Work Text:
Sometimes life can taste so sweet when you slow it down
You start to see the world a little differently when you turn it upside down
--Paloma Faith
When she opens her eyes, her first thought is simply: so we’ve failed.
Her second is: what’s wrong with my eyes?
Her house, boxy and ominous and every corner of it familiar, reigns over the same sandy beach as it had in the Land of Light and Rain; the ocean still stretches vast and empty out to every horizon. But the house is a black shape against the ocean’s further blackness, the windows spilling a bruisy, sullen purple light across the ash-black sand of the beach. It is a transformation from a soap-bubble iridescence to all the shimmering sickness of an oil-slick and she feels suddenly very angry. She clambers to her feet in the shifting ashy sand and her hands knot up into claws.
Then she looks up, and thinks: ah.
The Land of Light and Rain had never been dark, never had a night. Above her now stretches a vast and dizzying panorama of stars, thick as a handful of bright glitter, and directly overhead a moon as pink as any girl on any planet could ever wish for stains the trailing clouds a dozen shades of rouge. At the very edge of the ocean in one direction--East? North? Who could tell?--looms a moon as green as acid.
Her hands, in the pink and green lights, are as gray as the sand on her beach, though every sharp-tipped nail has been carefully painted a different color, burnt orange or mustard or olive--one single pinky nail is ultramarine. Her shirt is plain black, her skirts patterned with rough gray circles, her sash as rainbow-iridescent as her nails, as the dark ocean. On her chest is a sigil of angles and loops in a vivid indigo--she digs the tip of one nail into the soft pad of her palm, and up wells the same color, bright as paint.
“Well,” Rose says, feeling her sharp teeth catch at her lips. “Well, then.”
A circuit around her little domain takes no more time than it ever had in the game, which was not very much. A few minutes to the far point around the back of the house, a few minutes to return to her point of origin. Her island has kept the same pier as was present in her Land’s version, though she has no idea what, if anything, she could deduce from this. There’s even the small boat, neatly moored. The wood is black. The ropes are dyed in stripes and patches of colors, like a string of rainbow flags. There is a cloying fragrance about the boat, even with the sharp salt-tang of the ocean all around: a bit metallic, a bit sickly-sweet.
The colors on the ropes leave dusty smears on her hands. They smell of death. Everything smells of death; the ropes that she can’t even pretend aren’t dipped in blood, her sash, her nails, the beach. The oily, shifting colors of the waves lapping against the pier turn her stomach.
As she turns to leave, however, a long white tentacle heaves itself up over the edge of the wet wood. She freezes, her hands reaching for her needles--she still has her needles, long gruesome things striped in black and red and purple and at least that’s something--and out of a writhing pale mass of tentacles comes a cat easily the size of a lioness, saber-like teeth glinting wetly. The long mass of tentacles seem attached at the tail, braiding and unbraiding themselves wetly against the dark wood.
“Hello,” Rose says, and readies her needles. Those teeth are long, and very sharp.
The cat creature makes a low, gurgling thrum that she identifies after a moment as a purr, and rubs the top of its head against one of her hips. It sounds like a stopped up drain, and nearly bowls her over.
One tentacle arches over the cat’s back and uncurls. It bears a fat finned dead thing, and the beast pushes it insistently into her hands.
“For me?” she says, a trifle weakly. “You shouldn’t have.”
The cat stares at her with white eyes, and licks at its lips.
“I couldn’t possibly,” she attempts, and the cat bares its fangs. The tentacle-tails all lash the pier in unison, a squelching whip-crack.
She remembers being four years old, and Jaspers laying the head of a little gray mouse between her light-up sneakers.
She remembers that she has never liked sushi.
Nonetheless, she considers, no one in the history of any universe has ever won an argument with a cat, so she gamely puts the soft stomach of the dead thing into her mouth and tears off a piece. As ugly as it is, the flesh is sweet and rich, and she finds herself hungrily taking another bite, then another, cracking the bones apart with molars that tear, now, rather than mash. She finishes the head with a snap of fangs and an eager lick of her fingers, stained an oily teal, and feels a sense of indescribable satisfaction as the last drop laves off under her gray tongue, the flesh settling heavy into her stomach.
The cat presses its head up under her hand, and she scratches it between the ears. It feels like wet velvet, and the sounds of gurgle-purrs can be heard as she drags her nails behind one ear.
“I shall call you Whiskers,” she says. “The Right Honorable Magistrate Duchess Whiskers del Tentabeast.”
It blinks at her, and its tails flop and twist in a way she can only interpret as quixotic.
“When a girl only has one pet her entire life,” she explains, “she gets a lot of names saved up.”
*
The door to her house is adorned with a small doorknob right in the middle, shaped like a skull. When she puts her hand to it, she is unsurprised to find that it is a skull. When she pushes inside her house, she has to throw her hand up over her mouth and nose. She gags sharply, her vision blurring with tears, and she backs out on to the sand. Duchess Whiskers chuffs and noses worriedly at her side as she doubles over, trying to keep hold of the contents of her stomach. Or whatever she now had, instead. She wants to run, run down the pier and into the boat and lose herself at sea. More than that, even, she wants to sit on this gritty sand and cry.
