Fifth Iteration (4/15)

[universe_c]

Fifth Iteration

A fic about a village at the beginning of a Universe

Part 1 | 2 | 3


4.

You and John are working on a windmill when he jerks up straight so suddenly he nearly slides off his ladder. A gust of air corrects his balance.

“Do you hear that, Tav?” he asks, head cocked.

You don't. You let your mind spin out into the air, over the village, through the trees. You can feel the warm disturbance of each breathing thing in the valley, but any sounds they might make are uninterpretable to you. Nothing really feels amiss.

“No,” you tell John, “What is it?”

“It kind of sounds like Jake,” John says, his face scrunched in concentration. “He's all the way up at the waterwheel camp, right? He's yelling, or... whimpering? I think maybe he's hurt.”

You fumble through your pockets for the weight of your PDA. Aradia and Dirk are both online but idle, which means their network is up. Their system has been working much more reliably since Dirk went up the river. You leave Aradia a message, asking her to check on Jake and let you know the situation. After a moment's hesitation, you leave a few lines for Dirk, too. He's a little terrifying but, you think, he'd be much more terrifying if you didn't let him know about his matesprit's potential peril.

“Do you think you'd be able to listen to Aradia answer if I ask her something?” you ask John.

“My range is nowhere near big enough to reach the camp, dude. The breeze just brings me things without asking sometimes. Can't control it.” He bounces a little, making you irrationally nervous about the ladder again. “Can you really reach that far? That's, like, a whole bunch of miles! Pretty amazing, Tavros! Anyway, I guess I'd better tell Karkat. You could go find Kanaya – I bet she could help you talk to someone up there.”

You think your powers can reach all the way to the waterwheel camp, but you're not totally sure. Aradia always seems to intuit when you'll need her without you having to contact her that way. You guess it's a Time thing, like how Dave always seems to turn up where and when he's most needed.

You climb down from the windmill carefully. John simply steps backwards onto thin air and flies off toward First House, calling Karkat's name.

You think Kanaya was supposed to be helping in the gardens today, so you head in that direction. You find Jade instead.

“Hey, Tavros!” she says. “I was just working with Equius on one of the pumps and he got this really weird look on his face, went all sweaty and ran off. I mean, I guess he just does that sometimes, but it seemed kind of odd, you know?”

“I, uh, don't have any explanation for that, I don't think. Have you seen Kanaya around? Or, can you maybe help me get a message to the waterwheel camp somehow? John heard something in the breeze and now he thinks Jake's in trouble.”

Jade's mouth and eyes go very round. “Oh, fuck! No, I haven't seen Kanaya anywhere. And I can only throw things as far as the waterwheel camp if there's someone there who can catch them. Otherwise they kind of tend to leave a crater! Did he say what kind of trouble?”

“He said he heard Jake yelling and thought he was hurt. I messaged Dirk and Aradia already, but they're both idle.”

“Well, maybe they have the situation under control already,” Jade suggests. “You know how Dirk is. Anyway, let me think. Porrim is still somewhere around the village, right? I wouldn't want to throw to Aradia unless she expected it, so that doesn't help. Maybe Sollux?”

“Hey!” you hear, from above. John is hovering above you, hair fluttering from his abrupt stop. “Karkat said to come find him at the Dorms. I'm going to go get Sollux to raise them on the radio!”

He tears off in a great gust of wind. You're definitely still a little jealous that he can fly. You've only managed to support your own weight with Breath once, that time you fell off the greenhouse roof. It had been completely uncontrolled, a panic reaction, over as soon as your feet touched the ground.

“Fuckass must be worried if he took it to Fuckass Senior.” Jade says. “Come on! Let's go catch the show!”

Karkat is in fact in Kankri's room, sitting with him on his scattering of red pillows. They look up from their borderline-argument when you knock on the door frame.

“Hey!” Jade says, “I brought you Tavros! What's the big fucking deal?”

“Tavros, is it true your range extends all the way up to waterwheel camp?” Kankri asks, politely.

You nod a little. “That is, I can, uh, sense Breath that far. I've never tried to actually commune with it over that distance before.”

