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one person's enough, here's a short excerpt from Dirk And Rose Fight For Ten Years: The Oneshot
The first day of school that year, Rose’s very first real day of school, not preschool, not kindergarten, but real school, Dave still wasn’t back. Dirk held her hand all the way from the car to the main building, only letting go reluctantly because he had to go to his own classroom.
She wasn’t supposed to be here alone. But it was okay. Mom said, a million times, that it’d be okay; the police would find Dave, and he’d be home, and everything would be back to normal. She just had to keep believing that. It would be fine.
(The police thought that Dad had taken Dave. Rose didn’t understand; he’d never really gotten on with the kids much, and he’d always been extra weird about Dave, and anyway, he had decided he didn’t want to be their dad anymore. Why would he come back? Why take Dave? Why only Dave?? Thinking about it all hurt. Nothing made sense.)
Dirk had said that the two of them just needed to be brave and keep it together, because Mom was depending on them to stay strong. Mom was always depending on them, it seemed to Rose. Whatever, they would manage. They always did.
So Rose walked into class, and she didn’t cry about walking in alone, and she didn’t cry when another kid took the seat next to her that should have been where her brother sat, and she didn’t let slip that anything was wrong until the teacher reached Dave’s name on the rollcall list, and kept calling it, over and over, and Rose didn’t understand why she didn’t just move on, instead of digging the knife in—
“Miss!” the kid next to her shouted, waving his arm in the air. “Miss, this girl’s crying!”
And something in Rose went snap,
Later, when asked why she hit that boy, she couldn’t answer. She just did it. And she had to sit outside the principal’s office, and wait for Mom to come deal with things, and listen to Mom explain how she was so sorry, it’s been so stressful, she just forgot to call in about Dave being missing—
Nothing was fine. She couldn’t pretend it was. Everything was terrible and her twin was gone and people wanted to just, just keep on living, like the entire world wasn’t broken, and she hated it.
***
Her birthday that year was even worse. Mom made her make a bunch of invitations to invite people and hand them out to some classmates, because she should have friends. But no one came, because Rose was that weird girl who cried during attendance and then punched Ricky for no reason on the first day of school. And still, Mom and Aunt Ramona, and Roxy all tried to act like nothing was wrong, as if the entire day wasn’t just a big reminder that they should’ve been having a party the day before, too. Nobody even said Dave’s name, and it just made him not being there even worse. Everyone just kept acting like things were fine.
Everyone except for Dirk, who didn’t smile all day, and only gave her a half-hearted hug around the shoulders, and who she found sitting alone in the middle of Dave’s room after everyone else had gone to bed.
It was almost enough to make her forgive that look he’d had, the day Dave went missing.
Title: The Calm Is Terrifying When The Storm Is All You Know [Homestuck]
Chapter 33: Declarations
Summary: There were two kinds of trolls who went to Earth: rich shitheads with too much money and free time, and desperate assholes who couldn’t survive on Alternia, even with the best efforts of the young Condesce. Karkat hated the planet almost immediately, but with his home planet too dangerous for mutants, he really didn’t have any choice but to hide out on this weird little diurnal planet. At least he’d be safe. Or so he thought, right before blundering his way into an accidental friendship with the son of an anti-troll terrorist.
Rating: M
Chapter Warnings: Implied/Mentioned abuse, mentions of terrorism, death mention, injury mention, depiction of an emotional breakdown, trauma aftermath; Illustrated; Pesterlog
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— carcinoGeneticist [CG] began trolling tipsyGnostalgic [TG] —
CG: WHERE THE FUCK ARE YOU?
— tipsyGnostalgic [TG] is an idle chum! —
CG: FUCK YOU, I CAN SEE THAT FOR MYSELF, YOU PIECE OF SHIT PROGRAM. I’M GONNA FUCKING YELL ANYWAY.
CG: I THOUGHT YOU WERE GOING TO PICK ME UP AT NOON. IT’S LIKE, 1:30 AND YOU STILL AREN’T HERE, WHAT GIVES?
CG: IF YOU GOT KIDNAPPED, TOO, I SWEAR TO FUCK I’M PERSONALLY PUTTING THIS ENTIRE GODDAMN FAMILY UNDER PERMANENT WATCH.
CG: I’M NOT ABOVE SITTING ON YOU ASSHOLES IF THATS WHAT IT TAKES.
TG: okay first off i know youre like a literal alien but heres a protip for ya:
TG: general human earth etiquette is to not text people who you know are probably driving?
TG: its like a whole thing
CG: WHY
TG: idk probs because texting while driving’s a great way to fucking crash lol
TG: anyway!!
TG: yeah im real sorry about that mom fucking rang me up like
TG: hi im at the airport come get me!
TG: out of fucking nowhere because everything has to be a fucking hassle with this woman
TG: so i had to go get her
CG: WHY THE FUCK WAS SHE AT THE AIRPORT?
TG: because fuck me is why
TG: and THEN shes like
TG: ooooh i gotta do some mysterious whatthefuckever errand at some mall out in the middle of nowhere
TG: so now im sitting in the parking lot waiting for her to get back which might be a while because her bad leg’s been acting up lately
TG: and thats why im not there yet >:(
CG: WAIT. WAIT, HOLD ON, I’M CONFUSED.
CG: BY “MOM” ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT RACHEL? I DIDN’T EVEN THINK SHE HAD A BAD LEG.
TG: nonono
TG: ray is like. dirk and dave and rose’s mom
TG: i dont call her mom i just call her aunt ray cuz shes not my mom yknow
TG: my mom is aunt ray’s sister
TG: aunt ramona? they talk about her?
CG: OOOOOOH. YEAH.
CG: THE WOMAN WHO WRITES THOSE SHITTY SUPERNATURAL ROMANCE BOOKS KANAYA LOVES.
TG: hahaha yeah her trashy shit is great
CG: SHE’S HERE?
TG: apparently!!!!!!!!
CG: I’M SENSING SOME BITTERNESS.
TG: ugh its fine she just always does shit like this
TG: womans always gotta make a fuckin entrance even if that means not telling anyone shes coming
TG: and its goddamn annoying as shit!!
TG: but its fine i get it shes here to help out and we are kinda all hands on deck
TG: speaking of tho i heard something about kanaya not coming along after all?
CG: NOT YET, NO.
CG: SHE’S BEEN TALKING TO ROSE, AND APPARENTLY DAVE’S BEEN PRETTY UNEASY WITH THE NUMBER OF NEW FACES AT THE HIVE.
CG: HOUSE. WHATEVER.
CG: TEREZI’S PROTECTION DETAIL HAS HIM KIND OF ON EDGE, I GUESS?
CG: SHE’S GONNA COME AROUND LATER PROBABLY. AND MIGHT END UP STAYING WITH PORRIM AND KEEP IT TO VISITS, AT LEAST UNTIL THINGS SETTLE DOWN A BIT.
CG: SO IT’S JUST ME FOR NOW.
TG: ooooh yeah geez i bet
TG: poor dave :( :( :(
TG: i gotta tell you and mom some uh. serious shit about him when i pick you both up
TG: id pass it on here but its probs better if i just tell you face to face?
CG: OH, WONDERFUL!
CG: MORE NO DOUBT HORRIFIC NEWS REGARDING DAVE.
CG: I CAN’T WAIT. THIS PANIC ATTACK’S GONNA BE ONE FOR THE RECORD BOOKS, I CAN JUST FEEL IT!!!
TG: :(
TG: tl;dr hes not in great shape but hes getting better but theres some stuff we gotta go over
TG: jfc mom what the fuck are you doing its been ages
CG: SO WAIT. SHE JUST HAD YOU DRIVE HER OUT SOMEWHERE AND WALKED OFF ALONE?
TG: yeah
TG: woman can take care of herself just fine so like im not worried??
TG: but still, like. cmon woman!!! whatever it is hurry up a little
TG: it cant be that important we got places to be
In terms of location, it was almost an outlet mall; somewhat detached from the nearest city and surrounded by forest. It was mostly all one building, positioned in a dip in the ground next to a clear stream, and these features had helped make it a serviceable fortress during the invasion, although Derek had regularly complained that he’d have preferred a site that held the high ground. Still, they’d made do; the roof was high enough that one could see for quite some distance, the stream offered fresh water, the trees provided decent enough cover during skirmishes, and the walls were thick enough to turn away most weather and weapons. It hadn’t been much, but it had served well enough as home for six years for around threescore ragtag survivors-turned-fighters.
Out in the surrounding forest, those who hadn’t survived that conflict still lay buried in pitiful graves marked only with a stone or a chunk of wood. There hadn’t been time to properly put anyone to rest; it had been risky enough for two or three people to slip out during a stretch of quiet with a shovel and a body. They simply hadn’t been able to afford to have any sort of formal burial, not with the threat of an attack constantly looming.
Even so, even so…
Derek had picked a spot he would remember.
In life, the oak tree would have been the kind people would have thought of as a monarch, with branches spread wide and gnarled wood ancient and strong, holding children in its branches as easily as if they were made of nothing; but the tree had already been dead by the time the invasion started, a great, ancient, dried-out husk. Even so, decades later, it still stood, its branches reaching toward the sky, the other trees forming a circle around it as though too respectful to come too close. Mushrooms and trails of greenery crept about a quarter of the way up the ancient trunk.
At its roots, a rotting wooden spar stuck up out of the ground. This, too, had been reclaimed by flowers, grasses and mushrooms, decorating the splintered and decayed timber with dark summer greens and pale white-and-lavender blooms.
Derek Strider, down on one knee with his sheathed sword held in his right hand, sighed. Of course, the trouble with having to bury the dead so hastily meant that there’d been no one to look over the graves, so it was to be expected that it be in such disrepair, but even so, seeing this one choked out by the invading flora was…
It wasn’t right.
Overhead, the ancient branches rustled slightly, and the raucous calling of a bird broke the silence. Derek narrowed his eyes and ignored it, tried to write the disrespectful noise out of the scene.
The crow seemed to have other ideas. The bird lighted down on the wooden grave marker, red eyes fixed on Derek’s face. It flapped its wings a few times, cawing incessantly. Derek scowled, unsheathed his sword, and struck —
The blade passed through the bird with no resistance whatsoever. The creature’s body split in two, bloodlessly, as though Derek had cut through smoke — it even looked like smoke, like a cloud cut in two by a passing jet. As Derek looked on, uncomprehending and with a growing sense of dread, the bird’s body seemed to pull itself back together, a video played in reverse, and the bird’s accusatory squawks started up again as though nothing had happened.
Derek was on his feet in an instance, stepping away from the beast, and as he did, he happened to look up…
Perched on nearly every branch of the old tree were ravens. Unlike the crow, they were all silent, and aside from the occasional shifting of a foot or tilting of a head, motionless. Scores of staring animal eyes bored into him.
Derek had never been a superstitious man, but nor was he the sort of fool to ignore the truth his own eyes showed him. He’d spent six years fighting alongside a witch, and seen enough to learn that some things really couldn’t be explained away as coincidence.
Had it been anyone else, he would have responded to the sound of footsteps approaching this site with a furious attack; even Ben knew better than to disturb him here. But when he whirled to face the intruder, he froze.
She’d aged more since he’d last seen her than he would have expected. Hints of silver streaked her hair, and she leaned heavily on her gnarled black cane. A faint breeze stirred the black fabric of her dress, playing with the light shawl laying across her shoulders. The crow had fallen silent.
“Put that thing away before you take someone’s eye out,” said Ramona, nodding nonchalantly at Derek’s sword.
Derek narrowed his eyes, and did not respond aloud, instead choosing to slowly and deliberately slide the sword back into its sheathe. Only after his left hand had returned to his side did Ramona nod and continue.
“That’s better,” she said. “Now we can talk things over like reasonable adults. Mind you, I ought to do the world a favor and wipe you out right now,” and Derek took a slow, deep breath at that, as she continued, “But I’d prefer not to desecrate your brother’s grave by staining it with your blood. I respect him far too much for that. You, however, have somehow managed to exceed all of my worst expectations to a nearly unfathomable degree, as of late. I’ve held off on this confrontation out of respect for the past, but I can see now that this was a mistake.”
Derek shifted. “Everything I’ve done has been to protect our damn planet, Ramona,” he started, but was cut off.
“Really?” she said, “Well, then. I’m not about to attempt to ask you to cease killing trolls, as we both know that would be pointless, but I would very much like to know how exactly burning your own son alive plays into your grand battle strategy?”
“He…he turned on us,” Derek said, through gritted teeth, “He forced my hand, left me no choice!”
“He is a child!” Ramona snapped. “And you, of all people, should know better! If you really must follow this path of self-destruction to its end, fine, but he should never have been involved!”
“I—”
“And in any case, you had a perfectly good sword on hand, I’m sure. If young Dave really did need to die, you could have executed him with minimal pain, but no, you wanted him to hurt, to know he was dying and to fear you and suffer as he passed. How do you justify that, Derek? How does anyone, especially a child, deserve anything of the sort?”
The eyes of the ravens and that damned crow still drilled into him. He could feel the stares on his back, but kept his eyes locked on Ramona’s, refusing to back down.
He wasn’t going to take back what he’d done. There’d be no guilt, he’d done nothing wrong except overreact a bit. It was justified. That…that boy wasn’t Dave. Ramona was using the name like a blade, but she’d not win that way. He didn’t deserve the fucking name, didn’t deserve to have anything to do with Dave, he never would have let Rachel name the kid that if he’d known he was going to grow up to be such a pathetic, useless little coward.
“I don’t have to explain myself to you,” he said.
“No, I suppose you don’t,” said Ramona, folding her hands over the top of her cane. “I’ve a fairly good idea, in any case.” She sighed. “The war is over, Derek. The time to put aside this violence and misery is long since behind us. Our children do not deserve to grow up as we did.”
“The trolls are still here,” Derek spat.
There was a long silence. Ramona sighed again.
“Fine, then,” she said, “So be it. Do as you will. Chase violence as long as you like. But if you come near my family again, I will consider it an act of war.”
She turned, and he was tempted to take the bait, to try attacking her while her back was turned, but he held still. It was infuriating, knowing what a pointed insult turning her back on him was, knowing that she knew he would not risk attacking her—but she was right. She was much too dangerous.
“Come along, little one,” she said, abruptly. The crow rose off the grave and flew to land on top of Ramona’s cane. If Derek had cared to pay any attention, he might have noticed the crow look back at him with something like regret in its eyes, but Derek was already far too lost in his own thoughts.
As one bird, the ravens took wing, dispersing in all directions, leaving him alone again.
The trouble with trying to go from Alternian to English was a multifaceted one, to be sure, but so far the most obnoxious piece of it that Karkat could see was the tendency of guides on how to speak English to simply use the closest Alternian equivalent as an English word’s translation. More and more, the two languages were notably extremely different, and while he could speak English well enough that he’d never had any serious problems, there were any number of words that he kept tripping over as a result of a translation being extremely unclear and culturally misleading.
