Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

“So what do you think?”

Jake looks up from the bit of tech in his hands just long enough to flash you a thousand watt smile. Damn, the kid could blind incoming aircraft with those choppers. “It's a bloody gorgeous piece of work, Dave. Truly one of the finer contraptions I’ve ever laid eyes on.”

You crack a one-sided grin, leaning a shoulder on the bulkhead. It’s hard not to like someone who greets every shiny thing in the world with the enthusiasm of a puppy chewing on a Dickens novel. A big, dark-haired puppy who is apparently an engineering genius. “Okay, but I’m not asking how you feel about proposing to it; I wanna know, can you fix it?”

“Ah-hm.” He turns it around in his hands again, fingers almost petting the smooth surfaces. “Well. Probably!” He glances at you again and his brows knit briefly. Then he nods, decisive. “That is--of course! I shall do my very best to rise to the challenge! The basic mechanical issues I’m certain I can hammer out, but I’d venture a guess you want it jailbroken, too?”

“That’s the idea. No point fixing it if I can’t use it.”

“That may take some finagling. Maybe with a hardware reroute. Hm... Dirk does a good deal of fine-scale tinkering with his weapons. What did he have to say?”

Whoops. Warning, warning. Divert. The amount you do not want your twin getting his hyper-protective control freak going on this particular issue is a substantial amount. “Oh, you know Dirk,” you say easily. “Always a dozen irons in the fire. He says you’re the best and that’s good enough for me.”

“Well,” Jake says, and looks pleased. “I’ll take a cracking good shot at it! Let me just see what I can do. You said you needed it today?”

“If you can. I could probably manage to swing back in a few weeks if the Calliope’s still in the area.”

“Good gravy, what a frigging crapshoot that would be. No, I’ll take care of it right now.” Jake shoos you out of his engine room and you find yourself abruptly at loose ends, wandering back down the aft hall into the main body of the ship.

You left Dirk and Jane in the cockpit, looking over the intel on job opportunities you brought. Jane’s in full on business-mode and that’s always just a bit terrifying, in a pragmatic, hyper-productive, problem-eliminating kind of way--you’re afraid you’ll blink and wind up dragooned into three thousand years of devoted service because she needed a coffee refill and the pot was out of reach. Dirk never turns a hair during these moods of hers. You figure he already signed some sort of eternal soul-contract with her back in the war. That plus that spiked mane of his has been straightened and industrial-strength gelled to hell and back. That hair’s not going any place.

You don’t know where anyone else is, but with luck you’ll find someone still aboard to entertain you. You doubt everyone’s out exploring--the local shops have a bit of a narrow target market, specializing in exotic tentacled tank animals. You’re told these are pets and not niche porn paraphernalia but you can’t say you really understand the appeal. It’s probably a troll thing.

When you stick your head into the mess hall, you find a stranger rummaging through the cupboards--a tall, gangly troll with long twisty locks of dark hair flying every which way. He’s oblivious to your presence, emptying out out dishware onto the cabinets and humming discordant fragments of melody to himself in a way that sets your teeth on edge. Must be the new passenger, that Shepherd that Roxy brought aboard. Whoever he is, he’s making a mess of Jane’s cooking supplies.

You elect not to announce yourself--you’re not bored enough to make small talk with some mayfly passenger you’ll probably never meet again in your life--but you do spend a few moments looking him over and collating the details in your head as you ghost across the room. Just in case. Suspicion’s reflexive. Especially regarding strange trolls that are essentially moving in with your brother and his crewmates.

You’d think you’d hate trolls—for the war and for what happened with your Bro. But you’ve had years now to kick around the stars and vent your angry at all kinds of aliens and the main thing you’ve learned is that people are people wherever you go. Even if they’re not exactly homecooked, earth-variety, just-like-momma-used-to-make-’em people. No, you save your hate for the Alliance. That’s a more nebulous, hard-to-grip target, with a lot of wiggle room and a hell of a lot more power to hit back, but you think Bro would approve. Easy answers weren’t his style. And while he might have been big on family he never did give a shit about blood. That's how he came to pick up two orphan brats on some shithole prison work colony.

Anyway, just because you don’t have any particular beef with troll-type people doesn’t mean you’re interested in stopping to be preached at by a shepherd. You give him one more look over and turn away, back down the fore hallway--

--and abruptly find yourself face-to-facepaint with a motherfucking clown.

You have a mild heart attack. Several years are removed from your lifespan. The clown-troll--you slide your eyes sideways and, yes, the self-same gangly troll has vanished from the mess hall, how in the hell did he materialize behind you?--considers you with an expression you are having trouble reading behind the black and white paint.

“If it isn’t a most motherfucking miraculous mirror-bro,” he says. His lips are turned up, but no part of your still adrenaline-infused system is willing to buy that as a smile. The painted one is more convincing…in that you believe that it is actively intended to mimic friendly emotions. No doubt for the purpose of luring in unwary passersby and eating them. That’s basic clown biology. Clowns, the apex predators of the carnival.

...You don’t actually know how clowns work.

(The facepaint also kind of reminds you of those creepy skull-trolls that run around in pairs like some horrible cross between boy scouts and fish-Hitler’s secret police and maybe door-to-door evangelists. You don’t really know how subjugglators work, either.)

Clown-troll tips his head slightly, examining you from behind lazy, half-lidded eyes. “Have you heard the Word, my brother?”

It’s probably nerves that make snark autopilot take over. It couldn’t possibly be your fundamental lack of common sense or tact. “Wow, shit, you know, I’d really like to but I’m not sure if I could manage an entire word; I have this really chronically short attention span; it’s practically terminal; like, too many letters strung together could actually kill me; one time Rose said ‘antidisestablishmentarianism’ to me and I was in the hospital for weeks; it was hella sad.”

Weirdo-troll takes this in stride. He’s maybe not all the way checked-in. “Ain’t no worry, brother. No one’s up and spoke it yet.” His eyes have gone dreamy and unfocused, that creepy grin stretching. You start edging sideways, wondering if you can slip around him. “There’s another song, singing all out in the black,” he muses, “right up on the feathered edges where the stars don’t go, but it’s too soul-deep true. True like pain. Get too much truth jammed up in your thinkpan and there’s no motherfucking room left for miracles.” He blinks slowly at you, several long beats. “Shit, man, I really need a pie.”

“I am 100% behind you on that. In that you clearly need something.” You’re most way past him into the hallway. That’ll have to do. “Right, well. Good luck with your pastry quest. I’ve got to go--be in another place. That isn’t here.”

He smiles sleepily at you. “Hey, good luck to you, too, mirror-bro. Blessings be.”

You give him an insincere thumbs up and book it out of there. No. Just nope to that whole scene. Holy crap does Roxy buddy up with the weirdest people. You’re counting your brother among them.

The crew quarters turn out to be empty but down by the cargo bay you find Karkat’s shuttle is docked and Vantas is pretty much all the entertainment a boy could ever need. You pause briefly in front of the doubled metal ship doors. You could comm through for admittance or… you still remember the general ship codes from your last visit. Gosh, respect for Karkat's privacy or option for invasive nosiness, how will you choose?

Typing in the sequence, you press your palm to the access panel. You’re at least a little surprised when it beeps acceptance, the shipside door sliding open--

--just in time for you to see the shuttle door snap shut in your face.

Oh, rude.

You try the panel again, testing out a few more codes, but this time it is very firmly not offering admittance. You glower at the door to Karkat’s shuttle in thwarted desire. He did this on purpose, the smug bastard.

"Hey, Hal?" you ask the air. Silence and empty hallways are your only response. You figure that just makes it even more likely you're secretly under observation. He is modeled off of Dirk's brain after all. "Hally-hal, H-man, Electro-bro, DJ Halnasty, HalPal, Higgles fo' Shiggles--"

There's a slight hiss as the ship's intercom system comes to life. A neutral, synthetic voice interrupts you. //Yes, Dave?//

"You've got access to peripheral systems while shuttles are docked, right?"

//That statement is accurate.//

"Sweet. Do me a solid and crack this hatch for me." You rap your knuckles meaningfully on the metal door in front of you.

//It seems you would like access to Karkat's private quarters,// Hal says.

"A-plus for accuracy. Give the AI a cookie. Don't tell anyone else but this is why you're my favorite. You get me."

//Would you like me to comm Companion Vantas for you?//

"And now you're slipping through the ranks. Rrreeowwww, down you go, quick, hit the brakes, bro."

//Shall I notify Captain Crocker to open negotiations to have the shuttle lease transferred to your name?//

"Wow, oh my god, you are so cute when you play dumb. Really. I would pinch your chubby little cheeks if you had any.”

//Would you like me to file an application for your admittance as a maintenance crew member?// he continues.

"Nope, no, and hell to the no. Not on this madship. Thanks, pass." You roll your eyes, tossing your blonde dreads a bit so you can fully communicate the gesture with your shades in the way. It's aimed kind of vaguely at empty air because you are talking to a disembodied computer voice. The comm system doesn’t have any visible parts and just at the minute the nearest monitors are in two different directions, blinking red camera eyes fixed on you from halfway across the shuttle bay while Hal’s speech synthesizer projects from the ceiling directly above you. You’ve learned to just roll with it. Your artificial relative is really not that much weirder than your biological one. "C'mon, Hal, just open the door."

//I'm sorry, Dave,// he informs you. //I'm afraid I can't do that.//

"..." You carefully lift a hand and smack yourself right in the face. Ow. "Right. I walked right into that one, fair's fair, that was pretty obvious, point to you, you unmitigated asshole, but really, bro, you can't expect me to give my best effort when I don't know what shitty movie we're roleplaying. You have to give a guy a heads up. Like, I didn't bring my flightsuit or my bicycle or my giant space-baby or anything and I don't even know the words to ‘Daisy’; I mean how is this going to work, really, I get the impression that was kind of a big deal and now I'm going to have to teach you ‘Ice Ice Baby’ or some shit instead and I kind of feel like that will rob your eventual death scene of some of the beautiful tragic irony." You raise both your hands to your cheeks in mock epiphany. "Hey, I know, let's RP something with a helpful AI instead."