She cannot allow herself to do either.
Instead, she straightens her spine and skirts and takes a deep harsh breath of sea air.
After a few steps into the living room, the smell abates to the point it can be measured, analyzed. There’s the salt-tang of any building steeped in ocean winds, mixed with the sweet-rotten scent of decay from every corner. Skulls are piled up like so many curios, a rack of ribs sits on the coffee table like a conversation piece, and a handful of slender legbones adorn a vase on a windowsill in a morbid boquet. The coppery tang of blood is everywhere, all across the walls in loops and whorls of dusky colors, a thousand twisted rainbow horrorterrors across every vertical surface. She nearly turns and runs again, but the white cat at her back spurs her forward. This is her home, now. This is her.
Somewhere in this mess is her laptop, or should be. The trolls had called their equipment husktops -- were they made out of husks? What, even, was a husk?
Resolutely pondering this mystery, she closes her eyes. Though that doesn’t keep the smell away, it allows her to get up the stairs--still the familiar route long memorized--and up to her bedroom. Respiteblock. Whatever she’s supposed to call it.
And there is her room, with another skull knob by the feel of it. How tacky, Troll Rose, she thinks. Inside the smell of dried blood is slightly less strong, although she has the sickening feeling that there is no room in this house--hive? Was she supposed to be some sort of bee? Is that what trolls were; big grey bees and oh god she was becoming hysterical, wasn’t she?--that there was no room in this hive that was entirely bereft of bloodstains.
She opens her eyes, one at a time. Oh. Wizards this time, though she can’t remember her human collection of statuettes embracing quite so passionately. Perhaps there is something to be said for troll social mores, after all.
The husktop is at her desk, just where she was hoping it would be. In the darkened screen she catches a glimpse of another skull, looming closer, and startles back before she realizes it’s only her reflection. She raises a hand to her cheek for the first time and feels the tacky slickness of oilpaint, sees the leering monstrosity in the black mirror twist with each of her movements.
She turns the screen on and the rush of light and color neatly obscures her reflection.
Pesterchum--no, Trollian--is open.
ectoBiologist is trolling her.
“Oh thank god,” she says out loud, and then feels extremely stupid.
EB: rose!
EB: rose are you there?
EB: hey!
EB: hey rose!
EB: earth to rose!
EB: or alternia to rose, lol!
EB: we’re trolls!!!
TT: You don’t say.
TT: And here I thought decorating with the corpses of my slain enemies was an entirely human occupation of mine.
EB: hi rose!
EB: yep, we’re totally trolls now. little monster horns just like troll howie mandel’s and everything. well, mine aren’t exactly like howie mandel’s, but that would be cool.
EB: wait, slain enemies?
TT: Presumably slain.
TT: It is entirely possible they expired due to boredom.
EB: lol. probably. do you think you read them too much wizard slash?
TT: You wound me.
TT: There is no such thing as ‘too much’ wizard slash, John. I can only pray that in time you will come to understand this crucial piece of information I have so tirelessly attempted to impart to you, before it is too late.
EB: to hell with your wizard slash, rose! i have a fortress! a FORTRESS!
EB: and my room is filled with posters and they are of all my awesome movies and they have long troll names on them and everyone is a troll.
TT: That would be because we are trolls, John.
EB: except nic cage :(
EB: there is no troll nic cage :(
EB: what kind of universe doesn’t
EB: WHOAH
EB: brb my dad is nic cage
TT: What.
EB: BRB!!!!
Rose leans back in her chair, feeling overwhelmingly relieved. Knowing that in some small way she wasn’t alone... where there was John, there would, presumably, be Dave, be Jade--
gardenGnostic comes online with a bright digital chirp. She clicks the little green circle before she even registers that her hand is back on the computer’s trackpad.
TT: Jade?
GG: ROSE!!! :D
GG: Oh man did you see John’s cowdad? He’s got a dad who’s a cow!
TT: I heard something about that.
TT: It wouldn’t be too much to presume that you, too, have undergone your own metamorphosis?
GG: well I’m a troll now, miss smarty pants! (:B
TT: I am sorry to admit that I am wearing skirts right now.
GG: well get some on, jeez! how is a girl supposed to be a smarty pants with no pants, huh? answer me that!
TT: Alas, I cannot. I shall therefore seek to procure such an august garment as these fabled intelligent pants at the soonest possible juncture.
TT: In the mean time, please tell me you know what the hell is going on around here.
GG: i don’t think i do. ):B
GG: i mean obviously doc scratch fucking cheated
GG: or like non-cheated but still cheated
GG: you know like how the devil or genie or whatever cosmic wish-granting fuckass you’re asking a perfectly reasonable favor from always gives you what you ask for but not what you want, like a big sack of total crap!!
TT: I have to admit, that is a little dismaying.
GG: but the thing is
GG: maybe this isn’t where we want to be, or where we asked to be, and it definitely isn’t where we WANTED to be, that’s for sure!
GG: but maybe it’s where we’re meant to be? O:B
TT: That is certainly a maybe, yes.
GG: lol, is it a maybe or a yes?
TT: Yes, it’s a maybe. Or both. I don’t know.