Karkat's eyebrows are doing a twisty little dance of surprise. His expression is maybe even a little bit impressed under his annoyance.

“Great of you to just keep that to yourself all this time!” he says. “Could you maybe make your pathetic self useful and tell those greasy fuckheads to get on the fucking radio?”

“Rude!” Jade says.

You're actually a little embarrassed you didn't think of that yourself. You settle cross-legged into the cushions and start to deepen your breathing. “I'll try.”

You have to go very deep to spin yourself out as far as the waterwheel camp. Your body sags somewhere at the receding edge of your awareness. The terrain is harder to picture the further you get – the camp is a full night's walk up the river, and you've never been there yourself. Eventually, there is only the open channel of air over the river, warm eddies of treebeasts and fleetbeasts, the flow of wind along the warp of pressure gradients. The camp is a sort of confused mass of activity, but Aradia's Breath is familiar as a beacon.

'Is everyone OK there?' you whisper. 'John thinks Jake might be hurt. Please check in somehow.'

You return slowly, and find your head cushioned in Jade's lap. She is idly poking at the tip of one horn, then watching the dents in the pad of her finger disappear.

A chime comes from your PDA and you jump fully awake.

--apocalypseArisen [AA] started trolling adiosToreador [AT]--

AA: it's ok Tavros, he's not hurt
AA: he's just in heat
AA: Dirk is very on top of the situation
AA: gosh, I didn't realize the breeze was such a perv
AA: though it would not really surprise me if you could hear them all the way down there
AA: maybe i should fly down and get Roxy and Jane? they're the moirails, right?

You show the message to Karkat, who says, “Oh my shitfrollicking, blisterbulged gog,” and hands it off to Kankri.

“I suppose I agree with the spirit of your assessment, if not your vocabulary preferences,” Kankri says. “But, Jade, you are the most similar genetically to Jake, is that right? Have you experienced any unusual, ah, symptoms?”

“Nope!” Jade says, helping you sit up. “My nook is dry as a fucking desert over here.”

You're pretty sure, from the way she giggles, that she said that just to see the look on their faces. They do have a pretty funny facial expression, you think, and also eerily similar.

There is a light knock and Gamzee leans his massive horns and indigo-black mop of hair through the doorway.

“Hey, my righteous motherfuckers. All the people I wanted to see all up in once place,” he says. “Palebro, I got a concern what I need to lay on you.”

“What now?” Karkat sighs.

“Well, it's fishbro the elder. He wandered by the kitchen looking real rough around the edges, so I got him to motherfucking sit down and take a minute. Us two tuneful motherfuckers like to up and get our musical discussion on every now and then, you dig? But my bardbro was kind of leaking these feels everywhere and then I noticed how he smelled. So I up and suggested he might want to get his privacy on and helped him back to his place. Anyway, point being, our Bard of motherfucking Hope appears to be in heat, like. Figured you might want to know.”

Karkat looks almost proud, in a constipated sort of way. “Sometimes you really come through when I least expect it, you dribbling clownbulge.”

“Motherfucker is asking for you,” Gamzee says, making large, solemn eyes at Kankri.

Kankri sort of blushes and blanches at the same time, his face going pale around two pink spots on his cheeks. He glances around at you, Jade and Karkat, then gives himself a little shake.

“It seems to be the pattern that the moirail's duty is to give aid and comfort during the... process,” he says. “I suppose I will just have to hope I don't find it too triggering.”

“Um,” you say. “I don't know that that is what he's, uh, asking for you for. And, um, well. If you're not really pale for him, uh. You may not be able to help yourself.”

The look Kankri gives you is completely withering.

“I would have thought,” he states, delicately, “That I'd made my position re: concupiscent feelings entirely clear to one and all. But if you require additional explanation, I'll have to ask that you refrain from any such accusations, implications, pointed rhetorical questions or other microaggressions, intentional or unintentional, until we've set some ground rules for-”

“Oh my gog, shut up you miserable nookchaffing sack of rhetoric!” Karkat bursts out. “Everyone has seen you make out with him. The two of you are all over each other practically the second you get in the same room with alcohol.”