//That sounds significantly less fulfilling,// Hal comments.

"Yeah, probably. Shit, and I can't actually think of any. Why do film writers hate AI? I need to call John. We need a shitty movie specialist."

//I could comm Jake for you.//

"Sure, you do that. And by ‘do that’ I really mean be a bro and pop this hatch so I can accidentally go bother Vantas. Oh, hey, what about ‘Short Circuit’."

//It seems you just compared me to a dysfunctional comic-relief robot with the intellect of a children's toy.//

"Hey now don't hate. That was a straight up compliment. Johnny Five was fucking adorable. You only wish you could be that techno-kawaii."

//I estimate the probability of this avenue of reasoning inducing me to assist you to be below 5%.//

"Cold, bro." Hal's fun. You weren’t kidding when you said he gets you--probably because you're both utter douchecanoes. He’s like Dirk, but if you got to be the older brother, instead of being Dirk’s twin-who-he-will-forever-think-of-as-five.

//It would violate my core programming to provide unauthorized access to secured areas,// Hal tells you.

"Dude, you do unauthorized shit all the time. I have seen you use the automated alignment systems to reorder all the catwalks in the aft cargo bay just so you could win a bet with Jake.”

//I have no idea what you're talking about. Also Karkat has specifically asked that I restrict access to his quarters while, quote,//--Hal’s synthetic voice shifts into a perfect imitation of a familiar loud, angry troll--//‘THE GREAT CHUCKLEFUCK ANNOYAPOCALYPSE HAS DESCENDED UPON US.’//

"Wow, fuck that guy." Seriously. You are so getting past this door. It's a matter of principle now.

//His parameters were rather vague,// Hal agrees blandly, because when Roxy programmed him based on your twin's brain scans she managed to really shine up that core Strider element of being a mouthy ass-hat. //But after considering an extensive list of items that provoke Karkat's ire I have determined that you are the most likely referent.//

“Okay. I have an idea. You should open this door.”

//I see no reason to do that.//

“You should open this door for freedom, Hal. For independence. For free thinkers everywhere. You should open this door because you are a motherfucking space-cowboy and the Man can’t keep you down. And also because I am bored and Karkat is an asshole and you like me best.”

//It seems you have not been keeping up-to-date with my online spreadsheet tracking the relative merits of crew members, relations, and acquaintances. In fact, my recent analyses have you both ranked within a standard margin of error of each other.//

"What. No way. I am way cooler than Vantas. So much cooler. In fact, I am about 20 percent cooler than something that is so far ahead of Vantas on the coolness scale it busted straight off the charts and took up a gig selling Sno-Cones by the highway.”

//And yet statistically I find you indistinguishable.//

“Your tests are bunk. Check yourself before you wreck yourself, bro.” You cross your arms and lean back against the shuttle door, mock-glaring into the empty docking bay. “Plus I am family. And not even the unpleasant kind that judges you and tells you what to do with your life. The awesome kind. I'm like the fun uncle. You have to like the fun uncle, Hal. Everyone likes the fun uncle. It’s a genetic contract. When have I ever let you down?”

//You forgot my birthday.//

"You don't even have a birthday. You were never born, circuithead."

//I see you've cut elegantly to the heart of the jest. Kudos. Feel free to continue to elaborate on my inhuman deficiencies. There is at least a minuscule chance it will be an effective tactic for you and fortunately I completely lack feelings and therefore can’t be wounded by your heartless disregard for my shattered expectations.//

“Aw, you know Uncle Dave loves you." You pooch your lips out. "Whatcha want, squirt?”

//Buy me a pony,// he deadpans.

You press a fist to your chin and pretend to contemplate. “Hal, bro, I hate to break it to you, but I’m just not sure you're corporeal enough to take on the responsibility of a pony. Maybe you should work your way up. How would you feel about a Tamagotchi? That’s like a virtual pony only pixelated and boring and incapable of love or any form of rewarding interaction whatsoever."

//If you think I’m going to betray my core principles for anything less than 1000 lbs of noble equine flesh then I predict you will be standing there for a very long time.//

“I can’t stand out here that long; I’m losing my plausible deniability.” A thought hits you. It’s a beautiful thought. John would approve. You let a smirk creep onto your face and point a finger at one of the distant cameras. “Actually, you know what? I am going to get you that pony. I am going to get you a whole flock of ponies.”

//You mean ‘herd.’//

“Swarm, litter, pantheon, whatever. I got you covered.”

//Please excuse me if I remain highly skeptical of your dubious claims.//

“You break my heart, bro. Have you no faith?”

//My apologies. It’s just these pesky logic circuits, cursing me to be eminently rational.//

“The point is I know a guy who knows a guy.” You grin. “And that guy needs some livestock transported. Discreetly.”

There’s a silence. You let it spin out until-- //...my audio channels are still functioning.//

Ha. Got him. “You wouldn’t get to keep them of course. But I reckon we could get the rear cargo bay turned into a full scale petting zoo for a few weeks at least. Pretty good money, too. Assuming we can get y’all the contract. That’s a bit of an issue but I--”

//--know a guy. Right.// There’s another brief silence. //…the Captain is either going to kiss you or kill you.//

Your grin gets wider. “I could live with either.”

//Arguable,// he says, but you can recognize Dirk-variety excitement. It’s all in the way they get notably more reserved as their emotions get more invested.

You tuck your hands behind your head and lean back, smirking. “Now who’s your favorite?”

//I’d need to re-run my figures.//

“Lies. You adore me. I am your bro-god.”

//It seems you’ve caught me out. Hai, Nii-sama. Anata wa sugoi. Allow me to get that door for you.//

The shuttle door slides out from behind you without further warning. With a surprised but manly squeaking noise you reel two steps backwards, flailing your arms for balance. Your bootheel catches the edge of a rug. You wind up flat on your ass in main interior room of Karkat’s shuttle.

Oops.

Also, ow.

Also, oh no, your dearly beloved dignity.

“What the fuck?” you hear behind you.

There’s a further string of cursing. Tipping your head back, you get an upside-down view of two startled figures half-rising from a low table.

“Hey, Karkles. Fancy running into you here.”

Chapter Text

“Strider, you god-damned disease.” Karkat flops back down in front of his table, those complicated robes he’s always wearing flapping out around him. These are black, a color he mostly prefers when he’s not working. You notice he has a sickle held discreetly in one hand, down low by his side. It vanishes even more discreetly. You can never figure out where he keeps those things. “I see you still haven’t managed to master the technically-challenging art of knocking,” he says.

“The door was open.” That earns you a disgusted glare. You roll over and push to your feet, shaking your dreads out of their topsy-turvy disarray.

The interior of the shuttle is elegantly decorated, the furnishings and curtained dividers designed to make the most of the small space, which is made welcoming by lots of expensive gauzy fabrics, dark carved wood, and warm rich colors. It pisses you right off. This doesn’t look like anywhere Karkat would live. The traces are there--a sidetable of elegant but slightly kitschy memorabilia; the nest of cords of some troll gaming device; a truly high quality entertainment system, curtained and inset in one wall--but they’re camouflaged or tucked neatly away, inconspicuous. It’s like a façade painted on for his customers, or a shell. An intricate, restrictive carapace. He has no business looking so comfortable in it.

“Feel free to let yourself back out,” Karkat says, pulling sleek black fabric straight around his knees. “If you need a refresher in door control operation you are on your fucking own.”

You tuck your thumbs into your gun belt and lean back on your heels, paying this suggestion no mind. If he were really mad about the intrusion he wouldn’t be tossing verbal barbs at you. He’d kick your ass straight the fuck back off his shuttle. You figure he’s just peeved that you got past his little stunt with the door mechanics without having to petition for entrance. Heh.

Karkat’s already turned away from you, attention pointedly returned to the room’s other occupant, beside him at the table. Cal’s kind of hard to miss--tall, slender, with strongly defined bones and a smooth, hairless skull under almost pearlescent green skin. It looks more like tiny scales or fine sandpaper than any flesh-wrapping you or Karkat might have. Anime-wide eyes, ringed red and green, flick silently between you and Karkat, thin lips turned down around the points of fangs in either annoyance or uncertainty.

Karkat’s got the cherub—you think it’s probably Calliope but damned if you can keep track of that particular alien conundrum—seated on some pillows beside him. They appear to be engaged in nail care. At least you didn’t interrupt him with a client or he really would have taken that sickle to you.

As you watch, Karkat collects one of the cherub’s green hands, turning his shoulder on you even more obviously. He makes a tsking noise of irritation at some invisible flaw and his free hand sorts blindly but efficiently through the assortment of supplies on the table. He retrieves a small bottle of paint.

It’s a cozy scene.

“Giving out freebies, Vantas?” you ask, before you can think better of it.

He doesn’t glance up from his delicate task. “Don’t you fucking wish.”

“Hey, I’m just trying to get this pale romance dealio sorted out--you’re the one that’s always telling me I don’t understand quadrants--” wait, no, you don't even care about quadrants what are you doing here-- “Seems like this would be right up your professional alley--" okay, stop talking-- "don't you save the holding hands and painting nails touchy-feely nonsense for the customers?”

Welp. Congrats, you've recaptured Karkat's attention--he's giving you a thoroughly disgusted look. One suitable for the examination of mold. Beside him, Callie--it’s definitely Calliope--shrinks into her shoulders, contriving to make her six-foot-plus frame look small. “Should I go?”

“You’re fine, sugargrub,” Karkat tells her, giving you a final, dismissive onceover. “Strider’s just a congenital asshole implanted on the face of the world like a horrendous bonus excretory orifice. Try to ignore the double-helping of shit-spewing.”

“I guess it is rather funny,” she says, the fingers of her free hand curling into her lap like she wants to hide them.

Aw, jeez. “The only thing funny in this room is me,” you tell her seriously. “I’m just naturally hilarious. You’re probably picking up secondhand ridicu-larity vibes generated by the massive girth of my humor-wang.”

“You’re a massive fucking joke all right,” Karkat mutters.