TT: While John has a tearful reunion with the move star-cum-father figure-cum-bovine soulmate of his dreams, I am sitting here literally surrounded by skulls, Jade. Piles of them. I am finding it a little hard to retain my usual sunny optimism in the face of such a relentlessly macabre situation.
GG: awwww, cheer up, rose!
GG: they probably deserved it!
TT: Somehow you always know just what to say.
turntechGodhead comes online, a low record-scratch of noise. He contacts her before she can even click his name.
TG: so guess who’s got a giant eagle
TG: its me
TG: guess who doesnt wanna be a human anymore fuck being human anyway
TG: still me
TG: guess who just got all the swagger on this whole dumb alien planet with the horns and the giant fucking eagles that you can ride on like theyre your big feathery surfboard
TG: catching mad air like im some kind of insane levitating pokemon master
TG: gotta catch all that air
TG: its still me
TG: its so me
TG: forever
TT: Hello, Dave.
TG: so are you jealous or are you jealous
TG: its okay if youre jealous
TG: im on a bird motherfucker
TG: fucking flying and shit
TG: tell egbert to suck my fucking contrails bitch all bluh bluh nic cowge fuck that bullshit
TT: Stop using me to do your flirting, Strider.
TG: you can suck my fucking contrails too lalonde dont think i wont let you break off a piece of this choice hang-time
TG: were all weirdo bug-juice incest siblings now
TG: the flirt train strider sexpress is leaving the not-a-human-anymore-i-got-a-giant-flying-eagle-i-can-fly-on station
TG: next stop everywhere
TG: choo choo motherfuckers
Infinitely relieved, she has to lean back in her chair and close her eyes just to keep hold of herself. Three colors flash and chime at her from her alien laptop, and the sensation of seeing them all, knowing they’re finally safe, sits achingly thick and warm inside her chest.
A new chime sounds: not a chirp or a ding, but a high, grating peal of synthetic feminine laughter. She jolts back to peer at her monitor.
TC... Who the hell is this douchebag?
tyrannicalConsanguinity [TC] started trolling tentacleTherapist [TT]:
TC: So you’ve finally lured the mutant freak out of hiding, then, have you?
TC: I knew you’d succeed! My clever girl.
TC: This ‘human’ game is so droll. And quite effective! Lowbloods do enjoy their silly pretending, don’t they?
TT: Pardon?
TC: This game that you’re playing, Rose. Making believe that you’re trolls for the first time, yes? What a diverting little exercise--and the traitors are revealing their locations, too. We’ll cull that impudent little gutterblood yet.
Shaking just a little, she watches her bloody rainbow nails tap out,
TT: Quite.
TT: If you’d excuse me for one moment?
TC: But of course, darling.
Then she’s slamming out of her chair, a noise she hardly recognizes working its way out of her throat, a low throbbing alien snarl, hot and burning. Everywhere there are bones and blood and nightmare eyes staring back from every wall and this person dares to talk like her mother, dares to call her friend, her brother, her Dave, a freak?
She picks up a statue of three wizards entwined and smashes it violently to the ground. The sound rings through her like a bell and she gasps, grabs another statue. It shatters a note higher. She smashes a third, a fourth, and then stomps on the pieces, grinding little hands and wands to shards under her heel and leaving a streak of glittery dust across the floor.
Only when all the statues are reduced to so many handfuls of sand does she feel like she can go back to her monitor without exploding. Her friends’ three colors still flash, chattering about wolf moms and bird dads and castles and she feels hot and sick and more than a little wild. More than a lot wild.
How is her mother here? Worse, how is she watching?
TT: Thank you for your kind allowance.
TT: If I were to enquire as to whether you observed that little spectacle I just made out of myself, would you do me the courtesy of chalking it up to youthful hijinks?
TC: You know my adoring gaze ends at your monitor, my dearest Rose ‘human,’ as grievously as it pains this ancient old vascular pump of mine not to behold you conducting whatever spectacle your precious little self desires. But more seriously, tell me, dear, do you like your new cushion?
TT: My cushion?
TC: The one I made you for your throne! Hasn’t it come yet? The courier ships are supposed to be faster than that! Oh dear, someone will have to be culled. Ah, well. I can do that on my way here.
TT: Terribly sorry, but I’m going to have to step away from the computer again.
Her mom isn’t actually in this house, is she?
Not her mom. This person is not her mom. She’s not even her troll mom. Trolls didn’t even have moms, adults weren’t allowed to live on the planet itself, Kanaya had said.
Maybe she ought to check, just to make sure--oh look, more statuettes to smash.
That accomplished, she prowls out of her room and down the stairs. The smell is hardly noticeable now, she’s acclimating; when she drags her sharp nails along the painted walls, they score long gray streaks, spilling a sharp tang into the thick air that makes her feel fiercely ready for anything.
There is a throne in her living room, where her favorite reading chair used to be. The sleek white bulk of the Duchess takes up most of it, and the cat is contentedly gnawing at yet another skull.
“What have I told you about jumping on the furniture?” Rose snaps, feeling a savage desire to throw her weight around, to prove... something. Anything.
