
Whoops. Jade had better scoot. But she whirls on Aradia first, squeezing the troll's hand one last time. "And hey!" she says, when Aradia looks up.
"Oh?" Aradia says, with an immortal grin.
Jade coughs, and suddenly finds herself talking fast to cover up the warm blush rising in her face. "Thanks for coming to get us," she says, checking to make sure John's absorbed in his phone - he is - and then very carefully touching Aradia's warm cheek.
Aradia leans into it, her dimpled cheek flush with Jade's palm, and lets out a quiet sigh. "No problem!" she says, her bright tone at odds with the way she rests all the weight of her exhaustion on Aradia's hand. Four years of fighting and searching and tirelessly haunting, all of it in Jade's hands, and Jade wants, with a sudden ferocity, to make a quiet place where Aradia can rest. Where they can all rest, yeah, for real and true - but especially for Aradia.
Then Aradia lifts her head, steps back from Jade, and snaps her claws. Dark red light burns around her, filling her eyes and face and hair with a wild light and outlining her hands with power, like she's drawing on some last reserve of strength. "And it's going to be a lot easier to wake up the others, now. I think it's safe to say that everything has gone better than expected!" Aradia says, full of vibrant life.
-
- and Jade -
-
- finds the others.
There's...a lot of explaining to do. But Calliope unravels her proto-reality and leaves none of the dreamy illusion behind, which makes it harder for the others to bury themselves in their happiness. Jade hates seeing them in pain, grieving - but she can't avoid it. And neither can they. There are still rings on Rose and Kanaya's fingers; it still counts.
When Jade takes them back to the edge of reality, Calliope stands there swaying on her feet, her mouth just barely parted and her tongue peeking out to taste the ozone-riddled air of the battle outside. Aradia holds a cheerful round of introductions, while John fends off the pent-up concern of a pack of worried friends.
And finally, when they all step out the door of the endless, eternal white house -
-
It's located right where Vriska left it. Jade touches Aradia's shoulder one last time, and the troll smiles back at her, her teeth ferocious and flashing in the weird half-light of the battle raging overhead. "When we win -" Jade starts, before they all have to dodge a hail of bullets that spews forth from a widening crack in reality. "- we should have a sleepover!" Jade calls, as she and Aradia fly up and arrow toward the epicenter of the breaking. "I think you could use some time to unwind!"
Aradia raises her claws, a luminescent red clock turning around each wrist. "I'll hold you to that!" she calls back. "Final round!"