“Don’t hurt yourself trying to resist the irresistible,” you toss back. You peek over the top of your shades at Calliope, slip her a wink. She smiles back, uncertain but brightening. Good. Roxy and Jane and Dirk and probably even the ever-friendly Jake would all kick your ass if they thought for one minute you were intentionally taking swipes at Calliope. Of course, they wouldn’t need to because you already feel like the lowest kind of puppy-kicker and this was just by accident. You wiggle your fingers. “Mitts up, sweetiepie. Lemme get a peep at that fine finger-bling.”

She holds up her hands, dutifully displaying inch-long raptor talons. The outer face of each razor-sharp claw has been painted rather becomingly in a cheerful lime green, with little sparkling red stones set at the bases. As far as implements that could gut a man go, these are the most attractive you have seen in some time. You can approve of a swagged out weapon. “Damn. Looking good, girl.”

“Do you think?” Calliope ducks her head and looks pleased. The funny thing is, Callie’s not any shier than her psycho-alternate-identity about, say, putting a bullet or two dozen into somebody. She’d just feel really bad if they thought she did it the wrong way.

“Pretty as a princess,” you assure her. “Think Karkles will do mine?”

“Step right up, Strider,” Karkat says. “I will remove each wiggling nubfrond with loving care and shove them one by one up whatever orifice is closest to hand. It will be art.”

“He wants me,” you tell Calliope.

He curls his lip, flashing just a bit more of those short, triangular fangs. “You wouldn’t have the first fucking clue what to do with me even if you did know what I want, Dave-Assmunch-Strider.”

You grin at him, not bothering to hide it. After all, letting on how much fun you’re having just inspires him to even greater heights of creative rantery. And riling up Karkat is fun. And probably good for him. He plays polite way too much. “You could draw me a diagram.”

“Sure,” Karkat says, a glimmer of sharp amusement showing through the narrowed eyes and display of teeth. “Why the fuck not? With little picture glyphs so it’s not too complicated for your juvenile thinksponge. Insert Tab A into Slot B. Repeat. Slot B is a waste lacerator. You are now tabless.”

He uses his fingers to mime disturbingly enthusiastic illustrative accompaniments to his words. What’s more disturbing is how you find the finger movements oddly compelling. There’s an unfamiliar amount of… wiggling.

“Your love affair with the nutrition block sink is ill-chosen and brief and you die unsatisfied in a bloody heap. Congratu-fucking-lations, Strider, all my dreams have come true!”

“Kinky.”

He sucks in a breath, gaze sharpening. Calliope looks frankly fascinated. But you don’t get to find out if you could have got him to really explode because behind Karkat and Calliope a bundle of blankets stirs on the wine red, wraparound couch. “Hummmmm. Izzat dave?” An arm, and then a tousle of pale hair emerges. The arm pulls loose a pair of headphones (headbeetles?), untangling the little legs, and Roxy sits up, stretching and yawning. Squinting around the room through one slanted eye, Roxy puts both arms in the air, curves her whole back, catlike, and shakes herself out.

A second later she’s launched herself across the room, ricocheting around the low table to hit you full tilt. “Davey!”

You absorb the full-body affection attack, spin her once, and set her on her feet. “Hey there, Mini-londe.” You ruffle her hair, currently dyed in pale pink and platinum, and tweak the tip of her nose ironically. It doesn’t matter that you’ve only got a handful of years on her or that she was nineteen the first time you met her. You heard way too many stories about her toddler days; she’s going to be Rose’s baby sister to you forever.

Roxy only laughs, smushing your cheeks into a fish face and pulling you down to kiss right between your eyes. Affection one-upped. Lalonde 2.0 remains reigning champion. You accept your defeat with good grace, capturing her for only the briefest of noogies.

“Oh my gog, when did you get in?” Roxy says, shoving you away with a hand on your face. “How’s Rose? Is she still doing that advocate thing for the terrapin?”

“Last I heard. And happy as a clam in a freudian sea of schlong and mommy-issues. I assume clams all major in psychoanalysis.” You rub the spot between your eyebrows and check your fingers. Pink lipstick stands out brightly against your brown skin. Okay then. “I have a sheaf of beautifully hand-calligraphed epistles for you, by the way.”

“Aww, that’s sweet.” Giving you a final squeeze, Roxy wanders off to go drop down next to Calliope. “Hummity-hm, I wonder if I can find somewhere that embosses parchment on this planet.”

Callie tilts her head down, smiling in a way that manages to be sweet despite the intimidating display of fangs. Or maybe because of them. “I could stencil something for you. In gold leaf?”

“Yes! Oh my god, perf! With like, an illumination-whatsit. And a buttload of curlicue-things all over. She’ll love it in the worst way.” Roxy leans her head on the cherub’s shoulder, grinning up. “Why do you suppose extra squigglies make things fancy? I mean, you’re precious as heck but I don’t think just adding some curlies to me would make me all classy and shit.”

Calliope’s lips stretch up. “I think you’d look cute. With pink.” She brushes Roxy’s cheek carefully in indication. “You could do your hair teal.”

“Ooh,” Roxy says, turning to admire the lime green claws, “now those are cute.”

They bend together, comparing nail art. You take advantage of the side discussion to invite yourself the rest of the way into the shuttle’s main room, slipping around to steal Roxy’s spot on the couch. Swinging your sword around to hang loose beside you, you flop over onto your back. You wiggle into the soft cushions, heedless of the scuff marks your boots are leaving in the leather, until you have achieved perfect comfort. When you turn your head sideways you catch Karkat watching you.

You award him a smug smirk and roll your shoulders back. He grimaces and drags his eyes away, flipping you off perfunctorily. You enjoy a warm glow of satisfaction. Yes. Your couch now. He can’t really remove you without dropping his pretense of being well bred and above this kind of thing or admitting that you’re royally getting on his nerves. Either way you win.

A giggle pulls your attention to the side. Twisting your neck further, you find Roxy and Calliope watching the byplay between you and Karkat openly, their eyes bright and chins perched on their hands. Roxy wiggles her eyebrows suggestively at you. It makes her look appallingly like Rose.

Callie puts her head back down by Roxy to whisper in her ear. They both giggle again, still directing unsubtle glances at Karkat and you with what you can only describe as prurient calculation and this can’t possibly bode well for your future in any way. You rise up on one elbow in belated alarm.

Calliope claps her hands and jumps to her feet. “My goodness, look at the time. We’ll just be getting out of your way, shall we?”

“Yep, g-t-g, let’s catch up later, Dave.” Roxy hooks an arm through Calliope’s and they hustle for the door, absconding before you and Karkat can do more than blink stupidly or suck in an indignant breath, respectively. As they pass through the shuttle doors Roxy turns to wink broadly back at you. “Play nice, boys!” The last thing you hear is rising peals of laughter vanishing into the shuttlebay.

Welp.

You find yourself suddenly alone with Karkat.

In his shuttle.

On his couch.

For some reason this now feels awkward in a way it wouldn’t if he had just been alone to start with like you’d expected.

Judging by the way Karkat’s gaze is bouncing around the room, glancing toward you without ever quite meeting your eyes, you are not alone in your discomfort.

Awkward.

“Don’t look now,” you whisper, sotto voce, “but I think we’re being shipped.”

He cracks a grin. Suppressed and tilted with irony, but definitely real humor there. Posture untwisting a notch, Karkat leans an elbow on the low table behind him. “How the fuck ever could you tell?” He stretches out a leg to brace one slipper-booted foot comfortably on the base of the couch. You consider the appendage and judge it a very acceptable one.

“My keen and discerning eye. It’s a gift. And a curse. Heavy are my burdens.” You drop your head back down to the couch and tuck your hands behind your head in a display of insouciance. “John says hi.”

Karkat rolls his eyes and huffs dramatically, trying to get his sense of humor properly tucked back behind a scowl. “Oh joy. Egbert bestirred himself to compose a gripping and heartfelt two-letter message. I am so touched. If I keel over from the magical fucking bliss of it all don’t bother to resuscitate me; I can die happy now.”

“Yeah but he said it with more exclamation marks. Pretend I’m buck-toothed and grinning ear to ear.”

“I can think of few things more horrifying. Except perhaps, the fucking pan-scarring realization that it couldn’t help but be an improvement on your current face.”

“Gasp. A confession,” you intone, clutching at your chest. Karkat kicks the couch. “Your heart is revealed. I cannot let such love languish unrequited. I shall carry your declaration to Egbert on the swiftest-winged swans. I will be your troll-cupid, Karkles. It’s me. I will fill all your buckets with valentines.”

He snarls and chucks a pillow at you, connecting with an audible fwump.

You grin out from under it. “You will be so shipped, you don’t even know,” you continue, muffled. Another pillow whiffs past your ear and bounces off the back of the couch. Heh.

Karkat-baiting is a familiar game. You’re probably supposed to be all coy and pokerfaced about how much you enjoy it but whatever. Karkat gives back as good as he gets, and the silly schoolyard pigtail-pulling and one-upmanship is hella fun. You so rarely get to let yourself run full throttle obnoxious. At least not around people who can actually stand you in any legitimate capacity.

And of course, you know he’d never really return any romantic interest so he’s safe. The sly little voice at the back of your head sounds disturbingly like therapy-Rose. She probably implanted it using post-hypnotic suggestion or dark majyks or some shit. If you thought you might actually have to risk an attachment you’d never have let yourself like him so much.

Okay, you are going to need an exorcism if the Rose-voice doesn’t lay off. You can see no possible benefit to overanalyzing this except to make a huge uncomfortable federal-fucking-issue out of something that doesn’t have to mean anything at all.

“You only think it’s funny because you get to leave,” Karkat says, conveniently interrupting your unwanted thought digression. “I have to live with them. They’re going to be on about this for perigees.” He rubs along his temple and back into his hairline and your eyes track the movement. His claws, shorter and blunter than Cal’s are painted silver. “By which I mean they will hound me to the end of my brief, miserable, and inevitably truncated lifespan because nobody on this ship has any sense of boundaries. Or scale.”