The cat contrives to look both guilty and disdainful, and slinks wetly off the seat. It flips a few tentacle-tails as it goes.
Shaking just a little, she crosses the floor and places her hands on each armrest. The whole affair is big and black and ornate, carved with thorns and wide-petaled rose blossoms like an art nouveau nightmare, each stone flower stained a different blood-dark color. Rose runs her claws over a rust-red petal, and almost licks her fingers clean, afterward, before she scrubs the color off on her skirt instead. The cloying blood-smell is hardly terrible at all, really, simply intense, and here, around this throne, it is very nearly enticing.
The pillow is a meltingly vivid indigo, embroidered thickly around the edges with hearts and stars and ponies in a bright cheery pink, a Lalonde pink. She almost laughs, almost screams, and runs her gray hand over the velvet.
In pink, spiny alien letters that she can nonetheless read with perfect ease, a twist of embroidery reads: The tyrant will always find a pretext for her tyranny.
She leaves it there, un-sat on, not quite daring to do more than simply touch it. As she ascends the stairs back to her room, she can hear the shuffling bulk of her custodian shift up to perch upon it once more.
TT: I found your cushion. The embroidered heart and hoofbeast motif is so very you, dear mentor; my lusus simply adores it. Did you do the embroidery by hand?
TC: Oh no, darling. I had my legislacerator do it. Such a busy schedule, after all. A Grand Highblood’s work is never done.
TC: But I am making sure my schedule is cleared for the culling of your little mutant friend. Candy red blood! Such a striking mutation, I do believe it will look so good on camera-- and it’ll be such a nice bonding experience with you, won’t it, dear?
TT: I’m sure it will be, mother.
TC: What’s a mother, darling?
TT: Just a human thing. Never mind.
In her absence, she’s been invited to FRUITY RUMPUS TWO: ELECTRIC BOOGALOO. She accepts, and finds her friends exchanging cheerful inanities in her absence.
GG: so i am calling her curie!
GG: she is the best wolf ever!!!!!!
GG: GOOD WOLF
GG: BEST MOM
GG: i always wanted a mom
GG: and a wolf!!! ^_^
TG: yeah i dont know if i mentioned but i have an eagle
TG: he is fly
TG: also: he flies
TG: let me send you a picture
TG: http://tinyurl.com/soveryfly
GG: so what do you call him?
GG: dj jazzy bird? mc pinfeathers?!?
TG: redglare
GG:... but he has white eyes doesnt he?
TG: yeah theres a little thing i like to indulge in every now and then
TG: called irony
TG: you may have heard of it
EB: dude, i think that’s the first time you’ve ever done anything that was actually, literally ironic, instead of just weird.
TG: john
TG: john
TG: john why you gotta hurt me like this
EB: look the important thing to take away from this conversation right now is that i win, my cowdad looks exactly like nic cage.
EB: it is the coolest thing i have ever seen in my LIFE!
TG: so exactly how many shits did you take when you saw him
TG: all of them or all of them?
EB: man! you don’t even know how many shits. probably all of them and then some!
EB: but anyway i guess i’ll call him cowmeron poe.
TG: i dont even want to know you anymore man
EB: so what is your animalmom like, rose?
EB: man where is rose even?
TT: Her name is The Right Honorable Magistrate Duchess Whiskers del Tentabeast and she seems to consist of both feline and cephelaopod attributes. She looks extremely regal.
EB: lol. you have an octopuss.
TT: I don’t even want to know you anymore, man.
TG: oh hey theres some guys out there
TG: here
TG: whatever
TG: got like rocket boots
TG: i want rocket
GG: ....dave?
EB: whoah, dave are you okay?
TT: Oh, no.
GG: dave are you there?
GG: dave come on that’s not funny!
EB: rose, do you know what’s going on?
TT: I may.
TT: do you remember Karkat?
EB: yeah of course
GG: we all still remember the trolls, i think!
EB: the other trolls, haha! hey, do you think they’re still here?
GG: ....oh, fuck!
EB: what? what fuck?
GG: oh, fuck, oh FUCK!!! ROSE! WHAT ARE WE GONNA DO!? O:B
TT: I know, Jade. I know.
EB: what’s going on? what does Karkat have to do with Dave?
TT: They cull mutants here, John.
EB: oh, fuck.
EB: oh god, oh man, oh god. is dave gonna be okay, rose?
TT: I
TT: I’m
EB: rose?
She can’t do it, she cannot say the words that she so desperately wants to be true. She sits paralyzed, her claws tick-tapping against the keys, useless. She has no words, only a visceral, screaming terror that feels more like rage than anything. She is young, and an alien, and she is simply and incoherently furious, and does not know what to do.
TC: Of course he will be, darling, of course he will. Reassure your little friends.
TC: You don’t want to give the game away so soon, do you?
Mechanically, she taps out:
TT: Dave is a skilled fighter.
TT: I’m sure he is even now dispatching his adversaries.
TG: okay so
TG: i just killed like three dudes
TG: that sucked
GG: :(
EB: :(
TG: this whole being a troll thing is suddenly slightly less than ideal
TG: is trying to carve off a piece of strider for keepsies like a general troll deal or am i just that cool?
