Work Text:
You get his letters infrequently, which you think is completely fucking unfair, since he lives somewhere that doesn't follow the normal rules of time and space. Would it really be that goddamn difficult to speed up mail delivery a bit?
But Parcel Mistresses don't like to be rushed, he says, they're flighty broads, he says, so whatever. You'll deal, like you always have, and like you always will.
You don't know when he woke up. You don't know how he knows what goes on in your world. You don't know why the fuck he gets to live in a cushy golden city with fucking Parcel Mistresses while you get stuck in the massive shithole known as Alternia, where you can't step outside without worrying someone's going to notice your blood color and cull you. You don't know why he seems just as miserable as you are, living up in a beautiful tower with loyal subjects who love him, like he's at the top of the hemospectrum or something. You don't know why your words have a lemony tang to them after you've been thinking about him, or why Terezi feels the need to tell you this. There are a lot of things you don't know.
This is how you met: you dreamt of him. You do that, sometimes, although the letters are more reliable. The first time you dreamt about him, you flipped your shit, it was fucking embarrassing. But what would the normal reaction be to waking up in a tower with an exact replica of yourself dressed in yellow pajamas? Politely shaking hands, exchanging pleasantries?
The truth is, you almost fell out the window. Which, okay, yeah, maybe that wasn't such a great reaction either. He had to catch you, and he yelled at youfor a solid ten minutes at until you woke up.
You told your lusus about it that night. He clicked at you, reproachfully, and told you to do your chores. But later, as the sun was beginning to rise, you sat and watched In Which A Medically Inclined Female Oliveblood Falls Into A Coma, Leading Her Ghostly Form To Inhabit Her Former Apartment And Begin Black Flirtations With Its New Tenant, Only To Later Develop Red Feelings For Him, etc, sniffling quietly, and you thought about him.
-
It's been sweeps since then, and not much has changed, except that your inevitable culling has grown closer and he sends you letters now, through some sort of stupid intergalactic mumbo jumbo. The universe is a fucked up place.
You know he pities the shit out of you, and, disgustingly, you feel the same. Yeah, you pity the fucking douchebag who got everything handed to him. Smart, Vantas, real smart.
He just seems so sad all the time, is all. Sad for you, sad for everyone, sad for your whole fucking world. He cares too much. He hasn't grown up like you, hasn't learned how to hide it, and it's completely, ridiculously pitiful.
You go on a--oh fuck it, it's a goddamn date, once, in his fucking moon-land. You watched a troll Will Smith movie before you went to bed, and you blame it for everything.
It's…nice, you guess. Anything is nicer than being awake, but he takes you on a walk and glares at the carapaces, while you just stare at them. You've never seen anyone like them before. One of them tries to come up and talk to the both of you, and he tells them to kindly go fuck themselves with something hard and sandpapery.
Despite all that, they offer you a flower, and you take it, although he tries to ignore it. You never get to go outside, in your real life. You figure Prospitian fauna is probably nonlethal, judging by the rest of the moon, so you go ahead and keep it.
It's a nice date. It's really fucking nice, if you're being honest, but eventually you wake up. Alternia is the same as ever, and your flower is gone.
-
On your eighth wriggling day, two sweeps after you first met him, Terezi pesters you. She's been on the run for a while. You didn't ask the details--you've learned that sometimes you just don't want to know--and she says that she managed to steal a newspaper, that your name's in it. Someone found out about you, and Terezi tells you to run.
Your lusus is long gone by now. You should listen to Terezi, you should get the hell out of here, but you don't know where you'd go. So you go to sleep, miserably, and you dream of him. He's crying, staining his clothes, and you have to kiss him, you just have to.
He tells you, after, that he's coming for you, that he'll be there tonight when you wake up.
You don't ask him how he's going to pull that off, because you're not really sure you believe him. But--he actually believes he can be a hero. He actually believes in happy endings.
And you pity him, for all that.