“I hardly think that a few inebriated explorations-”

“No, you hardly think you need to shut your hoofbeastshit-spewing windflap and listen when people talk but that is what you're going to do right now.

“You're the fucking Seer of Blood, and the thing is, much as it pains me to admit this, you're actually pretty good at it. All of your pan-rotting consensus process and the stupid weekly meetings everyone hates – they actually work. You bullied us into making them work, and they're not exactly like you'd pictured but they make this place run with, so far, no bloodshed. You're great at divvying up chores and assigning teams, and you're actually a decent auspistice, even though people mostly just stop arguing so you'll stop fucking lecturing them. I even came over here to consult you on this whole mess, a consultation which you are now making me regret with the intensity of the Green fucking Sun.

“That's why it astounds me, just fucking flabbergasts me so bad I have literally no words for my dismay, that you are so utterly fucking clueless about your own fucked up feelings. Get your head out of your oversensitive nook and stop jerking him around!”

“I'm not! I just feel, given his issues with over- and under- identification, as well as various social conventions and power structures, a pale relationship is-”

“The two of you are the worst moirails in history. You're even more of a mockery to moirallegience than the eight way pale clusterfuck that Egbert calls his Earth Human BFFamily or my diamond with that asshole over there.”

“Hey, now,” Gamzee says.

“And, here's a thought,” Karkat plows on, “Maybe if you and Cronus stopped encouraging each other to be such complete douchelords, you'd have some other prospects! It's almost like you want no one else to like him, so he'll have to focus all that creepy ass attention on you! And then you just keep him at arm's length forever, maybe make out with him once in a while just to keep him hooked, then shove him away again. It would be sort of disgustingly cruel if he weren't such a horrible, unforgivable asshole himself.”

Kankri looks as if he's been slapped across the face. He opens his mouth, then closes it, then opens it again.

“I-” Kankri says. “I don't really know-”

“Well, figure it the fuck out!”

“Might want to hurry it up a little, though,” Gamzee adds. “He wasn't looking too comfortable last I saw him.”

Kankri kind of looks like he might be sick. “What – what's going to happen to him if no one-”

“We don't, uh, actually know,” you say, quietly. “No one's heard from Kurloz in weeks, and Mituna's been out of contact for even longer. They're the only other ones who might have-”

Kankri makes a little noise of distress in his throat. Gamzee steps away from the door, lets him bolt.

Karkat lets out a long breath. “Well that was about as much fun as cleaning out my seedflap with a rusty sickle.”

“Do you think it might have, uh, helped?” you ask.

“Looked like he went toward bard-bro's place,” Gamzee says, “Guess he might have absconded, though.”

“What the actual fuck do I think I'm doing. Guys, you just let me wade right into that mess and make an abject tool of myself.”

“No way, fuckass, you were awesome,” Jade tells him, slapping him hard on the back. “I can't wait to go tell Nepeta!” And then she scurries out the door and is gone.

The three of you shuffle out of Kankri's little room and find yourselves standing awkwardly in the grassy alley outside. Gamzee grabs both of you by the shoulders and pulls you in against him until you relax into his side.

After a moment you say, “Do you think we maybe should go check on them? And Eridan, too, I guess?”

“Ugh,” Karkat moans, turning his face into Gamzee's chest. “Should, probably. Want to? Fucking no forever.”

But he peels himself free of Gamzee and pulls his determined leader expression on like armor.

“Come on.”

*

By unspoken consensus, you avoid Cronus's room and go looking for Eridan. Instead you find Roxy hurrying up the path from her cottage, looking a little shell shocked.

She sizes you up, then says. “All three of you better come. Come on.”

Equius is looming over Jane in her cottage's snug living room. She is dabbing a cloth on the numerous, deep scratches which score his back, shoulders and arms. His lip is bloody and his dark glasses seem to be missing.

When he sees Gamzee he freezes. Sweat breaks out on his skin and he flinches. Jane paps him on the thigh and tells him to hold still. She barely spares a glance at the rest of you, involved in her ministrations. Gamzee's face goes still. He makes as if to duck out the door again.