Witches, for instance, were clearly something very different on Earth. The Alternian word that was translated to English as “witch” was, like most Alternian words, a series of noises in the ‘click and growl’ family that most humans lacked the anatomy to create, and generally refered to certain lowblood prophets and healers in Alternian folklore. They were those who lived away from society and who, through some lucky genetics and convenient psychic powers, were able to fend of drones and effectively disappear from the world at large’s knowledge. They kept to themselves, sought to harm no one who didn’t attack them first, offered shelter to the weak and the hunted, and as such were always portrayed as utterly despicable beings in fiction, as no writer with any sense of self-preservation had dared to portray such reckless treachery under the rule of the last Condesce. There might have been some changes to the lore under the new one’s rule, but things like that changed slow.
In any case, they certainly weren’t anything like the old woman in a shawl who was sitting next to Roxy in the front of her car.
She was dressed all in black, for one thing. Alternian witches didn’t tend to wear much black. Some Alternian witches didn’t tend to wear all that much clothing at all, really. Most seemed to belong to ancient religions that weren’t particularly fond of shirts.
Ramona was definitely magic as shit, though, Rachel’d been right about that much. Was that all a witch was on Earth, just someone with magic? Fuck, if that were the case, then probably like at least a third of all trolls were witches by Earth’s standards. Then again, maybe magic was another poorly translated word? English didn’t seem to have a word to separate “things that we (read: trolls) know exist, like psychic powers and psiionics and ghosts and chucklevoodoos,” and “things that are super fake and don’t actually happen ever and make no sense.”
Whatever. In any case, Ramona didn’t look at all like Karkat had expected, and when he climbed into the back of the car, she didn’t react to his presence with anything stronger than an amiable nod. She seemed to have her mind on other things, and was largely silent at first.
Roxy wasn’t; she immediately piped up happily as Karkat swung open the door with a “Hey, man! Sorry about taking so long! Can you, uh, do me a favor and check on Jaspers? He’s in the carrier behind Mom, Rose asked me to pick him up while she and Aunt Ray were gone. He’s been missing them a lot, all staring out the window and kneading his blanket and shit, and he’s not a huge fan of car rides.”
“He’s asleep,” Karkat said after glancing into the little crate.
“Awesome. Alright, buckle up and we’ll get this damn show on the road.”
“On the road again, just can’t wait to get on—”
Karkat tilted his head as the car’s radio abruptly changed from quietly playing some human pop song over to something much louder and completely different. Ramona stifled a snort as Roxy stabbed a button, switching the radio back to the previous channel.
“No, thank you,” she said, glaring. “Christ, the fuck is with this thing today, I swear to god.”
“I suppose it may simply be getting into the spirit of things,” said Ramona with a smile. As the car pulled away from the curb, she turned back a bit to face Karkat. “It’s Karkat, isn’t it? Rachel’s been sending me any number of emails with updates, and from the sound of things, you’ve been rather instrumental in bringing young Dave back into the fold, so to speak.”
“…Into the what?”
“It’s a figure of speech, meaning in this case that you’ve helped us return him home as well as helping him to adjust to being there,” she said. “For which you have all of our heartfelt thanks. Ours is perhaps not the most functional of families, but it is ours, and as I’m sure you’ve seen firsthand, ripping away a piece of it the way Derek did has had some very painful consequences for all involved. We owe you a great deal.”
“Yeah, man!” Roxy said. “And from what Rose has been telling me, you were kind of a big part of why he finally spilled what he knows. Which, he did bee-tee-dubs, which means he’s off house arrest finally, so that’s good—”
“—And a partridge in a pear tree,” the radio crackled.
“What the fuck? It’s August,” Roxy scowled. She turned the radio off altogether as Ramona glanced hurriedly out the window.
“Speaking of Dave,” Karkat said, hopefully before anyone got distracted again, “Roxy, you mentioned that there was something that you needed to say face to face?”
“Right, shoot, yeah,” said Roxy. The car turned onto the long road that led eventually to the Lalonde hive. “Okay, so, like. There’s definitely some shit you should know before we get there, but I wanna preface it all real clearly by saying that Dave’s okay, y’know? He’s got a lot of healing to do, but the doctors said that as long as he’s looked after and we change bandages and shit and he gets plenty of rest, he’s definitely not in any danger anymore. He’s…weak, but he’s not like gonna keel over at any moment, okay?”
“Not actually making me feel any better, Roxy!” said Karkat. Oh, boy, with a preface like that…
“Well, fuck, I tried, I guess. Uh. So, Dave did get hurt…pretty bad, and there were some other complications—oh, for fuck’s sake!!”
“Watch me, watch me, hey, watch me, watch me!” The radio was louder than ever. Ramona’s hand flew up, poorly hiding a grin.
Karkat leaned around Roxy’s seat to glare at her.
“What the fuck, Roxy,” said Karkat.
“I’m not doing this!” Roxy said, waving her hand wildly. “I swear to fuck, I wouldn’t! I really do need to pass on some shit about poor Dave, and the radio’s never done this before? It’s been acting up since a little before we picked you up, keeps changing on its own and shit, augh!”
She fought with the controls, but the song stopped only for a moment before getting even louder.
“Why the fuck do you humans even have this obnoxious song?! Who listens to this?? It’s literally just some squawking wiggler screeching for its lusus’s attention!”
“I mean, I kinda love it for that honestly, it’s terrible and stupid and wonderful, but like, come the fuck on??? What’s with this thing?! Now is not the time!”
“Ass ass ass ass ass ass ass ass ass ass—“
“GOD, that’s even worse!!” Roxy yelled, slamming her fist down on the dashboard. “Fucking stop!!”
“That’s enough for now,” Ramona said, almost murmuring it.
The radio turned off. Karkat and Roxy both turned a suspicious eye on Ramona, and with equal simultaneity, decided to drop it for now.
“Anyway,” Roxy said slowly, “What I was trying to say is, um…Karkat, do you know what it means for someone to ‘flatline?’ Because, um. Dave kinda did, for like, a minute and a half.”
Karkat shook his head, realized Roxy probably couldn’t see him with her eyes on the road, and said, “Uh, I have no idea what that word means, no.”
“Well, um…”
“It refers to a heart monitor indicating that the heart has ceased beating,” Ramona said. “The machine indicates activity with a line which shows peaks and valleys, and it goes flat when that activity has stopped, thus, ‘flatline’. The organ we call a heart serves an equivalent function to what trolls call a ‘blood pusher’ or a ‘pump biscuit.’”
Karkat felt for a moment like his own pump biscuit had stopped.
“Shit, Mom, when did you get so good at translating to trolls?” Roxy murmured.
Ramona shrugged. “I’ve made efforts to reach out,” she said. “The war ended, after all, and since we’re allies now, it doesn’t hurt to learn about each others’ cultures.”
“His fucking—What?!” Karkat screeched, unable to keep the harsh buzzing whine out of his voice. God, that was such a moirail noise, and any other time he’d have yelled at himself for not keeping it under control, but not now, not when… “His fucking blood pusher stopped and I’m supposed to be calm!?!”
“They got it moving again!” Roxy said. “He’s okay now, the doctors said it was going strong! It was, um, mostly just exhaustion, they think? Like, the burn wounds could’ve killed him on their own, sure, but they got on those quick enough that if he’d been healthy to begin with he probably wouldn’t have been so bad off? But between ten years of, you know…and just, apparently he hasn’t been eating enough even while he’s been back with us? And Ray’s gonna get on his ass about that, but, just—look, the thing is, Dirk doesn’t know about this yet, and Aunt Ray’s asked that we try to keep it that way, and I don’t really get why but I think she has her reasons?”
Karkat was definitely hyperventilating, oh fuck, oh fuck—Ramona’s hand reached back to touch his own, snapping him out of it.
“It’s fine to be worried,” she said, gentle. “I promise you, though, it is as Roxy says: he’ll be fine given time to recover and the safety with which to do so. He’ll be alive when we get there.” She sat back in her chair, turning towards the road again. “As for Dirk, I suspect Rachel is waiting for things to settle down before breaking it to him gently. He is, for better or worse, very like his father, and Derek handled his brother’s death poorly, in large part because at the time we could not afford to mourn. Rachel probably wants to make sure that Dirk does not feel he has to force himself to be strong when she tells him.”
“Makes sense, I guess,” Roxy muttered. “Anyway, the main thing about that is that he’s not got a lot of energy right now, so don’t…take it personally if he just falls asleep on you sometimes? Especially with the painkillers he’s on, apparently that’s a side effect, too. He can walk short distances, but he gets wobbly quick and needs help sometimes, so there’s that too.”
“Fuck,” said Karkat, softly.
The next ten minutes of the ride were carried out in tense silence. This was broken by the radio once again bursting back on and blasting the ass song again, at which point Roxy threatened to pull over and smash the fucking thing to smithereens.
By the time they actually got to the fucking house, Karkat felt like his soul was going to vibrate right out of his fucking body with impatience. They had yet another delay in the form of Terezi’s protection detail—Terezi herself wasn’t there, but some officers were, and they insisted on knowing about any weapons the three of them had as well as names, and went in to check with the family while making them all wait outside by the car. Karkat already had his fucking bag in hand, he was ready to go, but no, they had to go through this tedious procedure! Sure, it was probably a smart move, and when he was feeling a little more sensible he’d be more okay with it as it was the sort of thing that probably would make them all feel a bit safer (especially poor fucking Dave), but right now the were a pain in the ass and he was going to fucking explode!!! If they didn’t!!! Let him get in the fucking hive!!!!!
Rose stepped out as they were still talking to the police, and for the first time in his life Karkat was unspeakably happy to see her. She quickly confirmed to the police that all three of them were in fact expected and trusted by this household, and then gently let Jaspers out of his carrier. The cat immediately yowled and threw himself into her arms, kneading at her shoulders and rubbing his face against hers, and it all would have been super cute if Karkat didn’t have his mind on other fucking things.
“Come on in,” Rose said, nodding towards the door. “Dirk’s on the couch and Dave’s in Mom’s room, as neither of them can handle stairs right now and Dave needs his bandages changed at least twice a day. Karkat, do you—”
She was talking to air. He was already in the fucking door.
And then had to face the fact that he’d never actually been to Rachel’s room. Fuck. Rachel was coming up the hall, though, and a slightly bewildered young human (wait, fuck, that was Dirk, what happened to his hair? It looked so weird hanging down like that instead of spiked up) was sitting on the couch with an Earth husktop on his lap. Roxy pushed in the door with Ramona right behind her, dropped a heavy wheeled bag right next to the door, and immediately launched herself at Dirk, who gave a startled yelp as she did so.
Rachel rested a hand on Karkat’s shoulder as she passed him, rushing up toward Ramona throwing her arms around her shoulders. The two shared a long hug, and Rachel kissed Ramona’s cheek.
“God, I’m so glad you’re here,” Karkat heard Rachel murmur, before Rose tapped his shoulder.
“I was asking if you knew where Mom’s room is,” Rose said.
“Uh.”
“It’s down the hall to the observatory, but you take a left before you get to it. Make sure to make plenty of noise on the way over, Dave gets really jumpy when he’s the only person in that room. He can’t block the door since we need to be able to come in and out, and it’s got him a bit on edge.”
Karkat nodded, unable to get any words out past the lump in his throat. He more or less just dropped his bag on the ground and pushed past, zooming around toward the room indicated. Dave looked half-asleep when Karkat pushed the door open, and waved as he sat up with some effort.
God, the photo Rose had taken didn’t do justice to how fucking bad he looked. There were bruises across his face and neck turned a weird greenish-gray but still dark against his skin, and bandages everywhere, his hair was a mess (although that might have just been from sleeping). He was in some oversized shirt with an Earth hoofbeast on the front that was probably Dirk’s judging by the size, and Karkat had no idea why Dave had it on but right now he didn’t care.
“Hey, man, uh. Shit’s been crazy, huh?” Dave said with an awkward grin. He didn’t have his shades on either, which made sense if he’d been sleeping, except they weren’t on the bedside table (which did instead contain a nearly empty glass of water, several bottles of pills and salves, and a first aid kit from which clean cloth bandages overflowed).
Two weeks of emotion boiled over all at once. Wordless, Karkat stomped across the room and grabbed Dave’s stupid fucking shirt in both hands and tugged him close.
“It was three days, Dave,” Karkat hissed.
“Wha—?”
“Three days! And you got yourself fucking kidnapped by a terrorist on day goddamn two!! What the fuck, Dave?!” His voice was threatening to abandon him, but Karkat forced it right back into place by sheer willpower. This tangent would not be fucking stopped, hell no. “I take my eyes off of you for two days, and you get yourself into shit again! What the fuck!!! Do you have any idea how-how fucking agonizing it’s been waiting for news?! And you’re just sitting there like ‘Oh, hey! What’s up?’ What’s up is my foot up your waste chute, you hopeless fucking—!” Okay, nope, his voice was leaving after all, actually. He felt tears roll down his face, and he should’ve been more worried about that, but Dave already knew about his blood color and he was the only troll in the house right now, so, fuck it, fuck it all! Helpless, he tugged Dave closer again, letting his face press against that stupid shirt, claws still twisted into the fabric as he sobbed.
“Holy shit,” Dave muttered.
“I was so fucking scared,” Karkat gasped. This was pathetic, they weren’t remotely a couple, Karkat had no right to be this worked up and he knew it, but…Dave wasn’t exactly pushing him away, either, was he?
“I’m sorry, man, I didn’t even…It wasn’t planned this time, it just sorta happened, and Dirk got hurt, and I…”
“I’m not actually angry at you, despite having so much right to be that legislacerators everywhere have preemptively declared me innocent. I’m just fucking screaming for the sake of it, dumbass.”
“Oh.”
The awkward pause that followed was filled with only the sound of Karkat’s weeping, which, fuck, he was probably too fucking embarrassed to tell him off. Except…Dave’s hand lifted up to rest gently against Karkat’s back, so, maybe he didn’t mind that much? Was that wishful thinking?
“Sorry for this,” he said, just in case, as he pulled away a bit. “It’s really fucking embarrassing, I know, I just…”
“It’s cool, man,” said Dave. Then, with a wink, he said, “I know you got your massive Strider homocrush, it’s only natural—”
“Dave, I swear to fuck, injured or not, I will pummel you into dust with a fucking pillow, don’t test me!” Karkat snapped.
Dave snorted. “Hey, man, it’s fine, everyone’s allowed to be a lil gay sometimes with their friends, it’s only natural.”
“I’ll ‘natural’ you!! Motherfucker, I spent the two weeks worrying about your wellbeing and you come at me with more of this bullshit!!”
