Chapter Text
“Stels, get my burner husk! I can’t remember how to do the thing with the fingers!”
Your name is Tyzias Entykk, and you are currently holding a very loud grub. A very loud illegal grub at that, and no amount of bouncing and rocking and spoonfeeding is doing anything to shut him up.
“Got it! What’s your password again, sweetie?”
“Our favorite thing to do in the bedroom.” Stelsa gives you That Look and types in the two numbers sitting between her and the rest of the rebellion. She scrolls through the conversation the two of you had with Daraya last wipe to find what you’re looking for.
“Take two fingers and place them at the nape of his neck” she shouts at you from across the block. You love Stelsa, but the two of you are trying to avoid a noise complaint right now, not add to your chances of one. “Press into his soft spot there and gently rub in circles.”
You do as your matesprit tells you, and the grub slowly collapses into a pile of sleeping mush. You barely have time to catch a breath of relief when a voice in your doorway makes you lose it all over again.
“I didn’t know grubs had an off button.” A familiar silky smooth sleaze greets you from your now open door. A sleaze you know can only belong to one Tagora Gorjek, the troll who you had the misfortune of being assigned your next door neighbor. Stelsa snatches the sleeping grub out of your hands and whisks him into the padded box that has been serving as his bed for the past few days.
“You saw nothing.” You’ve given Tagora this look many times before, each time he took a peek into your tome at the library, or when you would catch him reading your secure texts over your shoulder, but you can’t be sure that your glaring daggers at him will prevent him from turning you in this time. “How the fuck did you get in here anyway?”
“Stelsa gave me the spare key when we first moved in.” He swings a keyring nonchalantly in one hand while Stelsa laughs sheepishly, scuttling off to the respiteblock in the back, grub box in hand. “I thought I heard something off when your Friday morning ruckus sounded more like the brooding caverns than your usual violent coitus.”
“Listen Gorjek, I can explain-” you begin, but Tagora cuts you off and sets himself down on your loungeplank.
“No need. I’m sure this is important to your little rebellion. I mean, why else would you keep one of those… things around?” Tagora wipes his hand on his vest in disgust, as if he was the one holding the infant moments ago. You tense up at the mention of your revolutionary activities. “I’m not stupid, I’ve seen what you’ve snuck in to your presentations over the years. I’ve kept quiet up until now. There’d be no point in turning you into the regime at this point.”
You almost breathe a sigh of relief, but you remember who it is you’re talking to. Tagora may be trustworthy with a secret, but there is no way he’d keep one without getting something for himself out of it.
“However,” he starts. There it is. “I’m going to need a little something in return for all this generosity.”
“Fuck off Gorjek, I’m not paying you to keep quiet.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t do that to you Tizzy.” Tagora’s saccharine tone fills the room as he begins to fiddle with the shade on your utilitarian lamp sitting next to the loungeplank. “God knows you’re gonna need the extra cash now that you have a third mouth to feed, and according to your choice in decor, you clearly don’t make enough between the two of you as it is. I was thinking more along the lines of you taking some of my extra paperwork. They give us so much around here, I barely have time to do my full skincare routine each morning.”
“Fine,” you concede. “As long as it’ll make you shut up. How much are you-” You’re cut off by a bump in the back and Stelsa comes rushing out with the progeny in her arms, just as fussy as before.
“Zizi, he woke up. Should I do the finger thing again?” You stand up and take the infant from your matesprit, her energetic bouncing not doing anything to calm him down.
“No, Daraya said if we do it more than once a day it could fuck up his brain.” You carry him over to the plank, not sure what to do. You know you’re doing the right thing caring for this grub, you know he’s foretold to be the one to save the troll race from its own self destruction, but you can’t help but think you’re already fucking this up beyond all recognition. While you lose yourself in your thoughts, you don’t notice the grub has calmed down and managed to wriggle out of your arms, now plodding across to the other side of the loungeplank. You snap out of your stupor at the sound of a shrill cry next to you.
“What the fuck is it doing! Get it off of me!” While you weren’t paying attention, the progeny had wrestled out of your arms and made his way over to Tagora, where he is now. Suckling on one of Tagora’s oversized gemstone rings, still attached to his hand. “Do you have any idea how many caegers that ruby cost?”
Stelsa is cackling in the corner as Tagora desperately tries to pry the now defiled ring from his finger.
“I will be back with your bill later. Good luck with my paperwork, Tyzias.” He storms out of the block, the slam of the door reverberating down the hallways of the imperial central office ship.
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Tagora never was particularly loyal to the empire, that was more Tegiri’s thing. All the prostrating before the empress and pledging undying dedication to the Alternian government just bored him. If Tagora is loyal to anything, it is his lavish lifestyle, which is why you are a little bit worried. You’re sitting at the counter between the kitchen and loungeblock with an enormous stack of paper in front of you while Tagora sits on your loungeplank, staring and filing his nails with a smug expression. He might be neutral in his opinion of the empire, but you know that if this grub becomes more of a nuisance than an asset, he won’t hesitate to turn you in. The ring was just strike 1.