EB: no, we’re pretty sure they’re trying to cull you.
GG: is your blood still red?
TG: of course it is what other color would
TG: oh
TG: well spank my alien ass and call me a smuppet this is FUCKED UP
GG: ew, dave! uncool! >:B
EB: not in front of the ladies, dave!
TG: oh shut your face and let me have a little EXISTENTIAL CRISIS over here would you?
TG: why do i gotta be the mutant huh
TG: why cant john be the chosen one
TG: heir of getting his ass beat by strangers
EB: aw dave, i would if i could.
GG: me too!!!
TT: I believe we need a plan.
TG: yeah that
TG: lets do one of those
TG: i am all about plans sign me up
EB: okay, plans!
EB: plans, plans, i am so getting a plan like right
EB: now!
EB: we need to hide him out, that’s definitely the most important thing. he’s probably some kind of giant target just flying around in the open like that, unless troll-dave was on the run before we took over or showed up or whatever it was and staying in motion was his plan?
GG: wow, thats kind of a shitty plan.
TG: shut up harley what do you know about being on the run
TG: thats right
TG: a big fat NOTHING
GG: RUDE! ):<B
EB: come on, dave, you cant just have a chase scene forever.
TG: yeah i know i mean
TG: im sorry for being kind of a bitch
GG: well okay then
GG: as long as you’re OUR bitch!
TG: rude
EB: my house is a fortress. we can hide you here for a while.
EB: and then. i don’t know.
EB: can we get off-planet?
EB: rose, you turned into one of those important trolls, right? i mean, i’m a blue troll, so you’re probably a purple one, and purple trolls are the fancy guys, i think!
EB: maybe you can bribe someone to get us a spaceship?
EB: space is a thing for trolls, isn’t it?
EB: rose?
EB: you still there?
TG: shit come on lalond
TG: paging doctor lalond
TG: cleanup in the dave is going to get fucking put down like a fucking dog aisle
EB: rose?
GG: oh nooooooooo ):B
TT: No, I’m still here.
TT: I’m just thinking.
TT: Space is a thing for trolls.
She pages back over to the other chatbox, her breath bottled up tight between gritted fangs.
TT: I have the clearance to requisition a shuttle, correct?
TC: You have the clearance to do anything you like, my clever girl.
TC: I’ll meet you at the spaceport, you simply must tell me what you have planned.
TT: I
TT: Yes.
TT: I shall look forward to nothing else.
Back to the memo.
TT: John’s plan is sound.
TT: Go to his house.
TT: I’ll see what I can do about finding us a ship.
EB: cool. i’m working out how to get dave to my house. um, hive, whatever.
EB: maybe I can paint something on the roof?
EB: that way he’ll know it’s mine
EB: any suggestions?
EB: probably not “dave come here”......
EB: is dave even named dave or do we all have weird trollnames?
EB: like, um, davela.
EB: johnix.
EB: jadert.
EB: roseba.
GG: those are terrible names, john!
GG: i wanna be like
GG: EXECUTRIX GRIMMAULKIN HIVEMASTER!
EB: oh man yes!
EB: okay i wanna be
EB: uh
GG: CAPTAIN KONRATRIX FORMALDEHYDE NIMOY!!
EB: YES.
EB: HELL YES.
TG: what about me?
GG: you’re still dave!
TG: what
GG: i like the name dave! what’s wrong with dave?
TG: well obviously nothing but like
TG: who names an alien egg baby dave
TG: obviously you, executrix babynaming nutjob
TC: Your friends are so terribly amusing, Rose. Perhaps if they stay this entertaining we might grant the little traitors a merciful death! I might even let you do the honors yourself, I’ve heard great things about your development in recent sweeps.
TC: Though, personally, I’m glad you weren’t named Roseba. I wouldn’t be able to match my text color to your delicious name.
TC: <3
TT: I regret to inform you all that we seem to have kept our original monikers.
TG: so i seriously dont get to be like darkholm grubfuck at all
TG: even a little
TT: Not even a little.
Her friends are happily--well, not happily, but eagerly?--making plans to get the hell off this planet. Plans that will never happen. Because of her. The smell of blood is everywhere, over everything, over her hands and her nails and it smells so good, it has always smelled good right from the start.
This person who isn’t her mother goes on and on and on about the wonderful, terrible things they’ll do together once she’s planetside. Painting with her friends’ bodily fluids seems to come up in the conversation with disturbing frequency, as are inquiries as to her health, her hair, her interests, her body--is she flirting? Is that what this is? Is that what trolls do with their mentors? She thinks, achingly, of her conversations with Kanaya, with Nepeta, with Terezi, when anything to do with the mad world of the trolls had just been one more piece of irrelevancy with which to while away the long hours sailing over her bright and shining rainbow Land: trolls had no parents, no siblings, and a word for friend that meant the same exact thing as enemy.
How sad, she had thought, how tiresomely grim. It had been like something out of some maudlin teenage nightmare, and now she is stuck fast in the middle of it and her mother who is not her mother is enquiring as to whether she would appreciate any trophies from this cull--skulls, or viscera, perhaps? She does so enjoy indulging her beautiful Rosebud’s unique creative spirit--in the same tone as Rose’s own mother had graciously manipulated her into ballet lessons, or violin instruction.