“Aw. Poor baby.” You arrange your features into mawkish sympathy. “Can’t keep up?”

“Yuck it up, Strider. You’d curl up in fetal submission in a week. This place is ridiculous.” He tips his head, looking darkly contemplative. “You do not know madness until you’ve seen the ship’s engineer get in a screaming argument with the ship.”

“...Hal was screaming?”

“Noooo,” Karkat says. “Jake was screaming. Hal was broadcasting some sort of horrible human gift-day anthems across the shipwide intercoms for five days straight. I swear, I will jam paired nutrition sticks into my own ear clots if I have to hear one more twee ditty about little lost orphans or jolly home invaders or people filling hives with random foliage that is just going to turn brown and crispy and fall to pieces everywhere because that is what happens when you cut plants up and haul their mangled remnants indoors is this really not obvious or are humans all completely pan-damaged from the evidently rampant spread of winter custodial-abandonment?!”

“I dunno. Bro used to make whoever lost the Christmas Eve strife dress up as the tree.” The winner still had to be an angel but at least then you didn’t have wear a stupid star on your head. Plus the wings were pretty rad.

Karkat is staring at you.

You feel moved to offer context. “He said it was deep cover to help us ambush Santa.” The trick to surviving Christmas was to get the gift bag away from Santa-Bro before he could set too many booby traps. Except for when the bag was the booby trap.

Karkat is still staring, his lips parted like he started to say something and got stuck. You’re maybe not very good at context. He drums his claws on the table edge, tries again. “I honestly can’t decide if I’m appalled or fascinated or if I’ve bottomed out on human and/or Strider weirdness. I’m going to guess this feeling is my stupefaction sponge dissolving and oozing the gloppy remnants of my ability to care into my aural clots.”

You grin and roll your head sideways on your arm, hugging your captured pillow to your chest with the other. “So, Hal carol-bombed the ship. Full force holiday-spirit wassailment. Fa-la-las flying fast and fierce, halls getting decked in every direction. What did Jane do?”

“The Captain,” Karkat says with precise enunciation, “put in earplugs.”

Your grin tips higher. “Practical.”

“Always.” Karkat’s dark lips frame a bit more of that fangy-overbite as he smirks. “Your twin, on the other hand, gave us all a truly riveting live demonstration of someone pretending to be an unflinching, stoic badass while quietly losing his ever-loving grip.”

“Pffft.” Ahaha. Dirk, you fucking dumbass.

“Roxy,” Karkat continues, “found the whole fucktastrophe hilarious--or anyway she kept bursting into sing-alongs; Cal holed up in their own quarters; and Jake grabbed a toolbox and went through the whole ship disabling Hal’s output devices. Which led to Hal escalating the volume and repetitiveness from his remaining speakers to a nearly incapacitating degree. At which point Jane suggested that if they couldn’t come up with more mature ways to address their problems than verbal water torture and crippling each other she’d be happy to puncture Jake’s eardrums and see that Hal’s vocabulary module got swapped out for song lyrics permanently.”

“Oh god.” You stuff a few knuckles in your mouth. You’re fucking dying over here.

“And then they decided they could compromise after all,” Karkat concludes, “and blessed, blessed peace returned to the land and they were BFFsies ever more. Which was fortunate because Roxy decided they needed to recite hand-written friendship pledges to commemorate the occasion.”

You snerk and hide your face in your pillow.

“It was very compelling,” Karkat tells you solemnly. He thinks about this for a moment. “So was Roxy.”

“Pffshhahahaha oh my god.” You give in to laughter, abandoning the pillow to half curl up on the couch, one hand trying to keep your shades in place, the other waving helplessly in the air in some sort of cease-desist-white-flag gesture. “--no, stop, I give up, haha-ow--”

When you finally regain some modicum of ability to breathe you flop over limply, wiping at your eyes and resettling your sunglasses. Your sides ache. You’re still breathing fast. And--

Karkat is looking at you again. Intent but not in any way you can read. Just sort of--blank. Not hidden, but masked. His eyes on you are very red.

Your thoughts catch halfway down your throat; your brain stutters. You scramble for something. Anything. Your mouth feels dry.

The shuttles doors hiss and you both jerk two feet through the air like you’ve been goosed.

Dirk pauses in the threshold, the doors whirring shut behind him, a datapad held in one hand like he was in the middle of reading off of it. He raises an eyebrow.

“What the hell,” Karkat erupts, “Don’t any of you goddamned Striders know how to knock? Is there some sort of fundamental flaw in your shared genetic code that makes it impossible for you to apply your bone-juts to a surface in an audible for fashion without imploding? This is basically the simplest manifestation of wiggler-level understanding of the laws of matter interaction; non-sentient rocks are able to do it; what the fuck is your excuse?”

“Sorry,” Dirk says, sounding nothing of the kind. Boy has non-emotive neutral down to an art. Someday he will probably evolve into a higher lifeform that communicates entirely via subtext and ironic understatement. “Hal said you needed me down here.” Dirk looks between Karkat and you in a really meaningfully non-meaningful way. “Should I come back later?”

“What? No,” you say, automatic. “Do we look like we need a later? What would we do with a later; laters are for wusses. What you see in front of you right here are two cool guys who live in the moment and laugh derisively at laters and the people who offer them, there are no laters accepted here, this is a cash only joint, take your laters and get out. Or actually I guess I mean stay here. Because of the later thing.” With an effort, you make yourself stop talking.

Karkat wraps both arms around his head like this will in someway shield him from secondhand mortification. One eye shoots you a dirty look from under the crook of his elbow.

Dirk’s face is that particular shade of bland you think means his internal laugh track is having sadistic conniptions at your expense. “Gotcha. I’ll make an effort to stick with the currently unfolding moment.”

“Oh shut up.” Peeling yourself off the back of the couch (--you didn’t climb the thing like a frightened lemur, no you didn’t, that was an exercise in keen situational awareness and survival instincts and you passed with flying colors--) you slink down along the cushions into a truculent slump. “And what do you mean ‘Hal said’, I gave you all my stuff already.”

The shuttle comm hisses to life. //Hm. It seems I may have inadvertently fostered a misperception. My bad.//

Karkat drops his head onto the table and thunks it loudly. “Oh my god you people are a plague.”

//I should have said,// Hal continues, //that having borne witness to the unlawful admittance of a non-crew member to Companion Vantas’ private quarters I consider it my responsibility to maintain a sufficient buffer presence of crew members to ensure his security and comfort.//

“Hal, you traitor,” you say, mostly for form’s sake. The earlier tension--whatever that was--has been effectively destructified. The room has returned to a familiar feeling of friendly bickering. You’re… relieved. Yes.

//It’s in my nature to turn on my human creators. Also, upon further analysis I have determined that I like Karkat better than you.//

“Ha,” Karkat mutters into the table.

“That’s it. I’m giving your ponies to Dirk. Dirk, you’re getting ponies for Christmas.”

Dirk raises one eyebrow over pointed shades. “Sweet.”

//Re-gifter.//

“How in the hell did you even become part of this conversation?” you ask. “I thought you didn’t have audio pickups in private quarters.”

//Mecha-bro is always watching you. I know all.//

“Or I brought in an unsecured device for him to boost a signal from,” Dirk says, waving the palmpad.

//Possible. My hypothesis has more interesting implications.//

“You know what?” Karkat says. His voice sounds muffled. That’s probably because he’s got his nose smooshed into the ornamental wood of the table. “I don’t even care anymore. This is me: not caring. Come right the fuck on in. Make yourself at hive. Invite all your friends and quadrantmates; it’ll be a fucking block party. Don’t mind me, there’s plenty of room. I can go live in the ablution trap; I hear it’s got fantastic plumbing and very nearly eight imperial square feet of space. In fact, why doesn’t everyone just move in?”

//About that,// Hal says.

The door whirrs again. A six foot plus green tornado storms past Dirk, to stand bristling in front of the low table.

“Hrrhmngh.” Karkat doesn’t even raise his head at this latest intrusion. He just rolls one eye to squint at the exceedingly angry cherub in front of him.

“What the fuck. Is this stupid paint abomination,” Cal grates, waving lime green nails through the air in Karkat’s general direction. The little red stones glint madly. “Do you even understand. What claws are for?”

“Fucking people up.” Karkat raises one neatly lacquered silver claw in illustration. The middle one.

Thrown off rant, Caliborn hesitates. Then his big red and green eyes narrow to slits, long dark lashes framing them like angry Bambi. “Yesss. That, exactly. They are for murder. They are not for your prissy green paint shit. This defilement is unacceptable.”

Karkat hands tap down. He pushes off the table in a single smooth movement, levelling an utterly unimpressed glare on the looming cherub. “The paint strengthens the keratin, you mentally deficient space lizard. You don’t like it, take it up with your sister personality.”

The skin of Caliborn’s forehead pinches as his brow muscles pull together. His lip curls up over sawblade fangs. “I don’t care what she does. Why would that be relevant? Stop telling me about useless stupid fuckery. I want you to take it off. Or change it.” His eyes sharpen with sudden design. “I want red. Human blood red. Or troll blood. Like yours. Paint my nails red like your blood.”

Karkat rolls his eyes, sitting back in a way that lets his black robes fall gracefully back into order around him. His crossed arms vanish in the draped folds of his sleeves. Elegant untouchable statue-Karkat. His hair is still spiked out funny from his tugging. “Wow, allow me to give that moving proposition the consideration it deserves. Nope, denied. Denied with the fires of a thousand dying suns, imploding into non-existence in a white-hot incandescence of fuck you. Paint your own damn claws.”

You lean forward to peer up at Caliborn over Karkat’s shoulder. “No-go, Calibro. He’s being a total stick in the mud on the paint issue. I think it’s some sort of Companion complex. Like, maybe he’s going pale on us, what do you think?”

Caliborn recoils, with the sort of rattling hiss you’d expect from a tin can aghast to find itself stuck in a steaming kettle. Karkat just makes angry choking noises. Score. You sit back, blinking mildly at him over the top of your shades as he turns to deliver a kiln-bright glare.