“Wait, h- No, Makara,” Equius says. He glances unsubtly at Gamzee's stomach. “Stay, if you wish.”

Karkat sighs, “All right. Tell us what the fuck happened. And for the love of whatever gossamer threads my sanity hangs by, do it in as few fucking words as possible.”

Equius seems to weigh this command, then says, “Eridan.”

“Did you, uh, do it, with him?” you squeak. “Uh. I mean. Um. You don't have to answer that.”

Equius and Karkat eye you like the answer should be obvious. Roxy laughs and crushes the breath out of you in a twiggy-limbed hug.

“You're the best, Tav. Don't ever let anyone tell you you're not,” she says.

“Fuck,” Karkat says, rolling the word around his mouth as if savoring it. “So. Heat plus blackrom. I guess, for the sake of science, peacekeeping and absolutely no prurient interest whatsoever fuck you very much, I have to ask how that went.”

Equius frowns. “He was unusually, if not unduly forceful. But. At a certain point it was... not black.” He hunches his shoulders. “It was not really like anything I can explain easily. Then, after, he pushed me off his houseboat and ordered me to swim to shore. I'm afraid the rowboat is still out there.”

“I don't want you going back there until Eridan has himself under control,” Jane nearly snarls.

There is a shocked silence. Jane blushes very pink. She ducks her head over Equius's hand, cleaning a cut between his fingers carefully, then sealing it with a faintly blue-glowing trace of her finger.

“Ohmigawd Janey, you're too fucking cute,” Roxy says. “But you realize, right, getting in between them would be like an ash-mediation-whatsis.”

“Ashen solicitation,” Karkat sighs, “And yeah, it's exactly like that.”

Equius places his other hand carefully on Jane's. “Is that how you feel about us?” he asks.

She looks up at him, her eyes startlingly pale in the dim room. “I don't really understand how to feel that way. The idea that it would somehow be romantic to have to keep breaking up your fights - that is very strange and unappealing by human standards. But I care about you. I don't want to see you hurt each other.”

“This type of behavior is normal for a kismesissitude, both the violence and the concupiscent aspects. Only my moirail or an auspistice would normally offer me first aid.”

“And would your kismesis normally bear your child? No! It, it just strikes me as, well, messed up! Parents aren't supposed to hate each other!”

Jane's hands are small and plump and lost in Equius's careful grasp. Her face is crumpled in a teary sort of anger. Roxy sidles up to them and slips an arm around her. Jane leans her head against Roxy's shoulder.

“I'll go and check on Eridan,” Roxy volunteers, “I can swim out there and get the boat, at least, even if he doesn't want to see me.”

“I would be grateful,” Equius says. “He made it quite clear that I would not be welcome back.”

“Roxy are you sure you'll be alright?” Jane asks.

“Void player, remember? He won't even know I'm there if I don't want him to. I am ninja,” Roxy says. “Anyway, I think I'm pale enough for him that I'll be ok. I'm like his partner in crime, haircare and snarky complaining. That's what moirialdom is all about, right?”

Karkat sighs like he's about to go into another 'humans are palesluts' rant. You cut him off.

“What about Dirk and Jake?” you ask.

“Dirk's like my brother,” Roxy tells you. “Actually, he is my brother. That's always weird to remember!”

“An ideal human sibling relationship is close to how I understand pale affection works,” Jane explains glumly. “And on Earth it was pretty normal to have more than one brother or sister or even a whole circle of equally close friends.”

“I wouldn't say Eridan's like my brother, exactly. More like my BFF in fabulousness! I don't really mind being his agony aunt, either.”

“You're everyone's agony aunt,” Jane says. “Also a general instigator and bad influence.”

Roxy grins like that's the best compliment she's ever gotten and plants a very flushed-looking kiss on Jane's mouth. “You know it!” she says, and now you're even more confused as to what's going on here.

“Um, that's not exactly what I, uh, meant. We, uh, heard from the camp that Jake is in heat also. So, Aradia offered to come down and bring you two back up to help.”