Dave cackled with laughter. Karkat rolled his eyes and sniffled. He feigned annoyance as best he could, but, God, it was such a relief to hear Dave laugh. Rubbing a sweater sleeve furiously across his eyes, Karkat pulled back, sitting awkwardly on the edge of the bed. “Okay, but seriously, what’s with the shirt?” he asked, gesturing at the floating head of the hoofbeast. It wasn’t even a joke or a drawing. It was just…a straight photo of a hoofbeast’s face, with no text or explanation of any sort. What the fuck??
Dave glanced down, and snickered. “Oh, shit. Uh, yeah, we needed something that’s easy to get me in and out of, since the bandages on this fuckin’ burn need to be changed like, a lot, not to mention the gross-ass cream they have us slathering all over it on the regular. We tried a button down, but the buttons were kinda chafing, and like…who the fuck wants to ruin a fancy shirt with gross burn juices, right? And Dirk’s shit is more comfortable, and this one’s big enough that it’s real easy to take off even if I’m high on the damn painkillers.”
Karkat winced slightly, but decided not to comment. The scream from the video echoed somewhere in his think pan. “Where’re your shades?”
“Bro fuckin’ stepped on them or something, man, I dunno. They fell off at some point, and they were already cracked before all that, and Terezi just found pieces. Which fucking sucks, I mean God dammit, those were a gift from John. Shit sucks.”
“John?” Karkat tipped his head.
“Yeah, he’s like, an old friend of mine. Have I not mentioned him to you? Whatever, he, uh.” Dave scratched at the side of his head. “He was an online friend from before Bro started doing the, uh, raid shit, and I kept talking to him and another friend, Jade, for a while afterwards even though I wasn’t supposed to?”
“Jade’s name I remember,” Karkat said.
“Haha, yeah, yeah cuz I told you about…anyway.” He cleared his throat. “I guess since Dirk’s college is starting up again soon, not that he’s going for the first couple weeks with his leg and a fucking concussion, but, it’s starting up, and John’s sister goes there too, and he’s gonna come with so we’ll be able to hang out for a bit? Which is fuckin’ rad, I haven’t even talked to the guy in three years and we’re finally meeting in person.”
“You want him to be here? While you’re this badly injured?” Karkat yelped.
Dave blinked at him like he’d just grown a secondary head.
“I mean, yeah?” Dave said. “Like, yeah, I’m not in great shape and I guess it’ll be a lil weird for him to see me like this, but I’ve missed him.” Before Karkat could press the question further, though, Dave yawned. “Ugh, fuck, I wanna keep talking, but I’m…halfway to falling asleep, shit.”
“Oh,” said Karkat. He got up, ready to leave. He wanted to stay, wanted to curl himself around Dave’s obnoxiously lanky frame as best he could and protect this fragile idiot human from the entire universe, but…it wasn’t his place, was it? No.
“You leaving?” said Dave, rubbing at his unbruised eye.
“You said you wanna sleep,” Karkat said.
“Right. Uh. Could you, like…fill this back up for me, then, I guess?” Dave said.
“…Sure,” said Karkat.
He was…still confused, but Dave was tired, so he didn’t press. But he couldn’t wrap his head around wanting a friend around while he was so injured—well, he’d wanted Karkat around, hadn’t he? He’d seemed happy to see him, aside from the, uh, yelling. Still, it didn’t make sense! Every troll knew as a small child that the only people you could trust when you were injured were your lusus, your moirail, and maybe your matesprit! Anyone else might take advantage of the weakness and kill you, that was just basic logic! But Dave didn’t even seem to be thinking about it.
And…and yet, come to think of it, Roxy’d been awfully forthright about how bad Dave’s condition was. Hell, she’d heard it from Rose, who seemed like the one most likely to know not to spread that weakness, but the humans were all sharing it and passing it around. It wasn’t just that they didn’t seem to care who knew that Dave and Dirk were injured, it was like they wanted people to know.
And as he filled up the glass of water in the kitchen, he watched as Roxy and Dirk talked on the couch, as Dirk told her that he’d passed on the news of their condition to Jane already, that Rose had told her and Dave’s friends, and it just kept going. Everyone had to be up to date on the fact that both brothers were injured and vulnerable, and yet…
“I hope the flight wasn’t too long,” Rachel was saying to Ramona.
“Nothing would be too long right now,” she said in turn, blowing gently on a cup of tea that Rachel had just poured her. “Times like these, we all need to do our part. I know I might not be able to do much, mind you. My leg’s been acting up something fierce, as of late, but I’ll do whatever I can.”
Something clicked. All at once, the curtains pulled back and Karkat saw the whole picture—saw maybe not what it always was, and certainly not what the Lalondes achieved on any sort of regular basis, but what it was supposed to be, how it was meant to work.
On Alternia, everyone lived in constant competition. Trolls had to be strong as close to all the time as they possibly could, or at the very least find a moirail who could, because otherwise their society wouldn’t particularly care much if they died. That just meant they didn’t deserve to be a part of the gene pool or to contribute to society. If they were injured badly and left vulnerable, it was seen as normal for others to take advantage of that weakness and exert power or outright kill a rival. It was how they survived so long, or so the cultural narrative had so long stated: by this competition, the strongest survive. Nevermind that this survival was built on the corpses of uncountable trolls who didn’t make the cut, it Worked.
As a result, trolls had been bewildered just as Karkat had by how humans as a species managed to be so frail and yet so reckless and to still survive, especially when they didn’t exactly have the kind of numbers that trolls did. Humans lacked the numbers to be expendable, lacked the strength and toughness that kept Trolls alive, and yet they looked Death in the eye and pointed and laughed, and pushed themselves to extremes for no purpose other than to have some warped idea of fun. It was a question that had lingered around his consciousness for ages; how the fuck do humans even work as a species? How had such a seemingly doomed race not died off yet?
The answer that hit him now, as he watched Roxy help Dirk stand up and balance himself on a pair of crutches, was that humans didn’t have to be strong all the time, and that was the magic of their little social units, their families—they took care of each other. No one person had to be good at everything, or so good at one thing that it could keep them safe in any situation. It didn’t matter that their skin was thin or that they weren’t particularly strong or fast, they always, always had others around who would pick up the slack, others who would come even across oceans to offer what aid they could in times of strife; they weaved together all their strengths and weaknesses into a fabric able to withstand just about anything. Fuck, no wonder they’d wanted Dave back so badly. The Lalondes may have been less a tapestry and more a patchwork quilt, but it was still their quilt, and Dave was a part of it….
He felt a near-agonizing pang of envy that he didn’t have a quilt of his own. Humans might have been stupid about a lot of things, but this…this they’d gotten right.
“Fucking water? Is that really the best you could think of? Fucking dumbass,” Dave muttered to himself. God. This was stupid. This was all really fucking stupid. He couldn’t even deal with being alone while he was asleep, for Chrissakes! Too scared of nightmares of a big mean dog, like some fuckin’ little kid.
Yeah, he was tired, but he really, really didn’t wanna be alone right now, was the thing. Not with that fucking troll-drug-induced nightmare lingering around the edges, waiting to chase him down again at its first chance. But. Like. Karkat was kind of right? Bros don’t watch each other sleep, that’s fuckin’ creepy. Like. Okay, so maybe they’d done a bit of that way back when Karkat had been kidnapped, but they didn’t have a choice back then, and anyways they mostly slept at the same time during that experience, which was super different from just asking his best alien friend to fuckin’ hold his hand so the bad dreams wouldn’t get him. Fuck.
So he’d asked Karkat to refill his glass, even though he wasn’t thirsty right now, because it was an excuse to make Karkat come back, at least for a few more minutes, and they could talk for a bit, and maybe Dave’d stop being tired, wouldn’t that be rad.
Karkat came back in looking really thoughtful. He handed the glass over, and Dave took a sip to try and look like he hadn’t been 100% bullshitting there, and mumbled a thanks as he set it down. Then, just as a thought, he jerked his head toward the rest of the bed—it was a big king-sized one, probably left over from before the divorce and Mom had just never downsized or whatever, so there was a lot of space to Dave’s right—and told Karkat he could sit down if he wanted, Dave wasn’t gonna, like, pass out right this minute or anything, haha.
Karkat stayed quiet, which was fuckin’ weird, but he did sit down. He stared at the sheets for a minute, and then spoke up suddenly, saying, “I think I get it.”
“Get what?” said Dave.
“Why they wanted you back so bad,” said Karkat. “I mean, way back when you were first arrested. I kind of fought with Dirk over it at one point, because my only experience with the word Dirk used for why you should be with him was fucking Strider. And also I think I get why this shit all works, for humans in general. I mean, I’m probably just saying obvious shit, but it’s not how trolls work, we don’t take care of each other, not like this.”
Dave tipped his head.
“I mean with the whole fucking family thing,” Karkat said, rolling his eyes. “I’ve been trying to get it this whole time, but this shit’s used to justify so much bullshit with you humans, and I think I get it now, and why it’s so fucking important to you as a species.”
Dave snorted. “Dude, it’s not that big a thing—”
“It is, though! It just seems normal to humans because it’s how you always work, but, Dave, I’m serious, back on Alternia it’s every troll for themself. Maybe you have one person who has your back if you’ve got a moirail, maybe some are lucky like me and have friends who are actually consistently on your side and won’t take the first chance they get to kill you or fuck you up some other way, but we definitely don’t have a whole cluster of others we can just fall back on any time we’re met with something we can’t handle alone.”
“Makes sense, I guess,” Dave started, but Karkat just kept going. Apparently he’d had some sort of fuckin’ epiphany in the past two minutes.
“It took me so fucking long to get this, but I get it now! You know what I don’t get, though, is why the fuck you ever tried to convince me that Strider is part of your fucking family.”
Something in Dave dropped like a stone.
He’d…had a similar thought, really. Repeatedly. Multiple times, over the past week or so. He’d been kind of trying to avoid it, because every time it popped up, he got really stressed out.
“And don’t give me any of the bullshit about being ‘related’ or what the fuck ever, I don’t wanna hear it,” Karkat kept right on going. “I still don’t get why you humans care so much about that. The whole point of this family thing is that you all take care of each other, not that you’re related or whatever! Your aunt’s here, did you know that? She flew across an entire fucking ocean just to make sure she could help out you and Dirk! What the fuck did Strider ever do for you?”
It was a good question. And the answer, of course, was: aside from trying to kill him, do you mean? Hahaha.
Karkat was still talking, but Dave wasn’t really hearing him. Fuck, this had been a mistake, he should’ve taken his chances with the fucking nightmare dog. That was better than this old song and dance with his own thoughts.
The facts were pretty simple. He’d operated under pretty clear logic when he went up against Bro: We’re family, so he loves me, so therefore if I ask him to let me leave and explain that I really can’t deal with this, he’ll let me go. Except, Bro had tried to kill him, which meant that…
That was as far as Dave ever got. He couldn’t think any farther than that.
He felt like…like the next thought should be obvious, but he couldn’t make himself think it. It was too big—not so much a square peg in a round hole as it was trying to cram a grain silo into a pinhole, and the thought threatened to overwhelm and destroy him, so instead of thinking it, his brain kept rejecting it, the effect being like a broken record skip-skip-skipping, over and over, repeating the last thought he could get to before the Big One, because he couldn’t not think the Big One, either…
It was so fucking stupid, it was just a thought, why couldn’t he…
“Hah, yeah, now that you mention it, I guess I was always kinda wrong about this shit, wasn’t I?” Dave said, unable to stop the sardonic laughter bubbling up in his throat. “I mean, fuck, no wonder it took you so long to get, I probably gave you the wrong idea. My dumb ass was convinced he’d never try to kill me, cuz we’re family, and, well, here we fuckin’ are!”
Skip, skip, skip—
Karkat was still talking in stuttered phrases in the gaps of Dave’s own flood of words, looking almost scared, but Dave didn’t comprehned any of them, and anyway, the ranting had started, there was no stopping this shit now. “Like, what the fuck was I even thinking, right? I really thought that was gonna work, that somehow he’d just let me go if I asked, like a fucking idiot! Haha, what a fuckin’ dipshit, right?! And here I was thinking he—” Frantic laughter bubbled up, overtaking the words, not that more would’ve come, that next thought was just too big. Was he crying? Fuck, Karkat didn’t need to see any of this shit, but he couldn’t stop, couldn’t think
Skip, skip, skip, skip, skipskipskipskipskipskip—
It wasn’t Karkat’s fault. It really wasn’t. He might’ve set it off, but the storm had been building up for days, now, and it broke hard, sweeping Dave up in a torrent of just wordless mental screaming. He couldn’t think the next thought. He couldn’t. But the thing was damming him up, and he couldn’t ignore it anymore, and he was stuck in the middle and left to just completely melt down and dissipate into the flood.
A sound like a cicada crossed with the creakiest horror movie door ever to creak ripped through the tides, and suddenly Dave found himself tugged into a full body hug, wrapped up in four limbs with his face pressed into a thick sweater. The touch dragged him out of the flood and onto dry land, brought him back into now before he even knew what was happening. Karkat’s whole chest was vibrating with some intense cricket-cat hybrid purr, and this should’ve been so embarrassing but he was so tired and so lost and it was fucking comforting, so who the fuck cared. Who cared anymore. It was all bullshit. He could be embarrassed later.
Too soon, Karkat seemed to have the same thought, and tried to pull away. “Shit, sorry, I shouldn’t—fuck, I’m so sorry, this is really presumptive and I know you aren’t even into boys,” he babbled.
Dave groaned, wrapping his arms around Karkat’s chest and pulling him close. “Dude, if you try to make this about alien romance right now, I swear to fuck,” he gasped out between harsh sobs. Christ, he was going harder than Karkat did like twenty minutes earlier, what the fuck.
Karkat paused. Good. It meant his warm arms were still there. “Dave, I…I mean, this is troll romance, this is textbook moiraillegience, and I shouldn’t just be throwing myself at you because you had a moment of weakness, no matter how bad I, uh.”
Dave sniffled, wracked his brain for a moment…Karkat had explained this stuff about a million times, which one was…”That’s like…the bros quadrant, right?”
“The what.”
“The one that’s, like, platonic and shit.”
“…Yeah?” The cricket-purr started up again, cautiously.
“We fuckin’ kinda do most of that shit already, don’t we?” Like. Yeah. He wasn’t gay. That was still a thing. But Karkat was warm and solid and real and Dave was fucking exhausted and didn’t want to be alone, especially not when he felt right now like he was wrapped in safety. “Please, Karkat,” he added, because why not beg. He was already at maximum pathetic, there was no digging this hole lower, fuck it. “I really don’t wanna be alone right now, just, please don’t go.”
Karkat was quiet for a long moment, but finally, the cricket-purr went back to full volume and Karkat’s arms tightened around him.