Rose is scared and alone and angry and hungry, and she has run out of tiny statuettes.
Wildly, more than a little desperately, she snatches up the heavy leather grimmoire from beside her husktop-- the red bookmark flops like a tongue, and she rips the cover off, snarling, rips a handful of the first chapter free, pages scattering to the floor like snowflakes, like dead birds. The second chapter is dispatched likewise, and in the third-- the bookmark flashes at her.
Bright red. Dave red.
Culling-red.
She licks her lips, only now realizing she had been baring her fangs in a mad snarl, and brushes her bangs back from her eyes.
Then she sees the chapter title, and sits, abruptly, on the floor, clutching the eviscerated remnant of the manuscript to her chest. For the first time since she woke up in this nightmare hell-world, Rose Lalonde smiles.
Maybe she and Troll Rose weren’t so different after all.
She climbs back into her seat and clicks over to the memo. John has resolved to paint a green slime ghost on the roof of his fortress. Dave and Jade have established that her caravan and his current location are not all that far from each other, relatively speaking, and all three of them think they can make it to John’s hive within the next night or so.
She clicks the other window:
TT: Do you know when you’ll make it planetside? I need to give my friends a time to meet us.
TT: Dear mentor.
TT: <3
TC: <3 <3 <3
TC: Oh darling, it is so nice to see you show some interest outside the calliginous.
*
Rose spends the next night sweeping up the sand from the shattered wizard statues, then using some of the paintpots full of dried blood in the closet to dye it. The task is mindlessly soothing, and the elegantly shaped empty bottles she finds in her crafts closet are bright and lovely when filled with grainy, glittering rainbows. She holds them up to catch the neon moonlight, and feels a certain satisfaction at the colored shadows they throw around the room. A worthy gift from a doting protege to her mentor.
It was only too bad she didn’t have time to find a professional glassblower to make them fresh.
The Duchess brings her fish from time to time, which she devourers eagerly, grateful for a maternal touch that doesn’t leave her feeling more fragile, more filthy with every glancing contact. She’s a good cat, and when, hours after sunrise, she nips the scruff of Rose’s shirt and hauls her bodily into the alien pod of slime, Rose cannot find it in herself to protest. She winds her arms around the cat’s thick neck, as she has vague memories of doing with her mother, her real mother, when she was very small and things were simpler, hiding in her arms against nightmares. She sleeps with her face pressed against the soft velvet skin of this loving, alien monster.
In the evening, after she rises from the slime, cleans herself, and enjoys a breakfast of fish, more fish, and something that might have been a palm-sized whale, she finds her troll self’s yarn stash.
It’s brightly dyed and so delicious smelling, she surreptitiously licks it. The iron tang of blood spills rich as syrup over her tongue, and she can only sigh and wipe guiltily at her mouth. With nothing better to do to occupy the long hours, she takes a few skeins off to her throne, plumps herself down on the pillow-- it is remarkably comfortable-- and starts work on a scarf.
Or perhaps a garrotte.
She hasn’t decided yet. She supposes it could be both.
Just after the rise of the green moon adds its acid tint to the starlight coming in through her hive’s windows, John trolls her.
EB: rose?
EB: rose, are you there?
TT: I haven’t left the island, John.
EB: right! well, everyone’s here and cowmeron just made us lusus milk ice cream. its kind of creepy but so good! how’s the spaceship coming?
TT: All the arrangements have been made. Do you think you can be at the shuttle station by midnight?
EB: all of us?
TT: All of you.
EB: yeah, i think so. should we try and disguise dave so no one recognizes us?
EB: how are you going to recognize us?
EB: how are WE going to recognize you?
TT: Oh, you’ll know me when you see me.
EB: wow, that didn’t sound even a little bit ominous, rose!
EB: look
EB: is everything...
EB: okay?
TT: I have to go.
GG: rose!
TT: Yes?
GG: whatever you’re going through over there...
GG: just remember we all love you okay? like really for real!
GG: ...rose?
TG: lalonde
TG: take care of yourself okay
She backs away from the screen, very carefully, and goes into her bathroom. On the edge of the sink is a little compact of greasepaint, and a stained rag, and a brush. She washes the remains of last night’s smeary mess off and pats her dove-gray flesh exquisitely clean.
Then she picks up the paints, black and white, and draws herself a new face.
TC: Are you ready, my darling Rose?
TT: Ready and waiting, my dearest mentor.
TC: Then let the games begin.
She snaps the husktop in half with one brutal lash of her wrist, and for a moment the crack is the sound of a temple crumpling, a neck breaking, a peal of green lightning.
She leaves the parts scattered across her floor and strides out of the hive to her pier. Her lusus trots after her footsteps, then slips off into the dark water with a sinuous flash of tentacle tails: she is alone, now, truly alone.
Her boat flies, and she only wishes she had the capacity to be surprised by anything, anymore.
*
The spaceport is nothing like an airport. She had expected some grand terminal, or even something like a grand beehive, silver ships flashing in and out of hexagonal combs. A tower, a fortress, a building, something.