You’re used to this, though. You’re no stranger to doing others’ work for group projects to make sure you keep your grades up, it’s just that this time the grade is you and Stelsa’s safety, and the survival of the descendant of your most revered revolutionary leader. You sigh and flip to the next page of the contract you’re being forced to proofread. Stelsa bursts through the door, arms full of takeout bags.
“I didn’t know what the little guy would like to eat, so I just got some of everything.” Stelsa sets the bags down and starts filling your workspace with plastic containers. Tagora quirks an eyebrow at her.
“Little guy?” he asks, still filing his thumb to a sharp point.
“Of course! I can’t keep calling him ‘the progeny,’ it’s way too formal for a little guy like him!” Stelsa barely looks up from her bags. “By the way, what are you doing here Gor-gor? I thought you were just dropping off the paperwork for Zizi and leaving.”
“I need to make sure she does a good job. Can’t let her get away with getting grub spittle on my hard work, can we?”
You throw your arms in the air, exasperated. “For the last time, Sore-gor, the grub is in his box. He’s not going anywhere near your shit.” You go back to the contract, crossing out a grossly incorrect reference to a law that was reversed sweeps ago. “Anyway Stels, you’re totally right, we gotta give him a name.”
“Hmm. What will the name of this young grub be?” Stelsa stares into space, finger pressed to her chin. “Now that I think about it, how did any of us get our names?”
You think back to the time Daraya snuck you into a jadeblood naming ceremony a few perigees ago. You had always been told that your lusus named you, but that’s only a partial truth. Once a grub is chosen by a lusus, the jades analyze the lusus’ sounds and assign a name based off that, so often times a grub with a sheep or goat lusus will have long vowels in their name, or if they get a lizard for a lusus, they might be named something with a lot of “s” sounds. This all goes out the window if the grub is from a caste with a very strong naming tradition such as yourself. As far back as your research goes, tealbloods have always had names featuring at least one “T,” and nobody can explain why.
This isn't particularly helpful for your grub though. With no lusus to make weird noises and only one other mutantblood in history, you’re not sure where to begin.
“Well what was his ancestor’s name? He’s clearly some important guy’s descendent.” Tagora looks at you, surprisingly interested in the topic at hand. You still aren’t sure if he should know about all this, he could still turn you in at the drop of a hat.
“The sufferer?” You think for a moment. “Well if the texts I’ve found are right, he went by Kankri Maryam, taking his troll lusus’ surname since he didn’t have a normal lusus.”
“Then just give him a name with a bunch of Ks and toss your last names at him. Call him, I don’t know, Kaykay Entykk-Sezyat.” Tagora seems to be trying to speed this whole naming process along. He isn’t here for the company, after all. Stelsa, conversely, is bouncing on the soles of her feet.
“That is so cute!” She crows. “I’ve never seen that whole smooshing the last names together thing before but I love it! I don’t know about Kaykay as a name though.”
“Same” you agree. “Feels more like a nickname than anything else. Like the kind of bullshit name someone who calls himself Gor-Gor would suggest.”
“Oh just perish” Tagora hisses. You roll your eyes and get back to his pile of paperwork while Stelsa takes out her own pad of paper and starts jotting down some ideas. By the time you’ve made it through the pile, Tagora is snoring on the loungeplank and Stelsa has filled three whole pages with crossed out name ideas.
“I’ve got it!” She breaks the silence with a characteristic squeal. “What about Karkat? It’s cute, it’s got K’s like the other one’s name, and sounds kind of sharp and feisty, just like him!”
You look up from the table. “Karkat Entykk-Sezyat. I like it.”
“Great! Well now that we’ve got that done I better put this food away before it goes-” You both freeze and look at each other, horrified, before Stelsa bolts to the back room, in a panic. Tagora looks up at you, bleary eyed and with a shit-eating grin.
“You know, if you forget to feed little ‘Karkat’ as often as you forget to feed yourself, he’s gonna die before he pupates.”
You grab the stack of papers and plop them haphazardly in Tagora’s lap. “Here’s your busywork, Gorjek. Now get the fuck out of my hive”
“I’ll give him two weeks. He lives any longer than that and I’ll drop your charges.” The little weasel is still smirking as you push him out the door. You double bolt it and pray he left his key. You do not need any more of him tonight.
Stelsa comes out carrying the progeny. Karkat, you correct yourself, his name is Karkat. You like that. She sets him down on the counter and opens up the takeout containers, trying to see which one he gravitates to. When he refuses to move and just ends up sitting down and gnawing at his left front leg, Stelsa resorts to picking up pinches of grubloaf with her claws and tries to get them past his weird, rounded off teeth.
You guess this is your life now, just you, Stelsa, and Karkat, all hiding from the government in this bizarre, weirdly domestic and out in the open way. Out of all of the ways to be a fugitive, you don’t think you would have chosen any other way.