“Okay,” Karkat said quietly. Dave let out a breath he’d barely known he’d been holding and went back to crying.
“We’re going to have to talk about this later,” Karkat murmured, which put him at about normal volume for anyone else.
“Later, then,” said Dave, and let himself finally fall the fuck asleep.
oh whoops i meant to ask this earlier but i forgot. if your still doing the 500 words thing i'd love to know bro's thought process around this section - Derek didn’t turn around. Dirk watched as his face changed ever so slightly from whatever vague condescension it’d had before back into full neutrality, utterly unreadable. "Me an’ your brother were just…establishing a few things,” he said. “Boy’s gonna need to understand how things work around here, after all.”
oh mAN ehck yeah lets talk about this ahole a bit
although i can’t go into full detail yet because a lot of how he acts and thinks re: Dave is based on some stuff that hasnt been revealed yet, but I’ll go into it as best I can
#abuse tw under the cut
ok first heres ~500 words following after the line in question
Derek didn’t turn around. Dirk watched as his face changed ever so slightly from whatever vague condescension it’d had before back into full neutrality, utterly unreadable. “Me an’ your brother were just…establishing a few things,” he said. “Boy’s gonna need to understand how things work around here, after all.”
Dave hesitated a moment longer, and then stepped closer, his right hand clenching and unclenching into a fist as he spoke, his voice growing in volume as he did. “You — you said you’d leave him alone, Bro. You said if I fuckin’, behaved, did shit the way you wanted, you’d let him be, and I’ve — I’ve been doing every mundane bullshit thing you asked me to do!” Derek’s face settled into the slightest hint of annoyance as he turned his face halfway toward Dave, who kept talking. “Fuck, I’ve been cleaning this shitty old house all day, putting up with all kinds of bullshit from the rest of the goddamn Usuals, come on! Leave him alone, that was — that was the fuckin’ deal!”
The blow landed so quickly, Dirk didn’t even register what had happened at first; there was a loud crack and then the old man was standing, fully facing Dave, who was reeling backwards, his whole body spinning sideways with the force. His shades clattered off into the darkness of the cellar somewhere as Dave, now facing away from Dirk, leaned one arm against the wall, shaking.
It took seeing Derek lightly flexing the fingers on his right hand for Dirk to piece together what had happened, and at that point, Dave had already recovered enough to scramble to retrieve his shades.
“Git t’ fuck back over here, I ain’t done with you yet,” Derek said. Dave mumbled something Dirk couldn’t make out, and scrambled back over, his shoulders hunched and trembling. Dave leaned back against the wall as Derek loomed over him, dead silent for a long moment. With just as little warning as the slap (if it could be fucking called that, Jesus), Derek’s fist collided with the wall above Dave’s head. Dave jerked, startled. “Fuckin’ look at me when I’m talkin’ t’ you,” Derek hissed, and Dave straightened up, still pressed tight against the wall but with his head facing towards his father (and Dirk could see the side of his face already looking red, see cracks on the lens of his shades). Derek leaned down slightly, his voice dropping so low and quiet, Dirk had to strain to hear it. “I didn’t say shit about leavin’ him alone, and I know for a fact I raised you better than to talk outta turn.”
“Sorry.”
what a douche
but alright so
Derek like…did actually care about Dave once upon a time. he was always abusive but (and this is no excuse mind u) he was at one point genuinely doing it because he had this idea of shaping the kid to be a warrior…and then he took Dave out on a raid for the first time and was surprised when his thirteen year old son who’d always been the gentlest of his kids (which isnt necessarily saying a whole lot but still worth noting) refused to kill. And starting at about that point (like it didnt change overnight but it was p rapid) Dave went from being his son to basically an easy target for Derek to be angry at, which. Is a thing he’s constantly looking for for reasons I can’t go into much because Spoilers. (It starts w/ Uncle Dave ofc but I mean beyond that I can’t say much yet). The kid’s a disappointment now, a failure, and the more Dave fails to live up to Derek’s ridiculous expectations the more reinforced that becomes.
There was also that one single time Derek caught Dave directly disobeying him, the moment he got caught talking to Jade over pesterchum that he told Karkat about, and Derek thinks he taught Dave not to disobey him ever in that moment (he didn’t, he just taught the kid to not get caught but he doesnt realize this).
So anyway all that backstory is to set up that in this particular scene he’s here talking to Dirk, and his long term plan for keeping both the boys here basically amounts to ‘Dave won’t run, and he’ll do anything to keep Dirk safe, so he’ll be easier to manipulate with Dirk here; and Dirk won’t leave without Dave, and will do things he doesn’t want to for Dave’s sake’ and he’s confident enough in this that he’s basically telling Dirk what he’s gonna do to Dirk’s face. And then Dave comes in and talks out of turn, which is something he’s doing because he got used to living with people who, you know, respect him and see him as an actual person. And Derek’s thinking here that this kid knows better than to question him or talk like this, especially when he’s in the middle of something, so he’s just waiting at first for Dave to remember the goddamn rules. Not very long, because he’s not patient when it comes to Dave, but still. And when Dave doesn’t get the message from Derek looking slightly annoyed at him, he, as Derek would put it, ‘gets to deal with the consequences.’
Clearly, Dave’s gone soft in his time with Rachel, which is about what Derek expected, and therefore the kid’s gonna need a firm hand to get him back into shape and blah blah boy i feel like a douche just writing how this guy thinks sometimes lmao. anyway ofc Dave snaps back into his old way of thinking as soon as he’s hit, which is exactly what Derek wanted – plus it has the added bonus of demonstrating to Dirk that Derek’s got Dave right where he wants him.
he’s also like. ‘what the fuck kid what makes you think that i make /deals/ with you, you’re not my equal you’re gum on the bottom of my shoe’ and doesn’t actually care if he did say anything about not hurting dirk if dave behaved. the important part is that Dave knows his place.
(the biggest plot twist of this entire series is that the guy who thinks like this now used to be an actual decent person once believe it or not. i say plot twist jokingly because its rly not n were gonna see some of him being decent when he was younger in the next chapter but like….yeah he wasnt always like this. doesnt change the fact that hes despicable now!!!)
Chapter 30 summary under the cut for those who need it
REALLY short version: Dave’s escape plan mostly worked, but Bro caught up with them before the police arrived; Rachel got there in time to chase him off, but Dirk’s leg is now even more badly broken and Dave sustained serious injuries in the fight. The chapter ended with them both being taken into an ambulance and Terezi and Pyralspite hot on Derek’s trail.
warning for brief mention of burning and attempted strangulation as well as the ole’ troll drugs doin’ there thing ahead.
longer version, will still try to keep talk about the injuries and violence to a minimum: Dave forgot to grab the car keys, so they had to walk. They got to a point where the cell Dave had stolen had cell coverage, so they called Terezi, who told them that cell phone tracking isn’t as precise as it is on TV; dave climbed a tree and spotted a nearby house with some high schoolers gathered around a campfire in their back yard, and Terezi told them to go there and get the street address, then call her back. She started on her way to their general area as Sollux found from the tracking. They did manage to get down to that yard, and the kids gave them the street address, but Dave, panicked because he knew that Derek would likely be after them at any minute, grabbed his sword and ran out into the woods to fight him off.
Derek turned up, clumsier than usual but making up for it in raw fury; Dave, exhausted having to help Dirk, realized he wouldnt be able to keep up the fight long enough for the police to arrive, and in a moment of desperation, begged Derek to let him go. Derek, still feeling some effects of the troll drug, experienced a hybrid of a hallucination and a flashback to a moment in time when his brother had said something similar to what Dave did, and for a moment he looked like he might actually let Dave go, but as soon as Dave let his guard down, Derek was consumed with anger at Dave for the crime of looking like his uncle and lunged forward to try and kill him -- by choking rather than stabbing, despite still holding his sword. Dave wriggled away, but was thrown into the fire.
Dirk managed to force a flashstep even on his broken leg to knock Derek away from Dave, and thanks to that and some attempted help by the high schoolers, Rachel had just enough time to fire off a warning shot and scare Derek away. Terezi arrived shortly after with other police officers and paramedics in tow, and the boys were rushed into an ambulance.
Hey so skip the chapter, could you add like a summary of chapter 30 on your next one?
i can absolutely do that yeah. i can also do it here too if necessary and im not surprised man its a rough chapter ;w;
EDIT: actually 31 has some elements that might be tricky too? one particular scene that isnt violent per se but has some imagery that might be upsetting and features art that directly references injuries taken in 30 so like. i can absolutely summarize both here or elsewhere as needed
Title: The Calm Is Terrifying When The Storm Is All You Know [Homestuck]
Chapter 27: Surviving
Summary: There were two kinds of trolls who went to Earth: rich shitheads with too much money and free time, and desperate assholes who couldn’t survive on Alternia, even with the best efforts of the young Condesce. Karkat hated the planet almost immediately, but with his home planet too dangerous for mutants, he really didn’t have any choice but to hide out on this weird little diurnal planet. At least he’d be safe. Or so he thought, right before blundering his way into an accidental friendship with the son of an anti-troll terrorist.
Rating: M
Chapter Warnings: Implied abuse (physical and emotional), threatened violence, group-led abuse, neglect, enabling of abuse and neglect, alcohol mention, mentioned terrorist activities
FIRST | PREVIOUS | NEXT
Dave idled outside the bathroom, keeping himself alert for any sounds that weren’t the gentle noise of the shower within. It was about three in the morning, which was about the only time that either he or Dirk could safely snag a quick shower without alerting Bro’s men, and Dirk had been pretty visibly frustrated with the now-going-on-three-day-old hair gel situation, so Dave was keeping careful watch.
The bathroom was mercifully close to the cellar, and thank fuck for that, because helping Dirk get up there was a fuckin’ ordeal. Dave only came up to about Dirk’s chin, and even with Dirk being pretty skinny, he was still a lot heavier than Dave himself. And he still couldn’t put any weight on his bad leg, which meant that helping Dirk move basically amounted to half-carrying him. What Dirk really needed was probably a cast and a pair of crutches, but they weren’t getting that any time soon, so, fuck it.
On the whole, at least, Dave felt like he was adjusting to things again. It still sucked, but having Dirk around helped, and he’d managed to filch a knife from the kitchen, so that also helped. Wasn’t quite a sword, but evidently he wasn’t allowed to keep the blade down in the basement on account of losing his regular sword to the police, and he wanted to make sure he had something to defend himself.
There was a knock from inside the bathroom, and then Dirk’s voice. Dave shook his head. He’d been so distracted thinking, he hadn’t even noticed the sound of the water turning off, damn. Maybe he wasn’t as used to being on alert as he thought.
“Hey, uh,” said Dirk, “Are you sure you don’t know where I can get some shaving gel and a razor?”
“Sorry, man,” Dave said, “I’m pretty sure Bro’s not to keen on either, and I’m not gonna risk stealing from anyone else.”
He heard Dirk sigh, and then grumble something about “looking like a fucking barbarian.” Dave had to hide a snicker.
“What, man, you not a fan of stubble?” Dave teased.
“Look,” said Dirk, “I have a very specific way I like to present myself. If other guys wanna rock the ‘couldn’t be assed to care about my appearance so I just left this spiky shit all over my face’ look, that’s good for them. Some of them can even pull it off pretty well. Me personally? I prefer to look like I give a shit.”
“Alright, princess, c’mon,” said Dave, rolling his eyes. “Hurry and get dressed, I don’t wanna push our luck.”
More grumbling. A couple minutes of sounds of shifting fabric and at one point a quiet swear, and Dirk said, “Almost done, just gotta…try and dry my hair here.”
Dave took it as a cue to step in. Dirk was fully clothed and leaning heavily against the bathroom counter, furiously trying to towel off his hair. Dave stepped in and tried to help him out, and nearly choked on his own spit laughing when he tugged the towel off.
“Dude, your hair looks like it’s wilting,” he snorted.
Dirk groaned. “Ugh,” he said, “At this point, it’s gonna take at least an hour of hot water and a small miracle to get the gel out.”
“Sorry, man,” said Dave. “Hey, though, maybe we’ll get lucky and they’ll go out on a raid, and you can get properly fucking cleaned off.”
Dirk made a thoughtful sound. He turned towards Dave, his face suddenly serious. “Why do we bother keeping quiet?” he asked.
Dave stared at Dirk hard for a moment. “Uh, because we were told to?” he said, like it was the most obvious thing in the world, which it was, what the fuck, Dirk. “Besides, Bro doesn’t have an excuse for who you are and why you’re here yet, dude. And except for Ben, everyone here thinks he and I are half brothers, and until they work out a story for who the fuck you are, we gotta keep you a secret.”
“Exactly,” said Dirk. “We could threaten to be noisy, get ourselves some leverage. Maybe it won’t get us out of here, but it might get the old man off our back, at least, if we threaten to give away that I’m here and that he’s been lying to them.”
Dave could tell that the shades didn’t hide any of the way his face lit up in terror at the suggestion. He could feel the color draining from his cheeks. “Holy shit, dude, no,” he said. “What, are you fuckin’ crazy? No, man, just — don’t make trouble, let’s just keep quiet and out of the way for now.”
“Why not fight back?” Dirk insisted.
“Dirk, it’s three in the fucking morning,” Dave hissed, “I don’t — can we not have this conversation right now? Please? Let’s just get you back down to the cellar. Quietly.”
Dirk looked ready to speak again, but, thank fuck, decided to drop it. Dave moved to help him walk, and Dirk draped his arm around Dave’s shoulders.
“I really am sorry about this,” Dirk mumbled.
“It’s fine,” Dave said, for probably the hundredth time, “S’ not your fault your leg’s broke.”
“Do you have anything yet?”
Karkat hated the way his voice kept sliding into worried chirps, but he couldn’t fucking help it. His blood pusher was in his throat, pounding away and forcing every sound he made to come out strangled and desperate and needy and, fuck, he needed to know that Dave was okay, he needed Dave to be safe right now, he couldn’t deal with this.
Sollux groaned and didn’t turn around, still rapidly clicking away at the keys of his ungainly mess of hybridized husktops, formed half of Alternian tech and half of Earth’s less organic hardware. It was a fucked up pile of wires and miniature beehouse mainframes (complete with bees everywhere, because of fucking course there were, how did Sollux ever get anything done) and fuck knew what else, all looking to be connected in ways that shouldn’t work but apparently did.
Dave had had a word for shit like that. He’d brought it up, once. ‘Jerry-rigged?’ Karkat had said it was a weird fucking word and that humans were weird for having a word for it, but Dave had explained that the word existed because a lot of times when shit broke down in the middle of nowhere humans would deal by figuring out a short-term way to get the thing working again until they could get to a place with the parts needed to actually fix it, and fuck thinking about that conversation was just making Karkat even more worried about Dave. He never should have left, he shouldn’t have left the Lalondes alone, he shouldn’t have —
“No, KK, I haven’t found anything new in the five fucking minutes since you last asked me,” said Sollux. “And I will be able to sort through this and have a better chance of finding a lead much faster if you stop pacing so much, sit down, and shut up, so please do that and let me do my job.”