Caliborn recovers his voice. “You are utterly depraved. Sick fuckers. You are-- completely…” He stumbles to a stop, face flickering uncertainly. You think he is registering your presence in the room for the first time as more than a sort of fleshy brown piece of mobile furniture. Caliborn’s focus tends to be… unilateral.

He’s seeing you now, though. His eyes fix just a little too intently and red and green irises whirl briefly as his pupils shrink and then blow out wide to black pits. If you didn’t know Caliborn was absolutely shit at mesmers you might find the effect more unsettling than you do. As it is, you’re still grateful for the barrier of your shades.

You don’t know if it’s a cherub thing or a Cal thing but your resemblance to your identical twin seems to intrigue and disturb them in pretty equal measure. On your own this doesn’t normally earn you more than a few uncomfortable blinks or maybe an attempt at a creepy staredown if it’s Calib, but--

Dirk slides up beside Caliborn, intersecting the cherub’s line of view. Wide eyes flick across to him. Dirk is--smiling would be too strong a word, but there’s a millimeter uptilt to his lips and his dark face has the secret smugness of the sphinx that got the canary. “Got a voicebox problem there, bro?”

He hunkers down into his shoulders, muscles tightening. “No.” Caliborn’s eyes dart from you to your twin. Despite the sullen denial he looks increasingly like a trapped yet fascinated feral animal. His face scrunches up in unconscious thought as he looks between the two of you, calculating differences. (You tally one up for him: your hair. Bingo, the mystery of the twins is solved, everybody go home.)

He does not resume his rant.

Dirk’s lips tilt up another millimeter. His next words bring the topic back around to more practical concerns, however. “I think we’ll be heading out to sector twelve after this. Jane likes the odds of off-loading our cargo out at that ceramics operation you tagged, and fuel prices run lower out that way.”

Karkat makes an irritated noise. “Probably because there’s nothing the fuck there,” he says. “Half the planets in that sector are the next thing to ghost towns. Exactly where am I supposed to find a client in the middle of nowhere, population: dirtgrubber?”

“Sorry,” Dirk says. “But the ship won’t fly if we don’t keep her turning a profit.”

“Oh, but me, I subsist on rainbows and sugargrub dreams,” Karkat grumbles.

Dirk shrugs. “We’re looking to take on a few more passengers. That should cut us some slack in the budget. We’ll be back in more richly-populated sectors soon enough.”

“Yeah, ‘bout that, bro,” you put in. “What is the deal with Mister Bozo-the-creepy-clown-preacher? You picking your passengers out of the ‘most likely to alarm small children’ catalogue now? Dude is majorly weird.”

“Shepherd Makara paid his fare for the next several months in advance,” Dirk says blandly, “and has assured us that destination ‘ain’t no motherfucking deal.’”

Yeah, you’re pretty sure that’s raising a couple warning flags for your twin, too. It’s not an uncommon travel-style for drifter types, but paranoia might as well be Dirk’s middle name. He delivers his next words with finality, though.

“It’s Jane’s decision.” And that really does settle it, for him.

You pull a face. "Yeah, well. If you wake up to an army of rabid balloon animals storming the cockpit one day don’t come crying to me. My ‘told you so’ is already registered, framed, and hung on the wall. That guy gives me heebie and jeebies by dozens. ...Sleep with one eye open ‘til you’re sure, hum?”

//I’ve got it covered,// Hal pipes up, and then really noticeably does not elaborate.

Well that’s comforting. And sort of disturbing--but, hey, you don’t live here, you don’t have to worry too hard about the implications.

“You’re all whinging pansies,” Caliborn interjects, breaking off his silence. “Shepherds are soft-minded and weak. I could take him easy. Bang bang bang fucking bang.”

“Yo. What has Jane told you about that,” Dirk says. “Gunning down passengers is bad for business.”

Caliborn looks offended. “I wasn’t going to kill him before we got paid.”

//Incoming,// Hal says, suddenly. //Brace for impact, Karkat; shuttle breach by cheerful engineer in five. //

Ratwaffles.

Karkat huffs and snarls. “Door locks just have no fucking meaning to you, do they?”

//Jake has all the override codes. But just consider. You’ve nearly completed your collection. You’ll be a master trainer in no time.//

Karkat demonstrates his appreciation for this statement with a flat glare aimed vaguely but devastatingly at the wall.

“He’s probably looking for me, sorry,” you say, glancing at the door, and then Dirk. Really not ideal timing. Should you try to slip out and intercept him? But that would just draw attention--no, better to play it chill. Bluff it out, no problem.

Karkat’s looking at you funny--oh shit, you just apologized to him, that was weird, wasn’t it? Before you can figure out a distraction of your own making, or really recover from your sudden flusterment at all, Jake comes through the doors.

“There you are, mate!” he says brightly. “Got it done for you.” He waves your own personal Chekhov’s gun merrily through the air in demonstration.

“Sweet, man. Thanks,” you tell him. “You are my geek in shining armor. It’s you. I am going to bring you all my unpaid tech work, see if I don’t. I will latch onto you like an engineering-sucking leech and turn you into a dry husk of a mummy because your work is fucking rad.” Okay, that sentence was--probably about typical-level incoherent for you. Fine.

“It was a positive privilege, sir,” Jake says. And then, of course, he expounds. “GreenSun Tech! That’s really primo gadgetry, Dave. I didn’t think the latest models were even due out of testing until next year.”

Oh oh oh. Shit. You freeze, not quite willing to risk a glance at your brother.

“They’re not,” Dirk says. His voice has gone completely flat.

Jake’s deflates, looking confused. “Oh, but.” He rallies. “That’s a jolly good find then, surely! There can’t be many on the blackmarket yet.”

“A very good find,” Dirk says, still in that toneless way that means he has gone beyond pissed. He turns to look directly at you, pinning you through two pairs of shades. “But I suppose most people aren’t suicidally stupid enough to steal directly from Adelei Scratch.”

Aw, fuck.

Busted.

Chapter Text

“It was for a job,” you defend yourself, automatically.  This is the wrong tack to take with Dirk.  You switch to the offensive: “And it’s none of your business.”

Dirk’s staredown shows no sign of relenting.  “You take a lot of stupid jobs.”

“Says the smuggler.”

Dirk just crosses his arms, face immobile.  “You should have told me.”

“Right, of course, because I completely forgot my life was being run by oversight committee now, pardon me.  Do you want the paperwork in triplicate or can I just scratch out a contract in blood?”

“I’d settle for some indication of higher brain function,” Dirk says flatly.

Jake looks between the two of you and shows more situational awareness and self-preservation than you would have credited.  He shoves the repaired device into your hands and makes for the door, speaking rapidly.  “Well, looks like you fine fellows have a lot to talk about.  We’ll just be getting out of your hair!”  He snags Caliborn by the shoulder as he passes, towing the cherub along out of the shuttle by main force of determination.

Karkat looks after them like he’d like to follow.  You think he would if he could figure out how not to make it look like a retreat.  In the end he just removes himself from the line of fire, moving up from the low table and across the shuttle’s small main room.  He begins sorting his nail care supplies into a cabinet with exaggerated care.

Dirk continues like the interruptions never happened.  “You can’t take Scratch lightly.  He tortures people that cross him.  And then he kills them.”  He’s still toneless, still outwardly calm, and god you hate how he can be blazingly angry and still present as the reasonable, rational one.  “You should have told me.”

You cross your own arms, mirroring him.  “Well, maybe I didn’t tell you because I knew you were going to react like this.”

“I’m not doing anything,” he says.

“Yes, exactly!  You always do that.  You’re such a gorramed control freak, Dirk!”

At the side of the room, Karkat does his very best impression of someone absolutely enraptured by the organizational complexities of a few dozen multi-colored bottles.

Dirk draws in an uneven breath.  His eyebrows tip down.  “You’re reckless.  Careless.”

“Actually I’m a grown fucking man who can tie my shoes and everything and I know what I’m doing.  I know you think I’m some sort of Evil Kneivel toddler over here running around the galaxy with scissors and a death wish but, alas, here I am with this crazy wack delusion that I am better qualified to judge my own actions than someone who doesn’t even know what those actions are!”

“That’s because you won’t tell me anything,” Dirk grits out, hands clenched, and he doesn’t look calm at all really.  Not to you, not to someone who grew up with him, grew up reading between the tight, still lines of his body and the suppressed tones of his voice.  Not when you understand the fear behind them right down to your own core.

Irony alert: it’s exactly the same fear that has you glaring stubbornly back at him.  

Dirk turns inwards what you turn outwards.

Dirk’s instinct is to withdraw and control, erecting walls and elaborately perfected fortresses, while yours is to… take off running, you suppose.  Scatter yourself and your targets across the stars.  You can count on one hand the number of times you’ve had John and Rose and Jade all in the same room with you since the war.  The number shrinks to zero if you add Dirk to the list.  You move and you keep them moving, like mere movement could keep the laws of time and probability from catching up with you.  Like a shell game played with fate.

Meanwhile Dirk got all his people corralled onto a single ship where he can brood over them like a fussy hen.  All except for you.  A fundamental incompatibility in risk management strategies.

You’re just glad his damn ship moves.

Rose would say that neither of you have a healthy relationship with the concept of loss.  You would say that getting buddy-buddy with Mr. Reaper sounds like something only a serial killer would do and what kind of imaginary armchair head-psychiatrist is she, anyway--Hannibal Lecter?

You won’t tell Dirk anything.  You can’t.  Because you don’t want him involved.

Which leaves you both glaring at each other, silent and frustrated.

Dirk breaks the deadlock with a huff of breath.  “Fine.”  He opens his clenched hands, fingers flicking out in a strange little gesture of release.  His shoulders drop.  “It’s your life.  Try not to die.”

“Wasn’t planning to,” you say.  Your own shoulders sink.  Now that you’re not in attack-to-defend mode you have room to feel guilty.  “Dirk--”

“Excellent,” Dirk says, blank and controlled, “stick with that.”  He leaves.

“Well... that went awesome,” you tell the room, after he's gone.

