wintersday (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
wintersday) wrote2020-05-24 09:48 pm
wintersday) wrote2020-05-24 09:48 pm
Entry tags:
Fic: An Open-Ended Dream
Title: An Open-Ended Dream
Fandom: Homestuck
Major Characters/Pairings: Sollux & Aradia
Wordcount: 765
Rating: Teen
POV: Third person
Summary: Exploring the dream bubbles leads Aradia and Sollux back to a place that neither of them really wants to go, but both of them might need to.
Aradia is hovering above the memory of a city, letting Sollux tell her what life was like there, when the wind shifts and the bubble changes around them. Concrete and steel melt and blur into gentle wilderness, and she finds herself in a place of green fields scored with dig sites, a starry sky unbroken above. She’s selfishly glad at first that he can’t see where their memories have brought them, but before she can shift the scene again, he lifts his head and his face goes blank with recognition. He drifts a little, away from her and closer to her hive.
“Sollux?” she asks, and he turns back toward the sound of her voice.
“I remember what the wind felt like that night,” he says distantly. “It smelled like, I don’t know, but I remember it. Plants and shit. Like summer smells when you’re not in a city.”
Like meadow grass and clover, she thinks, breathing deep, and the fresh dirt of open trenches left unattended – and like char and ozone, scorched stone, smoke still rising grey against the dark of the sky. That part isn’t in her memory, only his. He drops to the ground beside a long, seared scar and touches the blackened earth, and she knows it’s too late to pull him onward to safer ground.
“It wasn’t you who did this,” she says.
“I should have – ”
“Been stronger? There’s a timeline where you were. More than one, actually.” She lights down behind him, folds her wings back into nonexistence and wraps her arms around his shoulders. He’s solid, for a ghost, and he’s shaking. “For those to exist, this had to happen too.”
“And that makes it better?”
She doesn’t answer that. It’s not the kind of question that has an answer, or if it is, she doesn’t know it, and she’s learning to be OK with letting that kind of thing go. The truth is, there had been a time when she hadn’t thought anything would make it better, but here she is, standing outside the place of her death, and all she can think is that the air smells fresh and the wind is cool, and long grass is tickling her ankles.
“I used to be afraid of seeing this place again,” she says, and he flinches. “I thought it would hurt, I think, but now that I’m here, it’s more like... taking a trip down to the Brooding Caverns and seeing the place where you were hatched. It doesn’t mean much, compared to everything after, and what it does mean isn’t bad.”
Sollux laughs – a quiet, strained sort of sound – and says, “I’m not sure I buy that, but you do you.”
“I intend to,” she says, and pulls him to his feet. He stands in the ghost of a field with the ghost of dirt on his fingers, waiting for her lead.
For a moment, she considers heading on towards the hive, picking through the rubble to see what she can find there. It’s been long enough that it almost seems like archaeology: unearthing the bits and pieces of what was lost, fitting them together into a story that approaches some kind of truth. Everything here feels that kind of old, that kind of distant. But it would bother him, and she’d rather not do that, and there are so many other places they could go instead.
“Come on,” she says. “I want to show you the frog temple.”
“Yeah, well, tough shit, AA,” he says with a grin, and taps his head beside one burned-out eye. “But you can take me to the frog temple, I guess. I can grope the statues or something.”
She doesn’t think he’s ever going to get tired of the blind jokes. Terezi has been... some kind of influence. Probably a good one, if it means he’s not upset about it.
The frog temple it is, then. She could shift the bubble around them to jump right there, but it’s close enough that she doesn’t have to, so she doesn’t. It’s all part of the same past anyway, a world fading seamlessly into itself, and after so much time spent flying, she could do with a good long walk.
She takes one last look at her hive before they go, marking the way back to this memory. There are still things she wants to keep, and maybe they’re worth coming back for. Then she grabs Sollux’s hand and sets out across the field, her boots sinking into mud and skirts rustling around her, into the reclaimed sweetness of the night.
Fandom: Homestuck
Major Characters/Pairings: Sollux & Aradia
Wordcount: 765
Rating: Teen
POV: Third person
Summary: Exploring the dream bubbles leads Aradia and Sollux back to a place that neither of them really wants to go, but both of them might need to.
Aradia is hovering above the memory of a city, letting Sollux tell her what life was like there, when the wind shifts and the bubble changes around them. Concrete and steel melt and blur into gentle wilderness, and she finds herself in a place of green fields scored with dig sites, a starry sky unbroken above. She’s selfishly glad at first that he can’t see where their memories have brought them, but before she can shift the scene again, he lifts his head and his face goes blank with recognition. He drifts a little, away from her and closer to her hive.
“Sollux?” she asks, and he turns back toward the sound of her voice.
“I remember what the wind felt like that night,” he says distantly. “It smelled like, I don’t know, but I remember it. Plants and shit. Like summer smells when you’re not in a city.”
Like meadow grass and clover, she thinks, breathing deep, and the fresh dirt of open trenches left unattended – and like char and ozone, scorched stone, smoke still rising grey against the dark of the sky. That part isn’t in her memory, only his. He drops to the ground beside a long, seared scar and touches the blackened earth, and she knows it’s too late to pull him onward to safer ground.
“It wasn’t you who did this,” she says.
“I should have – ”
“Been stronger? There’s a timeline where you were. More than one, actually.” She lights down behind him, folds her wings back into nonexistence and wraps her arms around his shoulders. He’s solid, for a ghost, and he’s shaking. “For those to exist, this had to happen too.”
“And that makes it better?”
She doesn’t answer that. It’s not the kind of question that has an answer, or if it is, she doesn’t know it, and she’s learning to be OK with letting that kind of thing go. The truth is, there had been a time when she hadn’t thought anything would make it better, but here she is, standing outside the place of her death, and all she can think is that the air smells fresh and the wind is cool, and long grass is tickling her ankles.
“I used to be afraid of seeing this place again,” she says, and he flinches. “I thought it would hurt, I think, but now that I’m here, it’s more like... taking a trip down to the Brooding Caverns and seeing the place where you were hatched. It doesn’t mean much, compared to everything after, and what it does mean isn’t bad.”
Sollux laughs – a quiet, strained sort of sound – and says, “I’m not sure I buy that, but you do you.”
“I intend to,” she says, and pulls him to his feet. He stands in the ghost of a field with the ghost of dirt on his fingers, waiting for her lead.
For a moment, she considers heading on towards the hive, picking through the rubble to see what she can find there. It’s been long enough that it almost seems like archaeology: unearthing the bits and pieces of what was lost, fitting them together into a story that approaches some kind of truth. Everything here feels that kind of old, that kind of distant. But it would bother him, and she’d rather not do that, and there are so many other places they could go instead.
“Come on,” she says. “I want to show you the frog temple.”
“Yeah, well, tough shit, AA,” he says with a grin, and taps his head beside one burned-out eye. “But you can take me to the frog temple, I guess. I can grope the statues or something.”
She doesn’t think he’s ever going to get tired of the blind jokes. Terezi has been... some kind of influence. Probably a good one, if it means he’s not upset about it.
The frog temple it is, then. She could shift the bubble around them to jump right there, but it’s close enough that she doesn’t have to, so she doesn’t. It’s all part of the same past anyway, a world fading seamlessly into itself, and after so much time spent flying, she could do with a good long walk.
She takes one last look at her hive before they go, marking the way back to this memory. There are still things she wants to keep, and maybe they’re worth coming back for. Then she grabs Sollux’s hand and sets out across the field, her boots sinking into mud and skirts rustling around her, into the reclaimed sweetness of the night.