wintersday (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
wintersday) wrote2023-02-13 09:52 pm
wintersday) wrote2023-02-13 09:52 pm
Entry tags:
- character: homestuck: aradia,
- character: homestuck: karkat,
- character: homestuck: sollux,
- fandom: homestuck: homestuck,
- fanfic,
- fanfic: length: 1-5k,
- fanfic: rating: teen,
- fanfic: type: f/m,
- fanfic: type: m/m,
- fanfic: type: poly,
- format: linked ficlets,
- giftfic,
- pairing: homestuck: sollux/karkat/aradia,
- trope: au - canon divergence,
- trope: au - no sgrub/sburb,
- trope: character study,
- trope: mutual loyalty
Fic: No Roadmaps, No Signposts
Title: No Roadmaps, No Signposts
Fandom: Homestuck
Major Characters/Pairings: Sollux/Aradia/Karkat
Wordcount: 1,239
Rating: Teen
POV: Second Person
Summary: Interludes from a camping trip, of sorts. (Three linked ficlets)
Notes: Written as a giftfic for Disworl on AO3.
What you like most about Aradia is she doesn’t waste time hoofbeastshitting around the subject of death. It’s going to happen to everyone. She’ll probably think it’s pretty fucking neat when it does. In your more morbid moments — which is not all of your moments, because you’re not Sollux and you try to keep the I’m going to die twice and then go blind pronouncements to a minimum — you’ve contemplated willing her whatever is left of your skull when the drones are through with it. It’s… comforting, you guess, to know someone will get something worthwhile out of your inevitable hideous fate. You wouldn’t mind it being the girl you’re sitting around a camp stove with, toasting gelatin pillows and hoping the shadow-droppers don’t find you.
Not that you’re in shadow-dropper country yet. You’re hugging the edges of it, hiding beneath tall blue trees infested with spooky squawkbeasts, plotting the safest way through the desert to Kanaya’s hive. Sollux wanted to say goodbye. You guess you do too, even though saying goodbye means telling her you’ll miss her and then never seeing her again. She’ll have a life somewhere, and the kind of purpose you used to want with a kid’s desperate eagerness to please. You’re over the propagation of the Empire now, but it’s not like any of you have choices. You’ll be going underground too, but you’ll just be running.
But Aradia — watching you intently, a smile playing about the corners of her mouth, her face made ruddy by the stove’s dull glow — she claims there’s something there worth finding. Some old temple carved with signs and stories, one the drones avoid.
“I don’t know why,” she’d said cheerfully, “since the place is positively redolent with sedition. I think it’s the ghosts.”
Which… great. Fucking peachy. But you’re not scared of the dead, no matter how often Aradia keeps saying you don’t have to be. You’re scared for her, with her practical boots and burgundy lipstick, and Sollux with his smug asshole face and dynamo thinkpan, because they’ve got more to worry about than you.
If they’re afraid, they don’t show it. Sollux curses as his gelatin pillow ignites, and Aradia catches your eye, all bright vitality, halfway to laughter. For a moment, everything feels normal — but you’re still scanning the woods and the sky overhead, waiting for drones or worse. You know your sickles and anger aren’t enough to keep them safe. You have to hope Aradia’s ghosts will be.
.
You’re leaning against a cliff in the pre-dawn light with your husktop propped against your knees, too tired but still trying to make progress on your latest virus. The power gauge blinks a constant 22% — that’s how good your precision is, and how convenient it is to be you, because the one thing you don’t have to worry about is running out of batteries. Which is kind of the fucking problem.
Half the fucking problem. The other half has just lost his shit and started swearing at your sun shelter because he can’t get it to stop collapsing, and you don’t know whether you pity or hate him more, only that you don’t want to lose him. If the Empire cared about smart or fair, he’d make a better threshecutioner than they deserve. Instead, the only reason you haven’t spent this bad-idea roadtrip convinced you’re all going to die is that his voice isn’t screaming in the back of your thinkpan.
Which doesn’t make him quieter, actually. He’s pulling out all the anatomical stops concerning exactly where and how the insulating fabric can get fucked, which means it’s time to have mercy and psionically hold the support poles up for him to fix in place.
“Thanks for deigning to remove your head from your wastechute long enough to do something useful,” he says. “Get in here.”
The shelter’s close and warm, even before AA slides in behind you and wraps her arm around your waist. You don’t mind. KK takes the spot nearest the entrance, and he lies facing you, sturdy and so short your chin would fit easily between his horns if there were any less distance between you. His eyes are almost completely red now. Looking at them — at him — you sometimes feel like you’re following in someone else’s walkstub-impressions, and you don’t know how to get off that path, or why it’s so imperative that you do.