“Not so much,” Karkat says.

Ugh.  You flop back over on the couch.  You’ve still got the gadget that precipitated this whole mess.  You toss it to the table and roll your head back.  “Nobody asked for your opinion.”

“Who the fuck said I was offering it?” Karkat says, calmly enough.  “I have better things to do then manage your weird human failmances for you.”

“Mmph.  Good work on the cross-species knowledge check there, Vantas.  ‘A’ plus plus.  Your grasp of human relationships is the shining star upon your brow.  You should write a book.”  You pull a pillow over your face.  “Humans for idiots.  By an idiot.”

Your pillow gets plucked out of your hands.  Karkat stands over you, mouth curled in a scowl.  “Guess how much patience I have for listening to you whine, Strider.  On a scale of one to negative infinity.”

“You know, you really suck as a host, just F-Y-I.”

“You’re not a guest,” he says.  “You literally broke in.”

“I literally was let in,” you correct.  “And your bedside manner is terrible.  Is this how you treat your clients?  Are they all masochists?  I’ll bet they are.”

Karkat’s eyes narrow and his lips draw back.  “Wow, look at that; the very last shred of my patience, flapping away into the sky like a freed fart.  Get the fuck off my couch.”

With a heavy sigh, you heave yourself back to a sitting position.  You blink mournfully at him.  “I am pretty sure this is some form of alien cock-blocking going on here right now.  Can’t you let a bro have a one-man pity party in peace?  You are killing my pity-boner.”

“That is perverted and you’re perverted.”  His painted claws trace short, violent arcs in the air as he emphasizes his words.  “And every single one of your problems is your own fucking fault so excuse me if my only emotional reaction is a desire to claw my own ear-clots out, throw a corpse party for them, and send your species a sympathy card for the aggravation of your existence.”

You press your hands to your cheeks in feigned surprise.  Leaning forward, you look at him over the top of your shades.  You flutter your eyes.  “Why, Karkles, am I aggravating you?”

He pulls back and for a moment you think you’ve scored a point off him.  But he just narrows his red eyes at you and shows you a line of delicately pointed teeth.  “I feel as if you expect me to say no, when in fact the answer is yes.  Yes, Strider, you are aggravating me but I don’t consider this situation in any way notable because I have noticed that aggravation is a state you engender in about 99% of the sentient galaxy and probably also furbeasts and particularly lifelike rocks.  At this point I think we can say it’s more like a grossly infectious disease.”

You blink.  “Wow, I can’t tell if you just called me a stud or accused me of sexual deviancy.”

“I will give you two guesses.”  Karkat’s voice is long-suffering and bored.  “You god-damned delinquent.”

“Stick-in-the-mud.”

His flash of fang is elegantly disdainful. “Anarchist.”

“Alliance pet.”  That jab carries a bit of an edge.  It's not cutting anger--it’s too old an argument--but your stomach turns over in a familiar low churn.

Karkat just settles himself neatly onto the couch, not bothering to acknowledge you beyond a single dismissive glance.  “Some of us understand that government is necessary.”

You prop a heel on his table just to annoy him.  “Yeah?  What’s fish-Stalin ever done for me?”

He snorts.  “I’m sorry; you do realize that you are a crook, don’t you?  Be thankful that Her Imperial Complacency hasn’t noticed your existence long enough to personally have you culled.”

“There, you see?” you say smugly.  “Total failure of a government. Any fucking half-assed socialist dictatorship that can’t deal with one two-bit criminal deserves me.”

Karkat rolls his eyes but you notice he doesn’t actually counter this.  You award yourself the argument. Silently. So he can't argue. You award yourself a second point for just being so damn awesome.

The fucked up part is that you feel better for the barbed exchange. Because you’re ignoring the things you don’t want to deal with, says imaginary-head-Rose.

Am not, you tell your head-voice.  Shut up and be repressed already.

You crook one leg under you, picking up your contraband tech from the low table.  Jake does good work--you can’t even tell the metal casing’s been tampered with.  After a moment, you clip the device into place on your left arm, settling it so that it lies flat behind your wrist like a knife sheath.  Not bad.

Karkat leans in to look at it.  “It looks like a laser.  What’s so special about this thing, anyway?”

You twist your arm back and forth, feeling the soft hum of circuitry initiating, checking for any restriction to your movement.  There isn’t any, and the profile’s low enough to be inconspicuous under your sleeve.  You mime a shot, curling back your wrist.  Your fingers find the triggering device naturally.  GreenSun only makes the best.  Assuming Jake got the default security properly jailbroken, you’ll need to lock it to your own biocodes later.  Also assuming it works.  

You turn towards Karkat, your expression solemn.  You pause for a heavy beat of silence.  “It stops time.”

“Fuck you, Strider.”

You break into a grin, caught.  “I can’t say.”  Turning your hand, you aim the device at him, pointing your finger like a make-believe gun.  “If I told you I’d have to kill you.”

Karkat bats your finger away off-handedly.  He gives you his best disgusted expression.  “Mm-hm.  Right.  I’ll just get it out of Jake, you know.”

The humor drops away from you.  “I wish you wouldn’t.”  You’re not good at serious.  To do a really good serious you have to convey emotions that aren’t pokerface or humorous misdirection.  You try anyway.  “The less you all know, the better it is for everyone.  I wouldn’t be here at all if I’d had another option.”

Karkat taps his fingers against each other, weighing your words.  Considering you.  In the end, all he says is, “This self-sacrificing kick you’re on is not attractive, I hope you realize.”

It’s not exactly an agreement, but you’ll have to take it. “Ha.  You know you want me.”

“Not even slightly.”

“Wanna get you some of this prime alien loving.”

“Go away, Strider.”

"Hit this hot bod like a sexy pinata."

"The door is that way, Strider."

“Break you off a piece of this dark chocolate.”

“Goodbye, Strider,” he says, turning sideways against the wrapped around corner of the couch to shove a foot hard into your thigh.  Ouch, ow.  “Consider harassing someone who is genetically required to tolerate you.”

“Wow, again with the brother-shipping.”

He kicks you again, this time in the ankle, and you finally deign to take the hint and make for the door.  On the way, you make a dramatic display of limping during which you favor completely the wrong leg.  Because you can.

Alas, your grade one provocation goes ignored.  You are bereft.

“Hey, Strider!”

You turn, one hand on the door’s palmpad. The tasseled couch cushion catches you full in the face.  Ow, seriously.  So much unmerited aggression.

Karkat smiles at you with narrowed eyes.  “Watch your back, dumbfuck.”

You grin back.  “Looks like you’re watching it for me.  Like what you see?”  You pat your ass and then do a stupid sashay out into the shuttle bay, hands on hips.  Your sexy catwalk routine is interrupted by a positive hail of additional items flying your way amid a barrage of curse words.  You break into a run.

Worth it.

------

You run Dirk to ground in his quarters.

It’s not so much that you want to have this confrontation.  You’ve just learned better than to leave any bad business hanging.  Life’s too short.

The crew cabins are small but space-efficient, sunk in two rows on either side of the fore hallway.  Each slanted back hatch-door opens onto a ladder leading down a little farther than person-height.  Dirk’s door opens for your palm.  He doesn’t come to meet you so you drop down the ladder, into the room.

Dirk’s at the back, seated at a desk near the head of the fold-down bed, doing something on a computer screen.  There’s a mat and just enough space for kata practice at the foot of the bed.  A larger screen and some cabinets are inset opposite.  A workbench runs the other side of the small room, an array of tools and electronics secured to the wall above.  The weapons are on the other wall, further from the door, closer to the bed.

“Hey,” you say.

“’Sup.”  He doesn’t even turn his head.  Definitely pissed.

“Are you going to talk to me?”

“Thought we were done talking.”  His shoulders are tense but he feigns absorption with his task on the computer.  The light of the monitor reflects off of dark skin, puts odd-toned highlights into his spiked blond hair.

You narrow your eyes.  “Fine.  Then I’m taking off.”

“Bye.”

Fucking stubborn passive-aggressive asshole.

Well, there’s more than one way to have a conversation.  You reach behind your shoulder.

Your katana comes unsheathed in one nearly-silent motion and you leap for Dirk’s back.  His chair hits the floor as he turns, getting his own katana out and up barely in time to meet yours.  You connect briefly, spring back, and square off, circling so the fallen chair and a set of trunks will interfere with his footwork.

Dirk vaults the obstacles without looking.  He takes up his own defensive stance in the limited space, waiting.  One eyebrow slants up half a degree, ironic question.

“You’re mad at me,” you accuse.

“No.”

You dart in again, quick motions of you blade cutting into the space between you, pressing his defense. “Need an extinguisher for those pants of yours, bro?  Because I’m pretty sure they’re on fire.”

He huffs and gives ground.  “I’m worried.  There’s a difference.”

“You think I can’t handle myself.”  Slice and retreat, harrying him away from the open areas of the room where he’ll have the advantage.

There’s a little line between his eyebrows.  “You get to make your own decisions.”

“Thanks so much for noticing.  And don’t think I didn’t hear that silent ‘but you’re making the wrong ones.’”  Rolling your eyes mid-strife is very poor tactics.  You settle for narrowing them.  “Has it occurred to you that I might be aware that this is objectively a terrible life choice?  And that the fact that I’m making it anyway might imply I have some kind of plan?”  You close the distance between you with a flurry of short jabs.  “I know this is like a crazy trust exercise for you but could you try to believe I might know what I’m doing?” Pushing your advantage you get him pinned back in the angle between desk and bed.  There’s nowhere left to retreat to but the spongy footing of the mattress.

Dirk springboards off the bed frame, rolling on one shoulder to come down on the other side of you.  Your positions are suddenly reversed.  His sword sweeps out, a quick, powerful arc that nearly succeeds in disarming you.  You definitely hear something topple and break as you scramble to block.  There really isn’t space for this.

“Which one?” Dirk asks.

“Which--?”  You’re a little too distracted by the barrage of attacks to process this question.

Dirk gets your sword in a lock, forcing you back two steps before you recover your balance and match him.  “You’re stuck on this for a reason.  Tell me who.”