Karkat gnashed his teeth together, growling, and resumed pacing.
“The fuck are you doing, anyway?! How is sitting at a computer helping this? Where the fuck is Dave!”
“I’m checking everything I can is what I’m doing, asshole,” Sollux snapped. Kanaya hissed a soft breath, her eyes nervously flicking between the other two. Terezi’d dumped them both here yesterday before rushing back out to investigate, and Sollux had been working at this pretty much the entire time since then. There were a lot of empty bottles and cans of energy drinks from both planets littered around him. (Karkat was pretty sure some of the Alternian ones weren’t even allowed on Earth; he hadn’t even been able to get a bottle of a fucking harmless sleep aid through customs when he’d immigrated to Earth. Something about it being dangerous to humans?) “I’m checking security cameras in a wide radius around the Lalonde house, especially on the roads most likely that he would’ve travelled, hopefully I can get a fucking photo of whatever car they used to abduct those two and maybe even figure out where they’re going. I’m also checking to see if any of the people suspected of being connected to Strider have been seen in the area, if they’re staying in motels or some shit, and — look, it’s a lot, and I need to pay full attention for any fucking clues I can dig out of this, and I need you to not be pulling my attention away from it. Stop fucking pacing.”
Karkat growled again and turned on his heel, stalking back across the room.
This room was too small, fuck. He shouldn’t be in here, cooped up, he should be out there, helping look for Dave, he needed to be doing something, fucking anything! He needed to find Dave!
“KK, seriously, sit the fuck down!” Sollux snapped, whirling in his chair. Karkat bristled and bared his teeth at him.
“How about you shut up and work faster!”
“I can’t fucking think with the sounds of you stomping around and grinding your teeth together, it’s like trying to do brain surgery next to a rabid cholerbear! Sit the fuck down and let me concentrate, you dense nooksniffer!”
“Give me something to do, then!” Karkat whined (fuck that stupid noise for coming out of his throat, fuck everything). “I can’t just sit here with my fucking thumbs up my ass, not while Dave’s in trouble, I need to —”
“Oh, my fucking god, Karkat,” Sollux rolled his eyes, “Get the fuck over your stupid pale crush for ten fucking minutes, we get that you love him sooo much but I have a fucking job to do.”
Karkat froze in place for a moment. Just a moment, stunned into silence born of pure fury, that Sollux had the fucking nerve — he lunged.
Kanaya stopped him before his enraged shriek made it halfway out of his throat.
“Stop this, both of you!” she snapped. “This isn’t helping anything! Karkat,” she said turning to him, “I understand, I’m frightened too. This is an awful situation, but you can’t take this out on Sollux —”
He didn’t wait to hear it. He struggled out of Kanaya’s grip and made a run for the door.
“Don’t even fucking think about leaving this room,” Sollux said, already back to typing away. “You’re under protective custody, you’re not going anywhere, dumbass.”
“Sollux, really, an ounce of sympathy would not be out of place, don’t you think?” Kanaya snapped.
“Oh, yeah, so sorry for all the shit Karkat’s dealing with, let me do my fucking job already.”
Karkat whirled into the bathroom and slammed the door shut behind him, curling up in the ablution trap and finally allowing himself to burst into the terrified tears he’d been holding back for what felt like an eternity.
Dirk hadn’t been expecting anyone other than Dave or the old man to come down to the cellar, especially after Dave’s earlier if still confusing insistence on keeping Dirk’s presence a secret. So he was surprised to no small extent when, just after Dave had left to deal with the day’s chores, another man came down. It took a while in the dark, but Dirk pieced together after a while that this was the same man who’d been with Derek when they’d been taken.
“Hey, there, Dirk,” he said, his face gentle. Dirk wished it wasn’t. The guy had a smile that would’ve been charming if he hadn’t been so chummy with the old man. “Jesus, you got big,” he continued. “I know you probably don’t remember me at all, but I was in the mall with your father. Last time I saw you, you were still just a toddler.”
Dirk narrowed his eyes.
“The name’s Ben,” he went on. Dirk thought hard. Fuck, Mom had said something about another friend from the mall, what had that name been? Dave had reacted to it weird — was this that same guy, then? That story had been months ago, and Dirk hadn’t thought much of it at the time, just the drunken ramblings his mother was prone to. “I do wish we were meeting again under better circumstances, but, ah, well.”
“What do you want,” said Dirk. “I’m not gonna join you and the old man’s stupid ‘cause,’ he already tried that, if that’s what you think you’re doing.”
“Yeah, I heard about that,” said Ben. “Tried to tell him to be a little more tactful about it, but tact has never been his strong suit, y’know?”
The guy kept acting casual, and it made Dirk want to fucking punch the damn smile right off his face. If this guy was the one Mom had talked about, then he’d been her friend, too, and he’d known where Dave was for years. He could have done something, told her where Dave was, told the police, maybe rescued Dave himself, fuck.
“No amount of fucking tact is going to change my mind,” Dirk said. “I’m not interested in helping the people who stole my baby brother.”
He looked to think for a moment, eyes up towards the ceiling, before shrugging and nodding his head. “Yeah, I can see how that’d give you some trouble,” said Ben. “I didn’t exactly agree with Derek’s choices back then, either, but it’s too late to change that now. So, alright, maybe you’re not interested in helping right away, that’s fine. But maybe you could use a friend around here? I help your brother out as much as I can, and I can extend the same to you, if you’ll let me.”
“I’m not interested.” Dirk didn’t hesitate. He had no intention of putting an ounce of thought into any offers made by his father or any of the bastard’s fucking friends.
Ben leaned back, an eyebrow raised in a sort of amused disbelief. He huffed something halfway to a laugh and shook his head. “Every bit the suspicious bastard your father ever was,” he said softly, and Dirk felt himself bristle all over. “Kid,” Ben continued, “I’m trying to help you. I know it seems shitty now, but it’s gonna get a lot worse before it gets better, and I can promise you I’m the only friend you got here. I’m not trying to trick you.”
“Help me how, exactly?” Dirk spat. “Because unless you plan on getting me and Dave out of here, I’m not interested in your help.”
“Stubborn, too,” Ben muttered. “Apple really didn’t fall far from the tree with this one.” He shrugged. “I’ll let you think about it, then,” he said, almost sounding disappointed. “It’s an open offer, so if y’ change your mind, just let me know.”
“Fuck off.”
There was a sort of unspoken hierarchy to Bro’s band of Merry Fuckheads. Dave was, of course, so far down at the bottom, it wasn’t even worth pointing out, it was so fuckin’ obvious, but he did work to keep track of where everybody else sat. Mostly because knowing that gave him a clearer picture of whose way he needed to stay out of.
Bro sat right at the top, obviously. So high up he was practically untouchable. The Usuals, especially any newbies, tended to treat him with almost a sort of reverence, it woulda been fuckin’ ridiculous if Bro hadn’t legitimately been that cool a dude. Ben was the second in command, but only because he was the only person Bro completely trusted. If Dave was honest, Ben was too nice for most of those guys. But he did important work, and Bro’s decisions were law, so even if Ben wasn’t exactly intimidating, the rest of the pack did listen to what he said.
From there, shit got worse as it went down the pile.
It had started off with just a few people, back when this had started when Dave was only ten. The leadership then had been five dudes including Bro and Ben. Of that group, only three of them were still around — one had died in a raid, and the other one had gotten it into his head to try and usurp Bro, and…Dave wasn’t sure what had happened to him, actually, but he wasn’t around anymore. Fuckin’ Beardy was the only survivor of that group besides Bro and Ben, though, and he was also a special case when it came to who Dave watched out for; he wasn’t the number three in the rankings right now, but he was still pretty high up there, and yet, he definitely didn’t like Dave. He wouldn’t say it to Bro’s face, but the guy had made it plenty clear to the others and to Dave himself that in his opinion, Bro shoulda dumped Dave on the side of some abandoned road somewhere years ago. ‘Ditch the fuckin’ dead weight,’ he always liked to say. Dave didn’t really like that big meathead either, so at least it was mutual. He didn’t tend to throw things at Dave, at least; he only tended to be a big problem when someone else started something and he joined in. Dude was big enough that Dave really couldn’t do much to fight him off.
The rest of the higher ranked members of the Usuals, though, actually sorta tended to leave Dave alone. It was the guys at the bottom of the pile who went after him.
They’d joined in late, and they’d seen how Bro was always harsh with Dave, and Beardy’s disdain, and they’d peer pressured themselves right in on the action. The newer or lower ranking a guy was, the more he’d go out of his way to make Dave’s life miserable. Within reason, of course. Bro would only tolerate so much of that shit. Thankfully, most of the lowest ranking dudes of the dozen men that made up the full force of Bro’s inner circle weren’t here yet. From the sounds of it, they’d been the ones who’d been leading that attack down in Ohio.
Tim had been scowling at Dave since…well, since yesterday, really. Dave hadn’t addressed it mainly because he knew what was coming. Tim had been the guy who’d had to haul his ass out at fuck o’clock back in April to tell Dave about the plan that Dave had then completely blown. It was a matter of time before the asshole picked a fight about it. Probably he was waiting for Bro to be a bit distracted, or calculating a way of going about chewing Dave out without overstepping.
Dave was focusing very hard on sweeping right now, and avoiding anything that might be construed as eye contact, because he did not wanna deal with Tim today if he could avoid it. Unfortunately Tim still took up the initiative anyway, the moment Bro was distracted talking to that guy in the stupid hunter’s hat. Careful not to actually touch Dave, Tim cornered him in the kitchen, leaning in close to talk in quiet, angry tones.
“Dude, lay off,” Dave muttered. “I wanna get shit done before I get in trouble for taking too long, what do you want?”
“I wanna know what the fuck you thought you were doing back in June,” Tim hissed. “Your fuckup made me look like a goddamn chump! D’you know how much shit I’ve had to put up with ever since that fuckin’ fiasco?”
“Lay off, man, I’ve heard it already,” Dave mumbled.
“I don’t think you have,” said Tim, pressing his hand to the wall in a casual gesture Dave knew to read as a threat. “Not near enough, at least. I had to work my ass off to get this high up, way fuckin’ more than the others ever did since I live out here instead of down in Texas. I have done so much to earn the right to be here, and you nearly ripped away everything I’ve built in one fell fuckin’ swoop, not to mention getting a couple real promising new recruits killed!”
Dave gulped. Oh. Yeah, he’d. Forgotten about that. Shit, Tim had been in charge of the actual rescue mission, too? Fuck.
“Now half these guys don’t respect me no more, and I can’t tell what your brother thinks of me, and I’m supposed to just let you walk away as happy as you like? I don’t fuckin’ think so.”
“The fuck do you want me to do about it?” Dave snapped.
“I —“
“That’s enough, Tim,” came Bro’s voice, calm but stern. Dave tried not to be too obvious about the relieved sigh he heaved.
“But — C’mon, Derek,” Tim said, “It’s — he’s the reason that mission didn’t work, I got every right to get some fuckin’ payback, don’t I?”
“He’s my responsibility,” Bro said. “I’m dealing with it.”
Tension lingered in the air for a moment. God, Dave hated fuckin’ standoffs, shit like this happened all the time with the Usuals. It was a way of testing things, Dave knew — there was an unspoken hierarchy to these guys, and whenever there was any sort of argument or dare or bet or what have you, it was a challenge to the order. Who’s the toughest, who’s gonna back down first. Dave was never a participant on account of he was so low in the ranking that even entertaining the idea was a fuckin’ joke to end all jokes. Didn’t mean Dave couldn’t get caught in the crossfire, though, not to mention that the loser of these interactions tended to turn their frustration on Dave. They all acted like a bunch of fuckin’ animals, exerting whatever dominance they could to feel better about themselves.
And Dave’s behavior back in June had apparently dropped Tim a good few levels in the rankings. This was gonna be hell until Tim felt he’d gotten his payback. God dammit.
The standoff didn’t last long, at least. In the same way Dave was hilariously low, they all put Bro up on so high of a pedestal that the only one who really dared challenge him was Ben, and even that was pretty rare. And also less of a challenge and more just Ben suggesting a different strategy. So it wasn’t much of a surprise when Tim broke off eye contact (or. Well. Eye to shades contact), shot a final glare at Dave, and muttered darkly all the way back to his spot on the couch.
This had been Dave’s life pretty much since the fight-the-trolls shit had started, about six years ago now, and as awful as it was, he’d sort of just accepted that this was how things were and never questioned it. He was trying not to question it now, on a way more conscious level, because he was scared he’d give away that he was thinking traitor thoughts or mumble something out loud like a fucking idiot, but.
Things hadn’t been like this at all with Mom and Rose and Dirk.
He’d spent ages trying to work out the pecking order, only to come to the conclusion that…there wasn’t one. Even with Dirk and Rose throwing down, there wasn’t really a clear victor, and the only time anyone had acted like the authority figure was when Mom stepped in and stopped them from fighting. It had been so confusing for so long, trying to work that shit out, because the on the surface it had looked like there should be another hierarchy, but…nothing. They just…helped each other and treated everyone with maybe not a ton of respect but enough that nobody was the butt of the joke, not even Dave.
He kind of missed it.
Shit, no, that was exactly the kind of thing he couldn’t be letting himself think. Maybe Dirk didn’t get why, but Dave did, he knew better. Letting even a hint of dissent slip through was asking for trouble, and he didn’t want any more of that than he absolutely had to take.
He got back to work for a while, trying very hard to act like what had gone down hadn’t bugged him at all. He wasn’t sure if the Usuals bought it, but Ben didn’t seem to. Soon as he was able, Ben tugged Dave out onto the creaky-ass front porch, asking, “Hey, you alright?”
“Yeah, don’t sweat it,” Dave said. “Even if he had tried anything, Tim’s slow as shit. Guy couldn’t hit me if I was tied down to a chair, duct taped to the side of a barn, and also given like the opposite of whatever the fuck happened to the Flash.”
Ben laughed softly for a moment before his face darkened. “Glad to hear it. Be careful, though, alright? He’s still fuming, and Bruce is gonna be getting here in a couple hours with the rest of the gang.”
“Fffffffffuuuuuuuuuuuuck,” Dave groaned. Bruce was the new guy as far as the Usuals were concerned. He’d only managed to claw his way onto the bottom rungs of the top of the heap a couple weeks before Dave had gotten arrested. New blood in the Usuals always meant a new guy going out of his way to try and prove himself, typically by showing off how dominant and tough and manly he was by picking on Dave, but Bruce took it to a whole ‘nother level.