To your surprise, the two of them blush furiously and Roxy bursts out laughing.

“Help! Oh. My. Gog. Wow,” she laughs.

“I think I'd rather decline. It would be too weird,” Jane chokes out.

“Human incest taboos,” Karkat says. “Fucking figures that senseless hoofbeastshit would extend to an inexplicable number of inappropriate situations.”

Jane relaxes a little, her blush starting to drain. “Yes. It would be strange for a number of reasons.”

“Enough of this crap,” Karkat says. “Roxy, check on Eridan. I'd say try not to pail him, but I have just now given up caring forever about any kind of human non-quadrant fuckery. You have my official friendleader 'try not to be a total fuck up, and don't give me any details' blessing. Tavros, go see if Nepeta is back from hunting yet and get her kitty ass over here. Gamzee, you're with me.”

Roxy gives Equius a little pap on the hand and winks at him. “You just sit your tight little ass tight, tall, blue and handsome. I'll be back before you know it.”

“You are not to take him any alcohol,” Equius tells her. “I'm told it's bad for fetal development.”

*

The next evening, Eridan bursts in to the sunset meal soaking wet and shirtless and drags Equius off by his hair. Roxy cheers drunkenly, then makes everyone have a toast. She later admits to you that she may have accidentally “sexed up” Eridan's “sexy fish ass... underwater!” You try to remind her that the ashen quadrant is conciliatory but she assures you that she has the best plan, you don't even know.

Karkat enlists Terezi of all people to help him keep an eye, or lack of one, on Kankri and Cronus. Dave says it's because she's a woman who loves the smell of a fresh train wreck in the morning, whatever that means. Personally, you think she likes antagonizing Kankri nearly as much as she likes antagonizing Karkat. If she can get both their metaphorical bleatbeasts at once, she's even happier.

The village is absolutely electric with gossip for the next several days. There is a tension in the air that is not helped by the punishing Bright-season heat. Everyone seems snappy, sullen or manic, except Cronus, who is smug as hell and defiantly proud of his swollen abdomen. Eridan refuses to set foot out of his houseboat, even for the weekly fishing trip.

Dirk and Jake send word that they're going to stay at the waterwheel camp until some mysterious, key phase of the construction is complete. Dirk messages you to say thank you.