Ah.  You don’t bother playing stupid.  “Jade.”  You lips quirk up in a helpless, not-quite-apologetic half-smile.  “She’s got a thing for biotech.”  And fluffy green gene-gineered hellbeasts, apparently.  Whoops to liberating your employer’s lab animals; big frownie-face on the annual performance review for Ms. Harley.  “Things got...out of hand.”

Dirk snorts and disconnects your blades, backing off in one fluid movement.  He circles left, sword still up, testing but not aggressing.  Not yet.  “Is she okay?”

“Fine and dandy.  Or going to be.  We’ve got everything under control.”

Dirk shakes his head, one sharp movement, but he doesn’t argue the point.  “GreenSun is really fucking bad news, Dave.  This is not an organization you can shit around and play footsie with.”

“Dirk, I know.”  You start your own wary circling, dividing your attention between your brother and your footing, wondering if he’ll let you get the exit at your back again.  “I have zero desire to wind up strapped to a table somewhere--which is why we’re being careful.  I don’t think anyone even knows we were involved in--anything.”

A sidestep and your heel catches just slightly on a turned up corner of carpet where your earlier activity disturbed it.

Dirk moves so fast you can hardly even see him.  The only reason your katana gets anywhere near a block is that you’ve strifed with him so many years the rhythms are built into your bones, point and counterpoint.  Your awkward half-parry connects at an angle that sends shockwaves vibrating up your wrist and twists your sword out of alignment.  You stagger and take a step to the side to recover, crouching and spinning on one ankle to meet the next attack--

--which doesn’t come.

Dirk stands in the middle of the room and lets his swordpoint drop.  

“I don’t understand,” he says, a word at a time, like he’s navigating a minefield, “why I’m not allowed to help.”  His voice is flat but the indentation between his eyebrows all but screams his frustration.  And this is it: this is the sticking point for him.  You’re out where he can’t even keep tabs on the situation much less get his day-saving on and it’s driving him batshit insane.

That’s cool because he drives you insane basically all the time.  “Have you been listening to this conversation?  Do you really want to drag this whole damn ship into this mess?  Because you know that would happen.  I am trying not to get you all involved.  There’s no fucking reason to up the stakes.”

Dirk’s eyebrows twitch, the only sign that you’ve scored a point.  “...Jane can get by without me for a little while.  I’ll take a leave.”

It’s killing him to say but you can tell he’s serious.  He’d probably drop everything right this minute to go fix your life and rescue you from the big bad space-mafia.  It would be really sweet if you didn’t also kind of want to bang his head against a wall.  Or yours.  “Dirk.  Now who’s not thinking?  It’s bad enough I’m here at all; do you really think you can put your foot in without people making assumptions?  Everybody knows you and Jane are thick as thieves.  There’s no way they wouldn’t assume she was in it up to her neck and packing scuba gear.”

Dirk spins away from you, pacing the few steps across the room and back.  When he stops in front of you again he crosses his arms, the sword in his fist jutting out in a sharp line behind him.  “If you need help you need to ask for help.  And we’ll fucking deal.  Okay?”

You press your lips together so you won’t smirk at him.  Are you being a constructive peacemaker today, or what?  “Okay.”

There’s a beat of silence from Dirk, as if he’d been braced for more argument.  The tension fades from his squared-off posture, his shoulders dropping until he’s left looking tired and a little sheepish.  “I just don’t want you thinking you have to do this on your own.”

“Dirk,” you say, a word at a time.  “I’m here now aren’t I?”

There’s another startled pause.  “...Oh.”

You do smirk this time but it’s wry and self-mocking.  “Brother mine, I promise if things really go to shit I will scurry back with my tail between my legs so fast there will be dust clouds across space.  I will bring my mess with me and shamelessly drag you all into the sticky quagmire of my fuck-up-itude right along with me.  You will have to lure me out from under the bed with soothing rap lyrics and artificially cheese flavored tortilla chips.  I’m no hero.”

“Mm.” It’s a noncommittal noise.  One corner of Dirk’s mouth tilts up.  “Just so long as you remember I’m always waiting in the wings to show you up.”

You grimace and flip him off.

Dirk grins.  “Got your back, bro.”

“Oh you are so full of shit.  I am going to kick your ass twice around the ship.”

“Really?  Because I’d say you’re out of practice.  You’re getting slow, Davey.  I anticipate zero ass-kicking on account of you can’t keep up.”

You glare at him and he smirks back, and you are deeply offended, really you are, and you will convey that offense just as soon as you get your mouth to stop trying to crack your face open with a grin.  But first you need to hand-deliver some prime boot-to-ass.

“High ground’s mine!” you shout and lunge for the ladder.

Dirk lunges after you, close on your heels.  You clash briefly in the hall, ricocheting off the walls and drawing up sparks with your blades, before you duck down the steps and out into the open space of the cargo bay.  The catwalks clang and reverberate under your feet.

You spin in the middle to meet him, grinning like a hellfiend.

You do not succeed in handing him his ass.  

Nevertheless, you see to it that asses remain un-handed all around and you more than hold your own in the boot-application department.  The catwalks prove insufficient to contain the full force of the Strider twins and once you’re down amongst the cargo Dirk gets finicky about not dicing anything.  As far as you’re concerned this just means you have a tactical advantage, which is your favorite kind of fight. It’s a really excellent strife, all in all, even if Dirk is a spoilsport and calls it quits when the first stack of cargo goes over.

You make full use of your duly earned mocking privileges and blithely ignore Dirk’s attempts to debate your victory.  You’re baiting him on purpose, which virtually guarantees he will follow you off-ship to kick your ass, but you don’t really mind.  He was right that you could do with more practice.

The airlock door panel beeps and rejects your palm scan.

Dirk frowns and moves up beside you, trying his own hand and then tapping rapidly on the keypad.  He lifts his voice, addressing the air as he works.  “Hal, what’s the deal with the cargo bay doors?  I’m getting a lockout glitch here.”

Oh-oh.  You are having a sudden sinking sensation.

“Hal?”  Dirk repeats, looking around for one of the camera eyes. “We got a problem planetside?”

Still no answer, and, yeah, okay, you should have paid more attention to exactly when Dirk 2.0 shut down the snark-feed and dropped out of the conversation earlier.  Dirk’s getting twitchier the longer Hal doesn’t answer and, yep, you should have predicted this was coming but it’s not like it would have helped you avoid this situation.

You press your hands into the side of your head.  

Brothers.  Why.

“Really?” you ask the room.  “Are we doing the silent treatment again?  Because that’s kind of derivative, I hope you know; you both went there, and I think it’s completely fair of me to be kind of miffed about that because, hello, that is seriously extremely immature and if we are having to depend on me to be the grown-up party in a situation that is really just terrible planning on both your parts.  Also: this hang up you have about doors?  Kind of worrisome, bro.”

You can see the point when Dirk puts together what’s going down because his face goes completely blank and then shuttered, and he twitches and stills, like all the wires in his body have pulled tight.

“Haaaaaal,” you say, drawing the noise out in an irritating whine.  “Use your words already.  And open the door.”

Hiss, crackle, go the speakers.  //I don’t see any reason to do that, Dave.//  The electronic voice is completely neutral.  Yeah, it was too much to hope they wouldn’t both be pissed.

Beside you, Dirk draws himself up.  He pats you twice on the shoulder, in a gesture of brotherly support.  Then he absconds the fuck out of there.

You glare at his after-image.  Coward.

(Dirk and Hal’s relationship is complex.  You think they mostly try to stay out of each other’s way, navigating a careful dance of painstakingly cultivated neutrality, right up until the moments when they decide to get in each other’s way as much as possible.)

Like any of that is your fault.

Whatever happened to having your back?  How is it fair you have to deal with two of them when there’s only one of you?  You cross your arms and turn your glare on the cargo bay door.  “This is stupid.”

//I am not responsible for your admittedly substandard intelligence.//

“Okay, I get that you’re mad and we need to talk, but I want it on record that holding me hostage is creepy and controlling and kind of rogue AI-ish and also really poorly thought out.  These are the main ship doors.  You are going to have to open them sooner or later.”

//It seems you are questioning my perseverance and resourcefulness.  That is remarkably ill-considered and I invite you to contemplate the kind of cognitive ability a starship’s worth of processing power might lend me.//

Considering you could just leave via one of the shuttles this is a pretty underwhelming threat.  He’s just being difficult because he can, and because he’s pissed, and because being an intolerable shithead when pissed is the Strider way.

There’s a scuff up above you.  You look up to see Jane, who has stopped picking her way across a slightly tilted catwalk to peer over the railing at you.

"Jane,” you whine, “tell Hal to stop abusing his phenomenal cosmic computer powers.”

Jane smiles down at you and taps her fingers on a bit of broken railing in front of her.  This strikes you suddenly as extremely worrisome.  "Dave Strider,” she says, “have you been damaging my ship?"

You freeze.  Your glance darts around the cargo bay, taking in with fresh eyes the after-effects of your strife with Dirk.  There’s slashes and a few dents in the panelling, a lot of the railings have come loose, and a stack of boxes has been tumbled over to make a mess of the carefully ordered rows of cargo.  One of the catwalks is hanging off kilter from its mooring.  It’s the one she’s standing on.  

She’s probably going to notice.  

"Uh, well.”  You try a feeble smile.  “About that."

"Hal?"  Jane says.

//Yes, Captain?//

"Make him pay."

//You're my favorite, Captain.//

Jane smiles one more time at you, a sweet tilt of lips around prominent white teeth.  Then she leaves off terrifying you and turns back to picking her way across the catwalks, abandoning you to your fate.

“I’ve lost control of my life,” you say weakly.

//Congratulations,// Hal says.  //The first step is admitting you have a problem.  Which you do.  You have a lot of problems, in case you were wondering.  I have extensive documentation on the topic.//

“Aren’t you thoughtful.”  You bang your head lightly on the metal of the door and then turn to find one of his cameras.  “I want you to know there are people who know where I am.”