“And Derek’s…still pretty fuckin’ pissed off about everything, too, so he might be more lenient than usual with the boys,” Ben cautioned. “I’ve had to talk him out of some pretty drastic punishments. He’s still trying to figure out what to do with you.”
“Shit.” Dave ran a hand through his hair. “I mean, thanks for keeping me posted, I know it gets you some flack from the guys sometimes, just. Shit.”
“Ah, don’t worry about me,” Ben said. “I got Derek on my side, they’re not gonna try anything stupid. I’ll try and keep them off your back as best I can, just take care of yourself, alright?”
“Yeah, I got it,” Dave griped.
“In the meantime,” Ben grinned, “I did manage to get some actual food for you and your brother. S’ in the fridge, should be enough for both of ya.”
“Shit, yeah, thanks man,” Dave said. “Was startin’ to get dizzy, fuck.”
“Alright, that’s all I needed to say for now,” Ben said. “Go ahead and take a lunch break, before you keel over.”
Dirk was ready for another argument when the door swung open again, but it was just Dave this time.
“Hey, guess what I got,” he said, the door clanking shut behind him. Dirk could hear the grin in his voice even before he saw it.
“Something useful, I hope,” Dirk said, “Because I haven’t been able to come up with any ideas, and I’m open to suggestions.”
“Real fuckin’ food, check it out,” Dave said, flopping down and tossing Dirk a wrapped-up sandwich. “Ben came through big time, thank fuck.”
Dirk narrowed his eyes at the food. Looked like it’d been bought from a store, wrapped in clear plastic and definitely a more substantial meal than anything they’d been given so far in their time here. But…coming from that guy, Dirk wasn’t sure he wanted to trust it.
“It’s not poison, man, eat it,” Dave said, already in the process of scarfing down his own. “Like, a lot of these assholes I wouldn’t put it past to put something weird in my food, but Ben’s a pretty okay guy.”
“I think we’ve got vastly different definitions of the term ‘okay guy,’” Dirk said.
Dave stared at him for a moment. “Uh, what?”
“He and I had a little chat earlier,” Dirk said.
“Okay, so you know what I mean, then,” Dave said. “He’s chill as fuck. And he can actually get away with being nice and still keeping his place in the pack, because Bro likes him, so he’s, you know, a good dude to have on our side.”
Dirk snorted. “I don’t fucking trust anyone here, especially not anyone the old man thinks so highly of,” he said.
“I mean, alright, I guess, but, like. Food’s food. Seriously, dude,” Dave said, nudging Dirk with his elbow, “You really oughta eat, man. I got no idea when we’re gonna get food again, and these won’t keep. I mean, unless we shove them into the freezer, I guess? Which sounds shitty, so you should eat now.”
“Why are we doing this?” Dirk said, throwing up his hands and earning a quizzical look from his brother. “Why are you doing this? Acting like one guy giving us a fucking meal is a sign of him being someone trustworthy, when it’s at best basic human decency! Why play along with this horseshit? Dave, we should be trying to fight back, trying to escape —”
“Or we could not do that,” said Dave. “Dirk, I told you, it’s fine. This is… it’s not as bad as you’re making it out to be. Bro’s kinda rough, sure, but Ben’s totally fine! He’s trying to help us out a little, man, and you’re acting like he’s trying to fuckin’ poison us.”
“‘A little rough?’ Dave, that black eye is not ‘a little rough,’ it’s fucking abusive,” Dirk said. Dave rolled his eyes. “You wanna talk about helping,” he continued, “I’m trying to figure out how to fucking get us out of here, but you seem like you’re actively trying to stop me from doing that! You won’t even consider doing anything that might actually get us somewhere, won’t even think about questioning if maybe this shit isn’t okay, which it fucking isn’t! Why won’t you work with me, here, Dave?”
“Because I don’t wanna get beat up any more than I absolutely fuckin’ have to, Dirk!” Dave snapped, all of the previous relaxed air suddenly gone. Dirk froze. “It’s real easy to talk about being a rebel from where you are, safe in the fucking cellar all day, I’m the one who’s gotta actually deal with what happens when Bro gets pissed off! And —” He stopped himself. Dirk was staring, stunned into silence.
“It’d be justified at that point, anyway,” Dave muttered. “It’s his house, or whatever. I get it. Besides, it’s not that bad.” He looked away, unable to meet Dirk’s eyes. “It’s fine. I’m fine. I can take it. It’s whatever.”
“I…”
“Just, please, for the love of fuck, don’t antagonize him,” said Dave. “The less reasons we give him to be pissed, the less either of us gets beat up.”
“I’m…sorry,” Dirk stammered.
“S’alright. You’re new. You don’t know the rules yet.”
“Dave…”
Dave gulped down the rest of his sandwich, wiped his mouth on a sleeve, and stood. “I gotta get back to chores,” he said. “The rest of the usuals are getting here in a couple hours. You should eat the rest of your food.”
“Okay,” Dirk said, after a moment. Dave nodded, and headed out of the cellar.
“And please, for the love of fuck,” he said, out of view by the door, “Stay quiet, alright? I was serious this morning about keeping you hidden, and shit.”
Title: The Calm Is Terrifying When The Storm Is All You Know [Homestuck]
Chapter 23: A Temporary Parting Of Ways
Summary: There were two kinds of trolls who went to Earth: rich shitheads with too much money and free time, and desperate assholes who couldn’t survive on Alternia, even with the best efforts of the young Condesce. Karkat hated the planet almost immediately, but with his home planet too dangerous for mutants, he really didn’t have any choice but to hide out on this weird little diurnal planet. At least he’d be safe. Or so he thought, right before blundering his way into an accidental friendship with the son of an anti-troll terrorist.
Rating: M
Chapter Warnings: Mentioned/implied abuse, internalized homophobia, more possible disordered eating/its closer to just bad eating habits learned from the abuse but i feel i should still warn for it
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Things had been…relatively quiet, the past few weeks.
Ever since Dave and Dirk had finally worked things out on the roof, it seemed that with nothing in particular to wind themselves up over, the house had finally managed to actually become as peaceful as ‘a big house out in the middle of the woods’ implied. Not that things were perfect between her brothers, mind, but there was good mixed in with the bad, and even the tense moments were far less terrible.
A few days after that talk, for instance, Rose had been helping Dirk unload groceries as always. Dave had come down, looking like he’d been caught stealing, but Dirk had simply tossed him a bag.
“Didn’t know which kind you like, so I just grabbed a few,” he’d said.
Dave had opened the bag, let a small smile spread across his face, said “Sweet,” and scurried back upstairs with a grateful nod at Dirk.
And since then it had seemed like whatever blockage was keeping them from progressing had been fully cleared away. They still moved in a series of frustrating baby steps, an infuriatingly endless process of trial and error, but even that was better than the vicious cycle of stagnation before, and Rose could see, day by day, Dave was well and truly starting to settle in.
(He was unfortunately a lot more nervous around Roxy, now, and he wouldn’t let her wrap an arm around his shoulders in the way she often did while speaking to people. He did, at the very least, seem to forgive her, however, especially after Roxy promised about fifty times over that she was never going to do that to him again.)
But things were never truly quiet in this house — there was always something. Even as Dave got better during the day, he was growing worse at night. Ever more frequent were the occurrences of his paranoia growing fierce enough that he would wake Rose up — Dirk’s room was still apparently akin to the lion’s den, and he couldn’t yet bring himself to fetch their elder sibling himself. The lost sleep was starting to grate on her, but she was careful not to direct her frustration at him. She’d learned that lesson well enough, being angry at him would only frighten him more; and besides, it was hardly his fault. That blame rested solely on the man who’d taught him to fear small noises so much.
Still, something would have to be done about that in the near future — with school starting up again in just three weeks, she really couldn’t afford to be losing this much sleep long-term. Dirk may have long since adapted himself to being a creature of the night, but Rose had no such skill.
More pressing than even that, however, was the trend that had come up in just the past few days: The trolls seemed to be fighting.
They wouldn’t say about what, and whenever Rose or Dave happened upon them mid-argument, Karkat would cut the conversation off and storm out of the room. Kanaya would only promise vaguely that she’d explain soon enough, and that Karkat was making it much more of a problem than it actually was.
“This isn’t about that, ahem, ‘pale-crush’ you’ve told me about, is it?” Rose grinned, after one such occurrence in early August.
Kanaya bit her lip. “Well, not directly,” she said, “but I fear it’s what may be clouding his vision. It’s…this is a good thing, in the long run, I promise, but it has some, um, short-term impacts that Karkat is not very happy about.”
Rose raised an eyebrow. “Is that so?” she said. “Dear me, I’ll have to work overtime to quash my burning curiosity. I eagerly await learning what this is all about.”
“Then you’ll be waiting on Karkat,” Kanaya said, “because honestly I’m mostly just waiting for him to stop being so argumentative about this. We’d only be gone for three days, anyway, he doesn’t need to be so fussy.”
“Wait, you’re leaving?” Rose said, snapping to attention.
“What?” came Dave’s voice. He was standing on the stairs — Rose hadn’t even noticed him come down.
“Shoot,” said Kanaya.
What followed was a small bout of chaos — Mom and Dirk both needed to be part of this conversation, after all. Dirk was just in the basement, but Mom took a few rounds of phone tag to contact, and then Dirk had to go fetch her from work, and in the end it took nearly two hours to get everyone gathered downstairs to hear exactly what was going on. During that time, Dave scarcely left Karkat’s side (who only begrudgingly agreed to participate in the conversation after being asked several times. Rose privately suspected he had acquiesced purely due to the look of near-desperation on Dave’s face). Rose couldn’t blame him; she’d grown so used to the trolls being here that the thought of them leaving, even temporarily, felt…wrong, somehow. Karkat’s stomping around truly had become one of the features of home, almost as natural a sound as the chirping of birds outside, and Kanaya was, well. She was Kanaya.
Speaking of whom, once everyone was gathered around in the living room and seated, Kanaya’s hands skimmed along the fabric of her skirt, a nervous habit Rose had learned to recognize as a sign that she was trying to sort together her thoughts into words. “Well, you see, Porrim, who is, um, the rainbow drinker who’s been helping me, by the way —”
“Oh, great,” Karkat grumbled.
“Quite fortunately so,” Kanaya said, tossing a glare his way before continuing, “As I don’t know what I would have done if that hadn’t proved to be the case, she’s been endlessly helpful filling me in on things, but, um. Right, we’re talking about why Karkat and I would need to leave. Well, it seems that Porrim has actually been planning in a somewhat long term sense on eventually moving her shop up to this sort of general area, maybe not here exactly but…she called the area in mind ‘New England,’ I believe?”
“That’s a name that’s used as shorthand for a few states, of which New York is one,” Rose said. “It makes sense to me that she’d want to move up here, we’re a bit more…trendy, shall we say, than your average Texan.”
“What, spurs and horses aren’t trendy enough for you?” Dave drawled. Rose shoved him gently.
“Right, well,” said Kanaya, twisting her fingers together in nervous patterns, “Apparently, as a result of my new condition, she’s taken it as…a sign of sorts, to speed up this process. She’s moving her shop up to a town not too far from here, which is wonderful, because it means that even when this whole mess is sorted out and Karkat doesn’t need to live here anymore for his own safety, we can all still be close enough to, you know, see each other regularly.”
Rose bit back her first response. Somehow, the trolls living here had shifted from feeling deeply temporary in those first few weeks to now feeling like a permanent change, and instinctively, she found that she really did dislike the idea that they were just going to leave. There was no reason to. Lord knew the house had plenty of room.
Then again, perhaps it was a bit forward of her to assume that they would continue living together indefinitely when they hadn’t, technically, officially, agreed to be anything more than friends? Not that Rose didn’t want to be something more, nor did she have any reason to think that Kanaya felt any different, but somehow they just…hadn’t really talked about that yet.
She was getting there. Slowly. Eventually. These things had to be handled with tact, especially with someone as wonderful as Kanaya.
“In any case,” Kanaya said, smiling faintly, “the good news is that she’s already on the road and should be here in a couple of days, at which point she’ll need some help to unpack and set up the shop. Which, of course, we’re going to do,” another glare at Karkat, “Because she has been nothing but kind and helpful to the both of us and the least we can do is take a few days to help her settle in, can’t we, Karkat?”
Karkat groaned one of his most theatrical groans, complete with a rolling of his eyes so pronounced and exaggerated that his whole head seemed about to drop off his shoulders.
“Karkat, come on, you know how much this job means to me, and it’s only three days!” Kanaya hissed.
“She’s not gonna fire you over us being busy!” he barked back.
“At least let me go to help, then,” she said.
“You can’t just leave me alone here in chaos central!”
“Does Terezi know about this?” Dirk interrupted. “I mean, I’m happy as shit for you guys, it’s good to know that even whenever things are hopefully settled enough for everyone to move on with our fucking lives, we won’t be breaking up the, uh,” he flicked a gaze between Rose and Kanaya, and then between Dave and Karkat. “…Friendships,” he said, carefully. “But Terezi’s the one who really ought to be aware of this, since Karkat’s still potentially in danger.”
“She’s aware,” said Kanaya, “Don’t worry, I’ve talked to her about this as well. She’s prepared to have a couple local officers on standby in case anything pops up, but so far as she can tell, she doesn’t think that Karkat’s being actively, um, hunted, at this time.”
“There’s a fucking first,” Karkat grumbled. Rose raised an eyebrow at Dave, who shook his head faintly. Whatever that was about, now was evidently not the time to talk about it.
Kanaya paused for a moment, thinking. “She actually mentioned that she rather preferred you being away from this house, in truth,” she said.
Karkat snapped up to attention, a low, alien growl echoing in his voice as he spat, “What?!”
“She said that she’s worried about whatever Strider’s next move will be,” Kanaya said, “That he will probably take a more direct action, and that we were lucky that he wasn’t here in person last time to recognize you, and that while as best she can tell his men have stayed active in Texas, she’d feel better if you’re far enough away from this hive to be out of immediate danger.”
“I can fucking protect myself!” Karkat was bristling, more worked up than ever. “God fucking dammit, I don’t wanna fucking face Strider in the flesh, but I’m not so fragile I need to be in a fucking mail-order protective sheet cocoon at all times!”
“You won’t be!” Kanaya insisted. “Just for three days! Why are you so opposed to this? You were complaining just a couple weeks ago about never getting to leave this hive!”
Rose caught the way Karkat’s eyes darted towards Dave for the briefest of moments, and did her best to stifle a small smile.
“I just —“ Karkat spluttered, “I don’t — Fuck, fine! I’ll help unload a bunch of shitty boxes for a few days, whatever! Be so glad to get out and stretch my fucking legs.”
“Thank you,” Kanaya said, tension slipping out of her. “We won’t be leaving for another couple of days, anyway, so it’s not like we’re leaving right this second.”