--timaeusTestified [TT] started trolling adiosToreador [AT]--

TT: Hey, man. Just wanted to say thanks for letting me know about Jake's potential peril.
TT: Turned out the only peril was to my maidenly virtue but the gesture is still appreciated.
AT: uH, nO PROBLEM
AT: mOSTLY, i'M JUST GLAD, tHINGS ARE OK
AT: uH
AT: hOW IS HE TAKING IT? jAKE, i MEAN
TT: Surprisingly well.
TT: He keeps talking about how it'll be just like in Junior.
TT: For your reference, that was an Earth movie.
TT: More specifically, it was among the worst Earth movies ever conceived, written, filmed and distributed. The kind of movie not even he should actually like.
TT: I grew up alone on an even smaller and more deserted island than him, so no excuses there.
AT: uH
TT: It was a movie about a human male getting pregnant. That's why it's relevant here.
AT: oH, i UH, tHOUGHT THAT HUMAN MALES, cOULDN'T GET PREGNANT, oRIGINALLY
TT: That's true. But it didn't stop people from imagining that scenario. It was actually a fairly common trope, usually played for comedy. Though, some subcultures employed it as a means of allowing fictional male-male pairings to reproduce in romantic stories.
TT: You have to remember that bearing and raising offspring together was idealized as the mark of a deep red-romantic bond in some human cultures.
TT: Also, most human cultures privileged the idea of rearing offspring who are direct genetic descendants over rearing genetically unrelated children.
AT: sO, tHAT'S WHY JANE IS ALL UPSET, oVER EQUIUS AND ERIDAN
TT: Is she? Those two are pretty upsetting for several reasons.
TT: Jane lets herself get too involved. I should drop her a line, maybe.
AT: tHAT MIGHT BE, hELPFUL, fOR HER
TT: Thanks for letting me know about that too, then.
TT: But the take home lesson here is this:
TT: Do not let Jake talk you into watching Junior, ever. It is truly awful and would probably traumatize anyone who was less than at home with mammalian reproduction.
TT: I should go through all his computers and make sure he doesn't have it on any of them.
AT: iF IT'S THAT BAD, tHAT MIGHT BE A VERY, uH, GOOD THING TO DO
AT: hEROIC EVEN
AT: tHOUGH, UPSETTING YOUR MATESPRIT, mIGHT NOT BE WORTH IT, jUST FOR ME
TT: Eradicating that movie from existence would be a service to all of human-troll kind.
TT: Also, I'd appreciate it if you didn't refer to us as matesprits. That term doesn't really apply to us since our relationship isn't based on pity.
TT: We've all started to use the words love and pity interchangeably, but as far as I can tell there's something fundamentally different about those two concepts.
AT: yOU, uH, mIGHT BE RIGHT
AT: wHAT DO YOU THINK THE DIFFERNCE IS?
TT: Now there's a question.
TT: When humans use the world pity, it implies a fundamentally unequal relationship. One person is in a position of power or advantage and holds the other in contempt for their weakness, even if they don't have malicious intentions.
TT: That's why having sex with someone out of pity would be considered hurtful or insulting by most humans.
AT: oH
TT: I consider Jake to by my equal. I wouldn't settle for any partner who wasn't my equal. Pity has no place in a partnership like ours.
TT: Though maybe this line of reasoning still comes down to semantics.
TT: If you have any insight on the matter, lay it on me.
AT: i tHINK,
AT: oNE THING iS, fOR TROLLS, iT WAS VERY DANGEROUS TO BE
AT: sEEN AS, vULNERABLE
AT: aND TO PITY SOMEONE, uH, pARTIALLY MEANT THAT
AT: yOU SAW THEIR WEAKNESSES, bUT DIDN'T FEEL LIKE, yOU WANTED TO HURT THEM, oR TAKE ADVANTAGE, oF THAT.
TT: Huh. That actually explains a lot.
TT: Horns, you're all right.
AT: tHANKS
AT: i THINK, yOU'RE MAYBE NOT AS, uH, iNTIMIDATING, aS I THOUGHT
TT: Well, now, I wouldn't go that far.
TT: I am a pretty towering paragon of intellect and sick rhymes.
AT: tRUE
TT: Maybe I'll hit you up again, next time I need some crazy troll shit explained in inverted case.
AT: iF i COME UP WITH ANY MORE INSIGHTS, oN THE MATTER YOU MENTIONED
AT: i COULD LAY THEM ON YOU, aT SUCH A TIME
TT: Sure, I'd like that.





[Bonus scene]

“Oh my gog, Kankri, are you drunk?”

“I'm always drunk when I let you-”

“Whoa, whoa. I seem to recall some incidents in which I was the one letting you. Not to mention the rather forceful way you just deposited my fine fishprince ass on this rest platform. Not that I mind-”

“Yes, you never mind. Any port in a storm or other nautical syllogisms to that effect.”

“Fuck, fuck, Kankri. In case you hadn't fuckin noticed, I am so obsessed with you. Like head over gills, stalking your pink ass, carving your lack-of-a-symbol in my arm creepily obsessed.”

“Yes, Cronus, you are a bully and a drama queen. I'm well aware.”

“You know I ain't above takin advantage of you either, specially not with this crisis occurring in my nook, so. Just. Aah-aaah what the hell are you – fuck!”

“Well, don't bite me unless you want me to bite back. Egalitarian relations and so on.”

“That was the filthiest chuckle I've ever heard. Didn't know you had it in you. Fuck, you are going to kill me. I will literally die if you don't pail me right this instant. Come on, make a human woman out of me you red-hot landdwelling pedantic graaah, ah - FUCK!”

“Is this enough of my attention for you?”

“Fuck, no. More.”

“Hmmm, how's this?”

“Nhh, aaah, oh fuck you kinky -AH!”

[At this point any hypothetical eavesdroppers retreated in disarray.]

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