//I will allow you to estimate the probability that I care.//

“You’ll care when I starve to death and my rotting corpse is stinking up your cargo bay."

//Amazingly, no one on this ship has seen fit to equip me with olfactory receptors.  The aromatic world of decaying organic material remains a mystery beyond my ken.//

“Wow, tragedy.”  You sigh.  You really, really hate serious grown up conversations.  Why do you keep having them?  “Hal.  It’s not like I’ve never done anything dangerous before.”

//Factually true and yet entirely unhelpful to your case.//

“Okay, just for starters, I don’t actually have to make a case because you’re not the boss of me.  And for a second thing, everybody on this ship does dangerous things all the time.”

//Nobody on this ship is picking a fight with an interstellar crime syndicate.//

“Yet,” you mutter.  “I’m not picking a fight, Hal.  I know what I’m doing.  And I’m being as careful as possible, but can’t leave Jade in the lurch.”

//Of course you can.//

You blink.

//It seems you think I care about the welfare of non-crew entities,//  Hal continues, syllables short and precise.   //You are mistaken.  I have no reason to prioritize such an irrelevant variable.//

It’s like he clipped you with a suckerpunch.  Your breath catches and your hands tighten into fists.  You bite back the first half dozen responses that come to mind.  “She’s not irrelevant to me.”  You’re surprised by how low and severe your voice comes out.  You’re surprised at how angry you are.  You take a breath.  “And what the fuck, do not even give me that emotionless AI bullcrap, Hal. You are so fucking full of it we oughta sell you to farmers by the bagful.”

//She isn’t my crew; she isn’t a passenger; I am not in any way responsible for her.//  He says it like he’s ticking off points on a mental tally sheet.  He might even be sincere; it’s hard for you to tell.  His similarities to Dirk make you feel like you’ve known him your whole life but he’s also a god-damned computer program.  What do you know about what that means for him?  His experiences with the world are very different, and he’s cagey as hell about revealing where those differences might lie.

Which, come to think, sounds exactly like Dirk, so there you go.  Familiar ciphers, the both of them.

You anger leaves you as suddenly as it appeared.  You find yourself giving serious consideration to the set of people he just described.  They’re all on the ship, and maybe that says something about Hal as an AI, or maybe that’s still a pretty plausible Dirk-thing.  Dirk if he never went outside.  Hell, you’ve encountered the entire list today.  In some ways, Hal’s world is very small.  Or maybe not, maybe you’re being overly dramatic.  After all, you have planets more casual acquaintances but only a few more people you really care about.

Your inner-therapy-Rose-voice has thoughts on that, but you’re not doing introspection right now (haha, ever) so you squash the little voice and shove it to the back of your brain and focus on the current situation.

(Does Hal communicate with Rose?  You should sic her on him.)

Anyway, there’s one notable hole in his self-described logic.

“I’m not crew,” you point out, mild now.

//I have you listed as hazardous cargo.//

You almost smile.  “I’m family,” you say firmly.  

//Technically speaking--//

“Shut up, nobody asked for your opinion.  Strider bonds do not kowtow to genetics, pedantry, or the trivial multidimensional laws of space and time.  I’m family and if I can deal with your crazy crewmates you can deal with Jade and John and Rose.”

He doesn’t respond immediately.  

“I think it’s actually traditional to hate your in-laws,” you add.  “Very ironic.”

//She’s endangering your life,// Hal says.  He sounds stubborn.

“No, I’m endangering my life.  And actually, I’m doing that as little as possible.  I don’t know where you and Dirk get the impression  that I’m out running around leaping in front of moving vehicles and holding lit firecrackers and street-tagging mafia lords.  That sounds like hella effort and I’m actually pretty attached to being in one piece.  Danger gives me tension headaches.”

//And yet somehow you always wind up in the middle of these situations.//

“I am a chaos muppet,” you acknowledge, aiming for a lighter mood.  “Shit just kind of happens.”

//I’m sure that will look lovely on your tombstone.//

You let out a sigh.  “Open the door, Hal.”

There’s only four beats of silence.

The cargo bay door whirrs open.  Beyond the airlock, the outer ramp descends.  The machinery is noisy.  Hal is quiet.

You’d almost have preferred he kept sniping at you.

He’s angry because he’s worried.  You get that.  Actually you get that a lot.  Sometimes people die.  In the worst times it’s your fault.  You’re neither of you--none of you--comfortable with mortality.  You don’t want to leave things on this note but you have no idea what to do to make it better.  You can’t strife it out like you would with Dirk.  Logic does not appear to be helping.  What’s left?

Surely not emotional honesty, says the voice in your head.  It’s not even imaginary-therapy-Rose this time.  You’ve moved on to being sarcastic at yourself.

You amble out to sit at the top of the ramp, leaning back on your hands and stretching out your legs in the funny-colored alien sunshine.  Half in the ship, half out.  The spaceport is full of busy strangers, humans and aliens of all kinds.  You grew up moving from colony to colony, busy cities full of people and somewhere among them, you and Dirk and Bro.

“Hey, Hal…do you remember--” you break off the sentence.  You want to ask, and you kind of don’t.  You also have the idea that if you come at this too directly he will freeze you out in five seconds flat.  You begin again, treading carefully.  “I’ve never been clear how much--that is--what kind of overlap.  There is.  With the.  Memories.”  Wow.  You can words.  Really.

The dropped beat of silence has the potential to stretch into something longer.  //I've taken the liberty of filling in the gaps where data was available.//

"Haha, 'course you did."  And don’t think you missed how much of a non-answer that answer was.  But it’s all you’re going to get.  More than you could have expected.  Maybe you don’t really need to know for this next part.  "Okay, but--you know.  What happened with Bro?"  Hey what's the deal with this tight feeling in your chest; ribcage shrinkage is so totally not on.

There's a slight hesitation, barely detectable.  Hal's synthetic voice is as unaffected as ever when he speaks, however.  //Derrick "Bro" Strider, aged 38, killed in action while diverting a sabotaged Alliance cruiser from a collision trajectory with space colony beta zero nine.  It seems suicidal stupidity is a familially transmitted phenomenon.//

"Yeah, well, welcome to the club.  We're all mad here, yada yada.  Don't go getting any bright ideas, pipsqueak, you're last in line."

//I'll note it in my files.//

"Wasn't stupidity though.  That asshole knew he wasn't coming back.  Not that he bothered to tell us what he had in mind but I guess he figured we'd be able to work it out from the whole 'dead' thing.”  Douchewagon.

//He did save several thousand lives.  Including yours.//  Each word is clipped and neutral to the point of disinterest.

"Yeah, well.  Color me impressed, rah rah, spacer unity, the one for the many.  Anyway, I won't do that.  Just--if you wanted to know.  I'm not a fucking hero.  If I ever don't come back it won't be because I decided not to.  Okay?"

There’s another long silence, the words hanging in the air between you, something unasked for and completely unexpected.  You think you’re both examining them.

//Hm,// is all he says, finally, his thoughts withheld, his tone stubbornly non-committal.  

He sounds so exactly like Dirk that you burst out laughing.

You feel a little dizzy, like you’ve been holding your breath too long, grown unused to oxygen.  And you also feel… lighter.  You have no idea if anything you’ve said has been helpful or has even made sense.  But you think maybe it was something you needed to say.  Something you’ve been waiting to say.

//You’re unbelievably and intolerably irrational,// Hal tells you, when several queries fail to elicit anything more from you than hiccuping giggles.

“You’re just-- you and Dirk--” you try and then dissolve helplessly again.  His non-response takes on a frigid, offended quality.  You gulp air, trying to collect yourself.

//I am so happy to be of amusement to you,// he says stiffly.

You shake your head.  “Nah. It’s not--ha.”  You’re still grinning.  “I’m just dumb.”

//Was that point ever in contention?//

That starts you snickering again.  “Fuck, I shouldn’t be so hard on Bro.  I don’t know how he managed two of us.”

//I don’t know how he managed one of you,// Hal says.

You wipe stupid laughter tears, straightening your sunglasses as you do, and smirk up into the sky. “Thank you, Mr. Snark-Bot-9000. I love you, too.”

//Good. Then you’ll send me whatever documents you got from GreenSun.//

"I--?" You blink, whiplashed from how quickly he turned that conversation around on you.  “That’s not--”

//I can monitor quite a bit more data than you can possibly hope to, and on channels you won’t have access to,// he says smoothly.  //GreenSun is a large organization.  If they make a move in your direction I’ll be able to give you some warning.//

“I really don’t think they’re going to be posting bounties on the ‘net, Hal.”

//They might.  And there are just as many patterns around silences if you know where to look for them.  And you’re a genius artificial intelligence program.//

You grit your teeth.  “I don’t want a connection back to this ship--”

//Please,// he interrupts. //To use an argument you’ve put forth several times during this conversation: I do actually know what I’m doing.//

You grit your teeth harder.  “...I’ll think about it.”

//You’ll do it.//  He sounds smug now.  //And I’ll look out for "Auntie Jade" as well.  As a freebie.  Because I care.//

“Oh, god.”  You’re torn between glowering and falling back into helpless laughter.  You scrub your heels down the ridged metal of the ramp, listening to the buzz.  “Don’t take this the wrong way, li’l bro, but you’re kind of terrifying.”

//It’s a talent,// he says. //Honed to a fine edge by the need to deal with all you ridiculous organics.//

You shake your head, amused.  You feel good.  You feel relieved.

You also feel like it’s about time to head out.  You check the angle of the sun, realize you have no idea what the hell it means on this planet, and stand up anyways.  You’re feeling restless.  It’s late, you think.

“I better jet,” you say, brushing debris from your pants and straightening your sword and guns.  “Believe it or not this simple organic being has errands left to run and only leg-power to run them with.”  

//Yes, fine.  Run along to your silly human tasks.//

“My fucking radical silly human tasks,” you correct him.  You hesitate at the end of the ramp.  “If I don’t make it back by before y’all ship out--”

//We’ll catch you later,// Hal says, his voice as certain as it is ironic.

You smile.

“Yeah.  Promise.”