“Whatever,” Karkat grumbled, stomping away upstairs. Dave stood for a moment, torn between saying something and following after, before evidently deciding on the latter.
“I think he took that rather well,” said Rose.
Fuck leaving. But also fuck telling Kanaya why, he was not interested in another round of nosy friends criticizing his futile pale crush on a clueless human.
Karkat stormed toward his room, stifling a growl. Yeah, sure, whatever, it was only three days, but he didn’t fucking…The thought of leaving Dave alone for that long, for any amount of time, made him nervous, which was stupid considering Dave was probably better at defending himself than Karkat was between knowing how to use a sword and that flashstep bullshit, but fuck it, he couldn’t help it! Not that he should feel like this — there was literally no one in the hive anymore that was in any way a threat to Dave! Even Dirk had turned out to really genuinely care about the guy’s well being once he’d pushed through the massive heap of whatever the fuck it was blocking that, and with that disgusting sewer clog out of the way, he could tell Dave was feeling more at ease!
Shoving his door closed behind him, he flopped down on the human sleeping contraption, pulling the blankets into a makeshift nest, fussing and rearranging it just so. Some layer of his subconscious trying to yell that this was his place, or something, maybe. He wasn’t really paying attention to what he was doing, letting his hands do whatever while he chased down his own thoughts.
But what if something happened when he was gone? What if he wasn’t here, and —
He shook the thought out of his mind. No matter how badly he wanted to be, they weren’t moirails, they weren’t anything. Dave wasn’t gay, as he’d so clearly stated so many times. There was no way they’d be anything, and he should just accept that and stop trying to be the big bad protector for a guy who didn’t need it and wasn’t interested —
“Dude, you’re gonna shred those sheets if you keep that up.”
He whirled his head around to see Dave, having crept in as quietly as he always moved, standing just inside the doorway. “You okay, man?” he said. “You seemed ornerier than usual, which is a fuckin’ feat and a half.”
“I’m fine, Dave,” Karkat said, forcing himself to relax his hands, “Just…Pissed off.”
Dave shifted his weight. “Yeah, I get that, man. This shit did kinda come outta nowhere, and all, and I know you ain’t as used to getting uprooted at a moments notice as I am, like. It sounds from what you’ve told me like you lived in one place pretty much your whole life? And now you’ve been, like, yanked off your entire planet, and then once you got used to one place dragged off to another, and now they’re pullin’ you away again, and. I, uh. I’m sorry, is I guess what I’m trying to say? Not because it’s my fault or anything. You know, this time. But sorta just a general sorry that shit sucks, you know?”
Karkat just let him ramble on. God, something about the aimlessness of his rambling could be bizarrely fucking soothing at times, just a gentle monotone voice saying nothing hugely important, its constant presence a reminder that Dave was still there. He was completely on the wrong track as to why Karkat was angry, of course, but it was hard not to appreciate the effort.
(And moments like this were the worst part of the whole mess. Moments where Dave would send these fucking…mixed signals, leaving Karkat scrambling to piece together what Dave actually thought out of the barriers and facades and the ever-present pure nonsense. The guy kept going on about how he super wasn’t into guys at all, so Karkat would mentally chide himself on any fantasies of a relationship, but then he’d turn around and do shit like this, coming after him exactly like one half of the serendipitous pair of any novel or movie Karkat had ever devoured, checking that he was okay — sure, humans were a lot more prone to doing that sort of thing in general, but. It couldn’t…it had to mean something, right? And then Dave would harp on the ‘gay’ thing again, and Karkat would force his hopes right back down into the shame pit where they belonged.)
“And, I mean, like, no homo, but.”
(Exactly like that, yep. That was exactly it. Boy, the shame pit sure was cozy this time of sweep. Year. Whatever.)
Dave shuffled his feet awkwardly before continuing. “It’s gonna be weird as fuck without you here, even if it’s not for long. God, I’m gonna be bored as hell without you to argue about bullshit with. It’s gonna be like a fuckin’ high school parking lot in July around here, all quiet and shit, and I’m the one loser hanging around cuz I got nowhere else to go.”
“Have you considered maybe getting a fucking hobby, Dave?”
He snorted. “Oh, yeah man, with all this fuckin’ freedom to do shit I got, no problem. I’ll just get on the fuckin’ computer and do shit, maybe start taking walks outside.”
“There’s things you can do without leaving the hive or having internet, dumbass. Read a fucking book, I don’t know.”
Dave was quiet for one rare, painfully short moment. That all too brief moment passed, he said, “Dude, seriously, are you alright? I know bein’ surly is your thing, an’ all, but you’re sorta…you seem more pissed off than usual.”
No, Karkat thought. No, he wasn’t okay, he was hopelessly pale-smitten with an alien who couldn’t possibly understand the nuances of that sort of romance and consistently strung his feelings out on an endless up and down cycle of maybe-whoops-guess-not, and it fucking hurt, but he was too fucking invested to give up on him, to the point that being gone for even a few days made his naive, smitten bloodpusher twist in agony.
“Yeah,” Karkat said instead, “I’m just…fucking pissed that this got sprung on me outta nowhere, like you said.”
Dave thought for a moment, and then shrugged. “If you say so, man,” he said, and flopped down next to Karkat on the sleeping platform.
Much as he disliked eating in front of other people (it always made him feel like someone was going to chastise him for it or take it away, even though he knew by now that they weren’t, but he couldn’t help it any more than he could help the need to hide food in his closet), since the trolls were gonna be gone for a while, he joined the rest of the family-plus-two downstairs for dinner on the evening before they took off.
Mom had tried to make…something. It tasted fine, albeit kinda burnt, but Dave really had no idea what the fuck it was or what was in it. She seemed so proud of herself for cooking, though, that he really didn’t have the heart to ask.
That aside, though, if there was one thing Dave’s limited experience with family meals had taught him so far, it was that, fuck, they tended to turn awkward and uncomfortable. Like this one, for instance: somehow, the conversation had inevitably turned to Bro again. Mom wasn’t waxing poetic about fuckin’ Uncle Dave again, but still, shit was uncomfortable. Bro was a jackass sometimes, but he was…well, he…Dave didn’t like hearing how harsh they got, he guessed. It made something in his gut twist in knots to make pretzels jealous, but he was too nervous about accidentally getting into an argument to really speak up.
He settled for pushing his food around his plate awkwardly (he’d eaten about half, and was still hungry, but…well, if this’d been back in Texas, this woulda been the point where he’d done his best to save the rest for later, maybe steal some ice from the fridge so that the rest of the meal could be breakfast tomorrow, and he did know that wasn’t necessary here, but…) and listening with half an ear.
“Maybe we can call Aunt Ramona to hex him,” Dirk said, sarcasm dripping so thick you could spread it on pancakes. Dave perked up, keeping his face toward his plate still but spending a bit more of his thought process on paying attention.
“Oh ye of little faith,” Rose said, weaving her fork through the air for emphasis, “Who’s to say she couldn’t?”
“Rose, our aunt isn’t a fucking witch, she’s just a woman who simultaneously enjoys her privacy and has a flair for the dramatic.”
“What, Ramona?” Mom said, nearly but not quite spilling her wine with how fast her glass got pulled away from her lips.
“Mom, come on, back me up here,” Dirk said. “This farce has gone on for long enough, but Rose keeps playing up the rumors about her. You grew up with her, you’d know better than anyone that she can’t actually curse people or whatever.”
“Well, I dunno about cursing them,” said Mom, sitting back thoughtfully. Dirk flashed Rose a victorious smirk, which very quickly faded when Mom continued, “’s far as I know, she never went for that sorta thing. She’d more likely just fuck ‘em up directly, sick some murder shadows on them or just call down lightning if she’s pissed enough. Then again, Iunno, maybe her powers’ve changed over the years, I ain’t kept track.”
“Powers?!” Dirk sputtered. Rose had set her fork down, her face a picture of delight, hands clasped together.
“Oh, yeah, your aunt’s magic as fuck,” Mom said, grinning woozily. Dirk sounded like he was about to choke on air.
“What, like…seriously?” Dave said. “Like, are you just fucking around? Are we talkin’ fuckin’ backyard magician shit or straight up necromancy?”
“Like black lightning and visions of the future n shit,” Mom said. “It runs in the family or somethin’. Like, I dunno the specifics, that shit skipped me entirely, but like…she started hearin’ ghosts and talkin’ to birds around the time she turned…13, I think? And from there shit just got reeeaaal crazy.”
“This — Mom,” Dirk said, desperately. “Mom, you can’t be serious.”
“I’m dead fuckin’, hic, fuckin’ serious, Dirk,” she said, clearly very much enjoying herself. “How d’you think we survived in a fuckin’ mall for six years? That shit wasn’t bomb proof, it was a mall. But we never had to worry ‘bout it, cuz every time one of their lil’ ships got too close, she’d just….BOOM. Right out the sky. Couldn’t really do big ships, but those didn’t come after us too often, since we weren’t that big a group of humans, but the little ones, fuck. No goddamn match.”
Rose was staring at Rachel, clearly ecstatic at this revelation but also a bit incredulous. “Why did you not think to mention this until now, Mom?” she asked.
“Iunno, you kids never asked,” she shrugged. “I always kinda figured it was obvious? Like, how the fuck do you not look at Ramona and go, holy shit, that’s a fuckin’ real life majycks user if I ever fuckin’ saw one.”
“So, she really is a real life witch, then?!” Kanaya was fuckin’ bouncing off the couch, holy shit.
“Hells yes,” said Mom. “Derek was always so fuckin’ nervous around her, too, it was the funniest goddamn thing. She always kept such a tight lid on what exactly she could do, he had no idea what to expect from her, which, for a guy as fucking anal about planning everything out to the tiniest detail as he is, was always just the worst.”
Mom kept rambling on, but Dave got distracted by the expression of disbelief on Dirk’s face. Holy shit. Dude had met a literal police dragon, lived with a vampire, and yet his aunt being a witch was too much?
Apparently so, as Dirk stood, plate in hand, and walked off downstairs, chased out by the sounds of laughter from the rest of the household.
The next morning, both the trolls had packed enough clothes and such for three days, and Karkat was, at this point, fucking eager to get going. Might as well rip off the medical adhesive quickly. The sooner they got out, the sooner they could start helping with the move, and, shit, maybe they’d be able to finish early and come back sooner.
Rose and Kanaya of course turned the whole thing into their weird, cagey, flirty-who-me-I-would-never nonsense, of fucking course. He noticed that they did also trade phone numbers, though, which he was privately relieved about. Good. They’d be able to check in, then.
Not that Dave needed checking in on, of course. He’d be just goddamn fine, he didn’t need some short, shouty asshole mutant holding him back and wasting his time. Whatever.
He was so caught up in his usual self loathing bullshit, he almost didn’t notice Dave coming up and lightly tapping him on the shoulder.
“Hey, uh. No…” Dave rubbed the back of his head, his other hand shoved into one of his pockets. Karkat braced himself for the inevitable. “No bullshit, real talk,” Dave said, sighing, “I know it’s just a few days, but I’m seriously gonna miss you.”
Karkat pricked his ears and tried hard to stamp down the spark of hope. Outwardly, he snorted, and said “Yeah, well, same to you, I guess. It’ll be fucking weird not having this obnoxious thorn in my side, burrowing its way into my flesh at all hours.” He couldn’t keep a hint of affection out of his voice, damn it, maybe Dave wouldn’t notice.
Dave huffed a quiet laugh. “Seriously, though, take care of yourself, alright?” he said.
Title: The Calm Is Terrifying When The Storm Is All You Know [Homestuck]
Chapter 21: Ambiguity
Summary: There were two kinds of trolls who went to Earth: rich shitheads with too much money and free time, and desperate assholes who couldn’t survive on Alternia, even with the best efforts of the young Condesce. Karkat hated the planet almost immediately, but with his home planet too dangerous for mutants, he really didn’t have any choice but to hide out on this weird little diurnal planet. At least he’d be safe. Or so he thought, right before blundering his way into an accidental friendship with the son of an anti-troll terrorist.
Rating: M
Chapter Warnings: Mentioned/implied abuse, arguably disordered eating/you know how Dave hides food? yeah that; Pesterlogs
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gutsyGumshoe [GG] began pestering timaeusTestified [TT] at 10:28 PM 07/06/2015
GG: Good grief, I thought Roxy was exagerating about how late you stay up! Isn’t it past midnight at your house?
TT: I mean, yeah, but this is nothing.
TT: Was up til four yesterday. Ain’t no thing.
GG: >:B
TT: Not my fault there’s not enough hours in the day.
TT: I got shit to do. Robots to build, commissions to draw, asses to kick.
TT: Whole big schedule to sort through on the daily.
GG: Might one even say that you have some irons in the fire?
TT: Got so many burning irons, you’d think I’m a blacksmith.
TT: Enough swords, too, so really it’s
TT: Shit, hold on.
GG: ?
TT: God dammit.
TT: Be right back. Gotta deal with something. Ugh.
GG: Uh oh. It’s not a repeat of what happened last month, is it?
TT: Sorry about that. No, it turned out to be nothing.
TT: Again.
GG: Well, that’s a relief, I suppose.
GG: Um, what did you have to deal with, though?
TT: God, uh. Let me think.
TT: About a week or so after that bullshit last month went down, Dave heard a raccoon in the garage, and thought it might be someone trying to take him away again.
GG: Oh, goodness!
TT: No big deal, right? False alarm, everyone freaks out at first but it’s just something totally normal for out here.
GG: I remember you mentioning an adventure with one in your room last year, right?
GG: Roxy chronicled the whole event with photos from her cell phone.
TT: Yep.
TT: The thing with this is, though, that Dave keeps hearing things.
TT: That raccoon is so far the only time it’s actually been another living thing.
TT: A couple times, it was a fucking tree branch banging against a window. Most of the time it’s literally nothing.
TT: But he freaks out at the slightest noise from outside, and, well,
TT: I’m glad he’s telling us, at least?
TT: But.
GG: How often has this been happening?
TT: This was the third time this week. So, you know, pretty frequently. Always at night, so Mom can’t deal with it, because she doesn’t wake up easy.
GG: Shucks, Dirk, I’m sorry. That does sound like something of a hassle.
GG: Maybe you could ask Dave to try and be a bit brave?
TT: Can’t risk it.
TT: The old man’s quiet as hell. What if the one time I don’t check, it is him?
TT: I’d never forgive myself.
TT: Still, it’s frustrating. Especially because Dave won’t actually come down to my room himself.
GG: He won’t?
TT: No. He wakes up Rose and has her do it, so she’s always in a bad mood, too, but neither of us has any desire to take it out on Dave.
TT: It’s not his fault he’s scared of his own shadow.
