wintersday (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
wintersday) wrote2022-11-27 09:59 pm
wintersday) wrote2022-11-27 09:59 pm
Fic: Across The Void, And After
Title: Across the Void, and After
Fandom: Homestuck
Major Characters/Pairings: PM, WV, Jack Noir, Jade
Wordcount: 413 words
Rating: PG
POV: Second person
Summary: A pawn reaches the other side of the chessboard. (Loyalty, fealty, and the difference between them.)
Your liege’s last command was to be more than you were.
WV would’ve argued with that, around the campfire beneath indigo skies, but you had your duty. You were content with it. Now you have wings, swift enough to cut through the void, and claws to clutch the sword you tore from your own chest. Your equal and opposite flees before you. Sovereign Slayer. Murderer of peasants. You’ll kill him for the blood he spilled, with a blade through the heart if possible and your teeth in his throat if need be. Your fangs are bared. You cannot be content.
Even on the hunt, there are lulls: empty distances between stars you don’t recognize, and then the black where even stars are absent. Sometimes the trail you follow is thin, not scent but a faint and fading trace of heat and radioactive ions. He can’t escape, and you can’t catch him, so there’s space enough and time to remember: golden Prospit; sand and scavenged cans of food; the ring in your palm, its weight, the moment of change.
You were a Parcel Mistress, a Mendicant. Now you’ve slipped free of where you were, and old names fall away behind you.
Your journey ends with the darkness, and in auroral light, your quarry meets you.
So does another, with the Green Sun’s fire in her eyes, its warmth in her smile. Your liege –
No. Your liege is dead. Your Jade –
You don’t know this girl, but you do. She flashes dragonfly-swift between you and your enemy. By her command, you veer away –
But the Wayward Vagabond would say you need no one to command you. He’s right. You’ve crossed this multiverse from end to end, and you have been transfigured.
No blade through good-Jade-best-friend’s heart, but you have your mission still.
And every mission has its end.
In new light, on a green world, you see your enemy fallen. He’s weak now. Let him be weak. The stirring air carries a scent to your canine nose, and when you look behind you, he’s there – the Vagabond alive and safe, still in his desert rags and Mayor’s sash. You let him slip the ring from your finger and fall back into yourself.
In another universe, a White Queen might have ruled anew, well and justly. Here, now, you climb, the two of you, hand in hand until you reach the volcano’s peak.
No rulers. No longer.
The power you’d wielded melts away, and you’re free.
Fandom: Homestuck
Major Characters/Pairings: PM, WV, Jack Noir, Jade
Wordcount: 413 words
Rating: PG
POV: Second person
Summary: A pawn reaches the other side of the chessboard. (Loyalty, fealty, and the difference between them.)
Your liege’s last command was to be more than you were.
WV would’ve argued with that, around the campfire beneath indigo skies, but you had your duty. You were content with it. Now you have wings, swift enough to cut through the void, and claws to clutch the sword you tore from your own chest. Your equal and opposite flees before you. Sovereign Slayer. Murderer of peasants. You’ll kill him for the blood he spilled, with a blade through the heart if possible and your teeth in his throat if need be. Your fangs are bared. You cannot be content.
Even on the hunt, there are lulls: empty distances between stars you don’t recognize, and then the black where even stars are absent. Sometimes the trail you follow is thin, not scent but a faint and fading trace of heat and radioactive ions. He can’t escape, and you can’t catch him, so there’s space enough and time to remember: golden Prospit; sand and scavenged cans of food; the ring in your palm, its weight, the moment of change.
You were a Parcel Mistress, a Mendicant. Now you’ve slipped free of where you were, and old names fall away behind you.
Your journey ends with the darkness, and in auroral light, your quarry meets you.
So does another, with the Green Sun’s fire in her eyes, its warmth in her smile. Your liege –
No. Your liege is dead. Your Jade –
You don’t know this girl, but you do. She flashes dragonfly-swift between you and your enemy. By her command, you veer away –
But the Wayward Vagabond would say you need no one to command you. He’s right. You’ve crossed this multiverse from end to end, and you have been transfigured.
No blade through good-Jade-best-friend’s heart, but you have your mission still.
And every mission has its end.
In new light, on a green world, you see your enemy fallen. He’s weak now. Let him be weak. The stirring air carries a scent to your canine nose, and when you look behind you, he’s there – the Vagabond alive and safe, still in his desert rags and Mayor’s sash. You let him slip the ring from your finger and fall back into yourself.
In another universe, a White Queen might have ruled anew, well and justly. Here, now, you climb, the two of you, hand in hand until you reach the volcano’s peak.
No rulers. No longer.
The power you’d wielded melts away, and you’re free.