You could leave him behind, but that’s never going to happen.
“Why are you looking at me like that?” he grumbles.
“Like what?”
“Like I’m...” He scowls, shoulders hunching. “Fuck you. Like I’m someone important."
He refuses to believe he could be, and that, you do hate, with such painful clarity you have to curl your claws into his hair and kiss him until you taste the blood he despises. You don’t care about blood. He’s yours — and AA’s too, because everything yours is hers. You’re not going to let history have him.
.
When evening comes, you set out from the shelter of the bluffs, into the painted sands, Sollux and Karkat following behind. You want to tell them It’ll all be fine, but you don’t think they’d believe it. They know you take the long perspective on these things. Still — it will be. You’ve been this way only once before. It’s enough to recognize landmarks — the solitary rock pillar on the horizon, the dry creek, the constellation of the dragon’s tail pointing to the oasis you’re aiming for — but mostly, it’s the dead that lead you.
The real dead, all those voices on the wind, sighing through the sand. Not the shadow-droppers. Those mostly sleep, without the sun to give them strength, though you see one or two distant shamblers near day’s end. They make Sollux nervous, which is cute. He says they’re too quiet, but of course they are. They’re only bodies and fungus. The ghosts are elsewhere — everywhere, really, and some are old. They pluck at his shirt, stir his hair with invisible claws. So many think he’s somebody he’s not. Others buzz around Sollux’s head, a flurry of warning signals that he seems to register as static and migraine.
You fall back to shoo them away, and he shakes himself, relaxing as they dissipate. You grip his hand tightly, feeling bones beneath the skin. He seems too brittle. You know he’s not, but if you could, you’d protect him anyway.
“Bad feeling,” he says, looking around like he thinks he’s being watched from somewhere out of sight.
“It’s not your bad feeling,” you tell him. “They’re caught in their memories. You’re not the one they’re scared for.”
“AA,” he says, like he’s on edge. Like he trusts you. “Where is it you’re taking us?”
“The past,” you say, “But not forever. Only until the future’s ready for us.”
“You’re completely crazy,” Karkat says, like that’s something he admires, and you’re struck by the impulse to touch him like the ghosts do, with all that reverent familiarity.
When you reach the oasis, you decide, you want them both — his rough warmth, Sollux’s restive energy, all three of you tangled together beneath the stars. There’s time for it. You never thought that could be true, but out here, it feels like you’ve slipped Alternia’s leash completely, and there’s something exhilarating about heading into the unknown. There’s no set path, no destination but one, and your journey won’t be over for a long while yet.
Fandom: Homestuck
Major Characters/Pairings: Sollux/Aradia/Karkat
Wordcount: 1,239
Rating: Teen
POV: Second Person
Summary: Interludes from a camping trip, of sorts. (Three linked ficlets)
Notes: Written as a giftfic for Disworl on AO3.
What you like most about Aradia is she doesn’t waste time hoofbeastshitting around the subject of death. It’s going to happen to everyone. She’ll probably think it’s pretty fucking neat when it does. In your more morbid moments — which is not all of your moments, because you’re not Sollux and you try to keep the I’m going to die twice and then go blind pronouncements to a minimum — you’ve contemplated willing her whatever is left of your skull when the drones are through with it. It’s… comforting, you guess, to know someone will get something worthwhile out of your inevitable hideous fate. You wouldn’t mind it being the girl you’re sitting around a camp stove with, toasting gelatin pillows and hoping the shadow-droppers don’t find you.
Not that you’re in shadow-dropper country yet. You’re hugging the edges of it, hiding beneath tall blue trees infested with spooky squawkbeasts, plotting the safest way through the desert to Kanaya’s hive. Sollux wanted to say goodbye. You guess you do too, even though saying goodbye means telling her you’ll miss her and then never seeing her again. She’ll have a life somewhere, and the kind of purpose you used to want with a kid’s desperate eagerness to please. You’re over the propagation of the Empire now, but it’s not like any of you have choices. You’ll be going underground too, but you’ll just be running.
But Aradia — watching you intently, a smile playing about the corners of her mouth, her face made ruddy by the stove’s dull glow — she claims there’s something there worth finding. Some old temple carved with signs and stories, one the drones avoid.
“I don’t know why,” she’d said cheerfully, “since the place is positively redolent with sedition. I think it’s the ghosts.”