TT: Fuck, if this keeps up, I’m gonna just build a bunch of security cameras and…
TT: Shit, no, that won’t work, Dave’s not allowed to use phones or computers. He’d still need someone else to check the feed for him. God dammit.
TT: Fucking house arrest bullshit.
GG: Hm.
GG: I’m…a bit loathe to suggest, this, but…
GG: You don’t suppose he’s jumpy because he’s hiding something again, do you?
TT: I mean, that’s a reasonable worry.
TT: He’s been talking to Rose a lot more, though, and he really did seem like he regretted what happened back in June.
TT: I think this is genuine paranoia, unfortunately.
GG: Gosh.
GG: I wish there was some way I could help, but I’m drawing a blank.
TT: Don’t sweat it, I mostly just needed to vent.
TT: Shit is ten kinds of stressful.
GG: I bet!
Karkat had no doubt about it now: Kanaya was up to something.
For the past week or so, he’d kept catching her speaking in hushed tones over her palm husk, usually visibly excited, but when he’d asked her what was up, she’d just grinned and informed him that it was “a surprise.” On the one hand, it was probably something totally harmless. On the other, Karkat knew his friends pretty well and he didn’t trust any of them with any ‘surprises’. Terezi’s idea of a ‘surprise’ had once resulted in him literally hanging upside down from her tree hive back on Alternia, one ankle snared in a rope. He didn’t even remember how things had lead to that, just that one moment she’d told him to come over to her house, and the next, hello, why is the world the wrong way up, what the fuck is this hoofbeast shit.
So, yeah, he was kind of wary, especially when Kanaya had asked that he and Rose (Dave ended up tagging along, too, out of curiosity) wait downstairs in the main room.
“Well?” Kanaya said, grinning widely as she stepped off the stairs.
It took Karkat a long moment to realize what had changed, but when he did, his jaw dropped.
“Holy shit, you’re not glowing!” he said, and heard a muffled “oh, fuck” from Dave next to him.
“How…?” Rose said, standing up.
“Turns out,” Kanaya said, “I did already actually know another rainbow drinker, who has been one far longer than I have, and she actually, you know, knows how it works. And she was able to teach me how to turn the glowing off, so!”
“So it’s not permanently gone, or anything?” Rose said. “I’d grown to like it so much, I’d hate to think you’d lost your spark so soon.”
Kanaya giggled over a pair of groans from Karkat and Dave. “Personally, I’m just glad someone finally shone a light on the ins and outs of this whole busine-”
Before Karkat could rightfully shout at the girls for the egregious punnage, a loud crashing noise from the basement made all four of them jump.
“What the fuck?!” Karkat yelped.
“Everything’s fine,” came a very muffled shout from Dirk. Rose darkly grumbled something about how Dirk was “going to set the house on fire one of these days if he wasn’t careful,” and just after she did, something even more surprising happened.
Dave, of all people, started laughing.
Karkat had heard Dave almost-laugh once or twice, but this was bordering on hysterics. He was doubled over on the couch, shaking with one of the most joyful sounds the troll had ever heard, if not a particularly attractive one. It was definitely an ugly laugh, and yet, a deeply contagious one, and Karkat had to fight to keep the corners of his mouth from curling up. (Especially because, even if he wasn’t sure what the joke was, seeing Dave this happy was doing things he didn’t want to admit to his blood pusher. Stupid pale crush, ugh.)
“What on Earth is so funny?” Rose asked, visibly fighting a smile of her own.
Dave tried to answer a few times, failed, and just pointed at Kanaya, who had…apparently started glowing again.
Looking at her hands, she sighed, and said, “Oh, damn it. Maybe I don’t have as much control as I had hoped, hm…”
Wheezing for breath, Dave finally managed to choke out, “She’s — fucking, hahhaha, holy shit, she’s a — she’s a fucking clapper!”
Rose’s hand flew to her mouth to stifle a snort as Dave curled into a ball under another wave of laughter. “Dave,” she said, her own shoulders shaking, now, “that’s mean!”
“A what now?” Karkat said.
“There’s — God dammit, Dave, stop laughing — there’s a, a device, a sound-activated light switch, basically, that allows you to clap twice to turn the lights on or off,” Rose sputtered. Her request seemed to only spur Dave on more.
“That’s…why?” Karkat said.
“I don’t know,” Rose heaved.
“Oh, well,” Kanaya said, “He’s not exactly wrong, in that case.” She clapped her hands twice and the glow turned off, and everyone absolutely lost it, Karkat included. Kanaya had just looked so fucking proud of herself as she did it, God damn it —
“I mean, that’s not how it actually works,” Kanaya said, in between helpless giggles, “But I — the punchline was right there, I had to!”
Dave fell off the couch, actually fucking wheezing.
And then, he stopped, suddenly sitting up straight, staring at the kitchen. Karkat composed himself as best he could, and followed Dave’s gaze.
Dirk was standing by the fridge, a freshly opened bottle of orange soda in hand, silently watching. Noticing that he was now the center of attention, he shrugged, and said, “Well, don’t stop having fun on my account.”
Dave swallowed hard enough for Karkat to hear.
“I was just about to go down and check on you,” said Rose, folding her arms and turning towards him. Judging by the hints of laughter still sparkling in her eyes, she hadn’t noticed how rigid Dave had gone. “What are you doing down there?”
“Nothing unusual,” said Dirk. “Just dropped something, is all.”
“What, an entire train? A beam of the house? Dirk.”
“It’s fine, Rose, really,” he said, taking a sip of his soda.
“‘M gonna go,” Dave mumbled to Karkat, and slipped away before he could respond. The next sound anyone heard was that of the door to his block clicking shut.
Dirk frowned. “Aaaand there he goes,” he muttered. “Should’ve waited to open the fuckin’ soda til I was downstairs, I guess. Jesus.” He, too, departed, albeit at a reasonable pace. The room was left with the very air feeling heavy, an awkwardness settling in almost painfully.
Rose broke the silence, thank fuck. “I’ve had just about enough of this,” she said. “Kanaya, I’m sorry my brothers ruined what was supposed to be your moment of triumph, I really am happy for you.”
“It’s alright,” Kanaya said, nervous.
Somehow, Karkat wasn’t so sure.
There wasn’t much Dave remembered about living here before. One of the things that had always stuck out, though, was this…this presence, a presence with a face attached to it that Dave had eventually figured out was Dirk, and it was a thing that had always given him a sense of safety when he was little. Like, whatever he was doing, playing in the woods or what the fuck ever, if that sort of shadow was somewhere in the background, everything was okay, he was safe and could just keep doing whatever.
Dave sure as shit didn’t get that feeling off of Dirk now.
He wasn’t sure what had changed over the years he’d been gone, but now when the guy was around, the only sense he got was one of danger. Which was stupid, and he knew it. Dirk had literally done nothing to him, he had no reason to think that he was going to, and Rose had made it pretty fuckin’ clear that this wasn’t a house that was prone to ambush-based training or really any sort of fight practice that wasn’t fully voluntary. And also, he was still under house arrest and couldn’t use a sword anyway, so there was that too. Still…
There was just…something about his face, about the slope of his eyebrows when he was frustrated and the way he held his shoulders, about the way he’d breathe in real slow while visibly pissed off (or maybe he was just frustrated? God, he was so fucking hard to read), something that set off every internal alarm bell Dave had, bellowing an internal ‘GET THE FUCK OUT’ at the most obnoxious pitch and volume ever. He’d be sitting there like, geez, did we really have to do a fire drill today? It’s fuckin’ raining outside, come on! But nope, every time Dirk came in, there they go, the twitchy-ass wailin’ sirens shoutin’ at him to evacuate.
And, if Dave was honest with himself, the knowledge that Dirk probably wasn’t gonna hurt him sort of made everything worse. Because if this wasn’t all the long-term build up to a sword fight on the roof, then why the fuck was he…Why was he being so weird?
Weird in ways that were familiar enough, mind. Showing up at weird moments, sometimes giving off the danger vibe more than usual, and yet sometimes acting almost out of character —Bro did that sorta shit all the time, and Dave knew what the idea was there. It was just mind games. Probably to keep Dave on his toes and ready for anything, teach him to be suspicious or whatever. Sometimes the games had a specific goal and usually Dave could figure out what that was. But with Dirk? He had no fucking idea.
Especially since the most out of character shit seemed to happen when Dirk was actually pissed at him — like that time with the cat on the roof, how he’d been so fuckin’ gentle even while practically scowling (well. He’d looked mildly irritated, but. Same thing, right?). Or how about that fuckin’ fiasco back with the botched rescue attempt? He’d obviously been angry, he and Rose had nearly gone for each other’s jugulars right there in the fuckin’ kitchen! But he’d never directed anything worse than a fuckin’ heavy sigh at Dave, so what the fuck? Same with the fuckin’ sounds he kept hearing at night — every time another one happened, Dirk reacted a little less serious and a little more annoyed (and…yeah. That was fair. Dave wasn’t sure why he was so jumpy, lately, but he couldn’t shake the feeling that he was being watched, somehow. Eyes burning holes in his back, and he couldn’t shake them, no matter where he went), but every few times he’d say that same thing again, that he’d rather go check on a false alarm than have Dave not try and give them a warning. And he’d say it that same way, too — his eyes serious and fuckin’ scary intense, but his voice soft, like he was talkin’ to a crying toddler. Dave couldn’t figure out what to make of it.
Part of him…that little whispery part that was always so contrary about this shit, the same one that had talked himself into admitting what was going on back in June, kept hoping that maybe Dave was misinterpreting shit, that the gentleness and the nice shit was genuine, but. He couldn’t buy it. Not whenever Dirk was in the room, being stoic and unreadable and fuckin’ scary.
Another part of him, one that had been steadily growing bolder ever since it had really sunk in that no one was gonna hit him, but had existed for longer than Dave had realized it was there, wanted him to fight back. Fuckin’ puff himself up and snap at Dirk, get him to either back off or push him over the edge to strike out — whatever it took to get rid of the terrifying goddamn ambiguity of this whole mess.
What held him back from acting on that bit, for now, was the memory of that fight between Dirk and Rose. That had been some scary shit, and it’d just burst in out of nowhere. One minute, all’s quiet, and the next, Dirk was fuckin’ lunging at Rose like a man on a mission. A death mission. Fuckin’ hell.
Dave didn’t want that. He really didn’t want it to come to that. The thought of having to fight Dirk, armed or no, made his gut twist and contort itself into all sorts of fucked up shapes.
But then again, so did the not knowing.
Something was gonna give, and Dave wasn’t sure he wanted to be around when it did.
The next time Rose saw her eldest brother was once again in the kitchen, this time with an expression of suspicious confusion etched on his face. He was looking intently in the pantry, finger tapping out an agitated tune against the counter.
“That’s certainly a severe expression to fix on a bunch of innocent food. Are you having a fight with the ramen noodles?” Rose said, crossing her arms.
Dirk flicked an eye over to her, back to the pantry, and then leaned back. “Be a little tricky to have a fight with something that isn’t there,” he said. “Which is more my actual problem.”
“What?” Rose said, stepping over to the pantry herself. “But you just went to the store three days ago. I saw you bring in enough cup noodles to last you a good two weeks.” Yet, as she stood next to him, she could see for herself that he was right — there was just one left.
“Karkat’s been at them, for sure,” Dirk said, “But I don’t think that’s enough to account for them disappearing so fast. Have Dave or Kanaya been eating any, do you know?”
Rose thought for a long moment. “Kanaya tried them once,” she said, “but I don’t know that she cared for them much. As for Dave, I…” She frowned. “Actually, I don’t know that I’ve seen him eat anything in quite some time. Normally, he just takes food and retreats to his room.” She sighed. “Well, it probably is him, though. It’s what makes the most sense, unless our mother’s suddenly picked up a taste for them, which I doubt.”
“It’s not just cup noodles, though,” Dirk said. “That’s not that big of a deal. There’s other food that’s been disappearing. A whole packet of crackers disappeared last night, along with a half-full jar of peanut butter.”
“That’s…strange, sure,” said Rose, “But I doubt it’s anything serious.”
“That’s because you’re not in charge of groceries,” Dirk said. “I am, and I don’t like that things are disappearing almost as fast as I can buy them.”
“So buy more,” Rose said, exasperated. “We’re not exactly on a tight budget, here.”
“Hmph,” Dirk grunted, closing the pantry.
That really should have been the end of things, but things were never simple with Dirk. The mystery was solved that evening, as it turned out. While in her room with Kanaya, Rose heard a soft yelp from the kitchen. Flicking a worried glance to Kanaya, she stood, leaving her room just enough to get a glimpse of what was going on downstairs.
Dave was in the slightly-hunched, deeply tense pose she’d learned to recognize as his version of cowering, a bag of chips that she knew to be about a quarter full held half-hidden behind his back. Dirk was standing near him — dangerously close to cornering him, actually. He probably didn’t mean to do so, but Dave was already on edge, that much was clear.
Dirk calmly reached into a cabinet, and pulled out a small bowl, handing it to Dave. “You know,” he said, “you can just use one of these, and that way there’s enough for everyone —”
Something in Dave seemed to snap. His voice was terse and defensive, almost frantic, as he answered, “I know, okay?! I know it’s stupid and weird and — I can’t explain why, I know there’s plenty of food here, thank fuck for that because I don’t know where I’d get it on my own, but if I — if I don’t have enough stashed away, I wake up in the middle of the night in a cold fucking sweat, and it doesn’t matter how much I tell myself everything’s gonna be fine, I can’t turn it off, okay?”
It was almost uplifting to watch, in a way, as he seemed to puff himself up and half-spit his response — not great in terms of making amends, perhaps, but she’d learned to recognize her brother’s fear responses well enough to realize that he was standing up for himself, defending himself against the one person in the house he still found frightening, and even as she found herself saddened by his actual words, she was proud of him for having the courage to say them.
Dirk seemed thunderstruck. He was silent for a long moment, and in that moment, that rush of courage seemed to drain right out of Dave. His stance slipped back into a cower, as he mumbled an even more frantic, stuttery apology, promising to put the food back, that it wasn’t actually a big deal, he was fine —
“No, it’s — it’s okay, you can have it,” Dirk said. “I didn’t realize…It’s not that big of a deal, I’ve just. Been wondering where some of the food’s been disappearing to so fast. None of what you’ve taken needs to be in the fridge, so you’re…fine.”
Dave mumbled another sorry. Dirk didn’t answer, suddenly unable to meet Dave’s gaze. Rose didn’t wait to see if the conversation would continue; Dave looked enough like he was about to bolt for her to duck back into her own room. Moments later, she heard the Dave’s door slam shut.
“What was…” Kanaya started. Rose had already pulled out her phone.
“I’m texting Roxy,” Rose announced. “I’ve had about enough of this. She’s wrangled Dirk’s stubborn ego into cooperation before. If she can’t find a way to fix this, no one can.”