Instead there is only a mountain, sliced flat on the top, and a star painted in jagged black lines across the brown stone. It contains all the elegant alien splendor of a helicopter landing pad, sans effort.
When she arrives, her friends are grouped at one side of the mountain top, walking uncertainly towards the middle. A tall elegant troll is striding with her mother’s confident sway across the stone towards them, her long black coat snapping out like wings behind her, her face painted like a dark carnival monster’s, all jagged teeth around her full, black lips, her beautiful flowing scarf dyed every glorious color of the rainbow.
Rose appears to be her mother’s daughter, as always, in all things. Even these things.
“Mentor,” she calls out, and all four figures on this rocky stage halt in their tracks.
“Smile for the cameras, Rosie dearest!” the woman calls, gesturing grandly. Rose can’t see a thing but stars and empty space. Her troll mom’s madness, or high technology? Would she even be able to tell the difference? Would anyone?
“Rose?” John calls out. “Rose, who’s that?”
She can’t look at him, or she won’t be able to do this.
“Rose, where’s the shuttle?”
“Mentor, dearest?” she asks, tipping her head off to the woman. “Our shuttle?”
The troll that isn’t her mother throws her head back and laughs, the same rich throaty peal of laughter as always but with an undertone of something wilder all through it, nails on a chalkboard, the high screech of gallows ravens.
“We ported, of course,” she says.“As in teleported? Oh, but you do love your games, Rose. Come here, my bright one.”
There is no choice. She goes.
Her mom-- her mentor’s hands are cool on her throat, careful of her facepaint. Her eyes are gold and indigo, her teeth sharp as a horror movie monster’s, and she looks just the same.
Rose closes her eyes and goes up on tiptoe, and the woman lays a kiss right on her open mouth. It is wet and invasive and there is tongue and some part of her, some crucial human part of her, completely shuts up shop. The rest of her purrs, every bit a monster, and sinks claws into this woman’s scarf. The kiss goes on and on until she is dizzy with it, and then she is stumbling back, full of an alien heat and tripping over her own toes, breathing so much harder than she’d meant.
Her mind is a fuzzy roil, and she presses her fingers to her lips. She is bleeding, and hardly minds. Her own blood is so much fresher than the licks here and there of yarn and dust and flaking walls.
“I claim the right of conquest,” she says. Her voice sounds strange in her ears, a low animal snarl.
“What was that, dear?” the woman asks, clearly amused. Her makeup is still flawless, for all the indigo stain to her tongue as she rolls it across those smiling, perfect lips.
“I’ll fight you for these culls, they’re my friends, they’re mine.” Rose draws her needles, ready for strife.
“They’re yours... if you can subdue them,” her mentor says. Her smile is a horrible twisted-up thing, her laugh a worse one, and Rose meets the cutting crest of both head-on.
“Oh, there’s no if, mother, dearest, darlingest mentor of mine. There’s no if at all.”
Rose turns, and her friends are already drawing their weapons. There’s a terrible dawning caution in their faces, but she is riding high on a wave of heat and anger and her needles are in her hands and they are hers.
She thinks of Kanaya, carefully explaining that the word for friend is the same as the word for enemy.
She thinks of Nepeta, explaining that there existed a special kind of hate, for when you wanted to hurt someone so much that you just had to keep them all to yourself, like a special toy, and she thinks of her mentor’s mouth on hers, soft and sweet and sickly loving.
She hadn’t been sure before, but now she knows.
She can do this.
“Rose?” John says, hesitantly. He’s the weakest of all of them: he would believe the best of her until he dropped. “This is a game, right? Rose?”
Her needles are bare of magic, of supernatural power, dark forces, anything. They are simple lengths of blackened steel, and all the power in them has to come from her.
“Tell me this is a game, Rose!” he demands.
“None of this was ever a game, John,” she spits, and swings again, scoring twin lines across the curve of his cheek. Blue coats the tips of her needles, blue like paint, like bluebirds, like the sky of a planet they’ll never see again.
“This isn’t you,” Dave says, and she just hisses, and now he’s raising up his half-sword, now his mouth is making a soft little shape of confusion around his monster fangs. He’s too slow to parry her forward thrust, scared of raising his blade to her, a hero of time always one beat too slow to know when the rules have all been changed. He takes cut after shallow cut up his thin bare arms, across his chest, and her needles take their tithe, red blood, red as cherries, red as humans, red red red against all this gray and black.
“This isn’t you,” he says again, more raggedly, but not like he believes it. Not like he expects her to believe him, either, and she doesn’t: this is her, this has always been her, she is fire and lightning in the darkness, she is the death born inside every living thing, she is the beginning and the end of everything. She had this power gifted to her once by monsters from the other side of reality and now she has found a side all to herself.
Jade’s arms wrap around her from behind, warm even through her clothes, and she can feel the soft press of breasts against her back, the hot rush of breath against her ear.
“Don’t do this to us,” Jade says, the fierce one, the strong one, the dreamer, and Rose simply rams her head back as hard as she can. There is a sick crunch that rings all through her like a victory bell, and Jade drops.