Which… great. Fucking peachy. But you’re not scared of the dead, no matter how often Aradia keeps saying you don’t have to be. You’re scared for her, with her practical boots and burgundy lipstick, and Sollux with his smug asshole face and dynamo thinkpan, because they’ve got more to worry about than you.
If they’re afraid, they don’t show it. Sollux curses as his gelatin pillow ignites, and Aradia catches your eye, all bright vitality, halfway to laughter. For a moment, everything feels normal — but you’re still scanning the woods and the sky overhead, waiting for drones or worse. You know your sickles and anger aren’t enough to keep them safe. You have to hope Aradia’s ghosts will be.
.
You’re leaning against a cliff in the pre-dawn light with your husktop propped against your knees, too tired but still trying to make progress on your latest virus. The power gauge blinks a constant 22% — that’s how good your precision is, and how convenient it is to be you, because the one thing you don’t have to worry about is running out of batteries. Which is kind of the fucking problem.
Half the fucking problem. The other half has just lost his shit and started swearing at your sun shelter because he can’t get it to stop collapsing, and you don’t know whether you pity or hate him more, only that you don’t want to lose him. If the Empire cared about smart or fair, he’d make a better threshecutioner than they deserve. Instead, the only reason you haven’t spent this bad-idea roadtrip convinced you’re all going to die is that his voice isn’t screaming in the back of your thinkpan.
Which doesn’t make him quieter, actually. He’s pulling out all the anatomical stops concerning exactly where and how the insulating fabric can get fucked, which means it’s time to have mercy and psionically hold the support poles up for him to fix in place.
“Thanks for deigning to remove your head from your wastechute long enough to do something useful,” he says. “Get in here.”
The shelter’s close and warm, even before AA slides in behind you and wraps her arm around your waist. You don’t mind. KK takes the spot nearest the entrance, and he lies facing you, sturdy and so short your chin would fit easily between his horns if there were any less distance between you. His eyes are almost completely red now. Looking at them — at him — you sometimes feel like you’re following in someone else’s walkstub-impressions, and you don’t know how to get off that path, or why it’s so imperative that you do.
You could leave him behind, but that’s never going to happen.
“Why are you looking at me like that?” he grumbles.
“Like what?”
“Like I’m...” He scowls, shoulders hunching. “Fuck you. Like I’m someone important."
He refuses to believe he could be, and that, you do hate, with such painful clarity you have to curl your claws into his hair and kiss him until you taste the blood he despises. You don’t care about blood. He’s yours — and AA’s too, because everything yours is hers. You’re not going to let history have him.
.
When evening comes, you set out from the shelter of the bluffs, into the painted sands, Sollux and Karkat following behind. You want to tell them It’ll all be fine, but you don’t think they’d believe it. They know you take the long perspective on these things. Still — it will be. You’ve been this way only once before. It’s enough to recognize landmarks — the solitary rock pillar on the horizon, the dry creek, the constellation of the dragon’s tail pointing to the oasis you’re aiming for — but mostly, it’s the dead that lead you.
The real dead, all those voices on the wind, sighing through the sand. Not the shadow-droppers. Those mostly sleep, without the sun to give them strength, though you see one or two distant shamblers near day’s end. They make Sollux nervous, which is cute. He says they’re too quiet, but of course they are. They’re only bodies and fungus. The ghosts are elsewhere — everywhere, really, and some are old. They pluck at his shirt, stir his hair with invisible claws. So many think he’s somebody he’s not. Others buzz around Sollux’s head, a flurry of warning signals that he seems to register as static and migraine.
You fall back to shoo them away, and he shakes himself, relaxing as they dissipate. You grip his hand tightly, feeling bones beneath the skin. He seems too brittle. You know he’s not, but if you could, you’d protect him anyway.
“Bad feeling,” he says, looking around like he thinks he’s being watched from somewhere out of sight.
“It’s not your bad feeling,” you tell him. “They’re caught in their memories. You’re not the one they’re scared for.”
“AA,” he says, like he’s on edge. Like he trusts you. “Where is it you’re taking us?”
“The past,” you say, “But not forever. Only until the future’s ready for us.”
“You’re completely crazy,” Karkat says, like that’s something he admires, and you’re struck by the impulse to touch him like the ghosts do, with all that reverent familiarity.
When you reach the oasis, you decide, you want them both — his rough warmth, Sollux’s restive energy, all three of you tangled together beneath the stars. There’s time for it. You never thought that could be true, but out here, it feels like you’ve slipped Alternia’s leash completely, and there’s something exhilarating about heading into the unknown. There’s no set path, no destination but one, and your journey won’t be over for a long while yet.