With Jade down, Dave and John fold: they crumple in surrender beside her still form, two boys bloodied and silent and shaking, made into a pair of frightened children before her wrath. This is the nightmare that is their lives, now, and it is only a shame that it took them this long to realize that there would be no waking.
When she grabs John by one horn he whines and Dave snarls, lunging at her-- she lets her foot fall heavily on Jade’s slack throat, and they freeze.
With Jade pinned, they have no choice but to let her score her sigil into first John’s wrist, then Dave’s, just as the chapter in her grimmoire had instructed. The thin lines bead with color immediately, dripping bright streaks of blue and red all down their arms and across the gray stone. They huddle quietly together as she catches up Jade’s limp hand and draws up a third river, this time of green. She moans, thickly, and then they are finally all quietly huddled shoulder to shoulder, small with defeat.
They are hers, now: their bodies, their blood, their very souls. They are hers.
She stands over their shattered forms, and she cannot meet the broken trust in their eyes. Instead she turns towards the Grand Highblood, and holds out her wrist.
“Do the honors,” she orders, terse with pain.
Her mentor comes over to her, step by confident step. Her hands slide along her arms, her wrists, and Rose cannot suppress a terrible shiver at the touch as the needles are pulled from her nerveless fingers . She can feel three sets of eyes burning into her, and it hurts almost more than the bright pain of the woman nicking the needles into her wrist, carving Rose’s own sigil into her flesh, sanctioning her. She carves deeply enough that indigo spills everywhere, a bright thick stream that perfumes the air between them, and when she steps back the woman brings her fingers to her perfect lips and licks.
Rose turns, kneels, and smears her color over each of her conquests in turn. They flinch and whimper, but do not pull away.
“Well done, Rose,” the woman that is not her mother says, and she sounds so like who Rose wants her to be that it hurts almost more than anything about this entire situation.
“Get out, you bitch,” she says roughly, finding her voice amidst the choked-up ruins of her heart. “They’re mine, you served as witness, now I’m done with you.”
“You may be done with me, my dearest Rose, but I’ll never be done with you. A mentor always does what’s best for her children, don’t you know?... Rose? Answer your mentor, dearest.”
But Rose neither moves nor speaks, not daring. She has used up every part of herself, human or alien. After a long moment she hears the click, click, click of the monster’s heels fading off across the stone.
“I’ll give you four some alone time,” the woman calls, her voice a gentle lilt, and then she is gone.
Rose stares off in the distance, into the space her mother never occupied. She will not cry. She will not cry, dammit.
Funny. Her tears don’t taste the way her blood does, even though they’re the same color.
“I’m sorry,” she says finally, dully. She doesn’t tell them it was the only way she could see to save them, even though it’s true. The excuse rings hollow in her ears. She had done it and she had liked it and she’d do it again, again and again for as many times as it took to keep them all.
She still cannot bear to look at them.
And then she hears... laughter?
They’re laughing. John, Jade, and Dave are laughing. She turns to face them and they are laughing and smiling and hugging each other tight.
“Dumbass,” Dave says, with real affection in his voice. “You don’t think we took that seriously did you?”
“We figured something was wrong when you changed where we were meeting,” said Jade, rubbing at her lime-green bruises. “And then we found a picture of the Grand Highblood online and John recognized her as your mom and we figured out that maybe she was pressuring you. Or something!”
“Something like sloppy fucking makeouts,” Dave says. “You total player, Lalonde.”
“Anyway,” says John, sternly, “I guess all of our parents are running around being trolls too. Maybe I’ll find Dad again someday! But so, we all decided just to trust you. Because you’re our friend and we love you. Sometimes we hate you, but we still love you, and I guess that’s a troll thing because we’re trolls. But even as trolls we knew you wouldn’t let us die.”
Rose can hardly speak. She’s crying now, she doesn’t care who sees or if the tears stain her clothes--no wonder trolls wear so much black--and then she’s throwing her arms around the three of them and laughing too, laughing so hard that she thinks her chest might burst with love and pity for these three trolls who are her family, now and forever -- and yes, there is a little hatred in there because of all the worry she went through, because they’re silly and obnoxious, too soft and too trusting and too bright to stand but it’s a good hatred, it’s a black passionate loving hatred, and it’s mixed with the rest of the feelings and these are hers, her friends, she owns them, they own her.
“I love you,” she whispers, as if it were any kind of secret.
“Yeah,” says Dave. “We know.”
“Come on, Rose,” says Jade. “Let’s go home. You can pick up our non-crazy animal parents on the way there.”
“Okay,” says Rose, laughing again, snuffling into her shirtfront as she wipes away tears and greasepaint, and she leads them to her little boat, which has just enough room for all four of them.
“Huh,” says John as they all fly off into the night. “You know, we never did find the other trolls. I wonder what happened to them?”
TOPSY TURVY BACK TO FRONT THE RIGHT WAY ROUND
a Team Bunny production!
Story by Roachpatrol and Biichan
Art by Roachpatrol, Inverts, and Renabunny
Editing by Renabunny and A_Stands_For
Thank you to our wonderful palhoncho Rena for the encouragement
and to all our Bunny teammates for making the HSO an awesome experience.
No trolls were harmed in the making of this fanfic.
Yet.
