Archive of Our Own ^beta

You are Rose Lalonde, and John Egbert died a week ago.

You were crushed. Destroyed, even. At the time, you could not possibly imagine a way that you could ever return to anywhere vaguely like normal. You are starting to realize that you will be more able to face the world through the discomfort, though. You almost long for the grief when you and Dave start realizing something still more disconcerting.

John’s death doomed more than John. Jade is also almost certainly dead, and as you and Dave progress, you become more certain that the game will kill you, as well, in the absence of John and Jade.

The cryptic hints of the Consorts of your lands have grown darker, and frankly less cryptic. Nobody outright says “you’re doomed to fail”, but they start talking about the only hope being “in the Seer’s annihilation”, and “the future is empty and cold”. Jaspersprite seems sadder as well, and his riddles are sadder, too. Yesterday, your dream self woke on Derse, which means you got the unique blessing of hearing the horrorterrors scream about the inevitable darkness as well. It’s almost a blessing that talking to Calsprite produces only terrifying nonsense puppet screams - it’s better than constant hints that you’re almost certainly doomed to complete annihilation.

It sucks being a dead teenager walking. It sucks and nobody understands.

Sometime that evening, you find yourself in your mother’s room. Well, “find” removes your agency from the decision - you have made the decision to be here on purpose. You have decided to get absolutely smashed. Under normal circumstances, you’re of the opinion you should be incredibly careful with alcohol - your mother was an alcoholic, and you know enough to know that there's a large genetic component to risk of alcoholism. Given that, and your distaste for your mother's use of alcohol, you’d resolved to stay away from any serious drinking.

But with the pressure on you as it is, and the constant feeling of doom around you, you’d do almost anything for some kind of emotional relief. Moreover, you’re a dead girl walking, so you’re really not all that concerned with the future. It’s amazing how much that lack of a future changes many calculations.

It takes you only a moment to find a bottle of wine among your mother’s many, many bottles of various harder liquors - she moved to harder liquors for actually getting drunk long before you can remember, but she still kept wine around, presumably because she actually enjoyed it, and she’s drank enough of it during your childhood that you have a decent idea where it is. It takes only a moment longer to find a corkscrew - you know where that is, too.

It takes you much longer to figure out how to actually use the corkscrew - you are glad that Dave is off killing imps and exploring, because this is embarrassingly hard. Well, that, and you’re embarrassed to be drinking in the first place - you’ve talked enough shit about your mother’s habit that it would wound your pride to be seen drinking for the purpose of getting drunk at all. After a few minutes of fiddling with the corkscrew, and a moment of considering using the handle of a piece of silverware to drive the cork into the bottle, you figure out how to operate the infernal piece of machinery.

You know enough to know that one glass of wine won’t get you drunk, but you have no idea how much alcohol tolerance the average person has. With the internet long since having failed due to meteoric interference, it’s not like you can look it up, so you have to find things out the old fashioned way - by experimentation. More than three glasses of wine seems somewhat excessive, and you’d rather dodge on a hangover, so you resolve to drink three glasses of wine, and see how you feel then.

You fail. The first glass is hard enough - wine, it turns out, tastes only marginally better than the martini that your mother left behind and you sipped. It has a weird dryish feeling, even, a bizarre feeling for something you drink, and you struggle through the second glass with the constant desire to give up. Now, however, it’s a matter of pride - you will finish this damn glass of wine, because you’ve resolved to try something, and you’re doing it.

It still takes you a good fifteen minutes to finish the second glass of wine, compared to the barely five it took you to make it through the first one. You give up halfway through the third one, reasoning that the difference between two and a half and three glasses is probably such that you’ll hardly notice.

You keep a notebook of your experiences. You note first that it’s really not all it’s cracked up to be - while you’re not as terrified as you were before, you are still scared of the future, and you feel dumb in ways that make you feel more than a little insecure about yourself. Finding the word you mean takes longer than it usually does in your notebook, and you’re pretty sure that most of your words aren’t as good when you’re drunk.

You’re still not smashed , but you are drunk. You realize later that you’ve lost some motor control, which you’re not too broken up about. You know you can’t drink and fight monsters, but you’re done fighting monsters for the day. You realize that Dave will probably be back soon, so you pour the rest of the glass of wine out and hide the bottle in the fridge. You hope he doesn’t think to check the server in the first place, but you aren’t willing to bet on that, and you don’t want to explain your decisions to him.

It’s half an hour or so later that he pesters you. You almost jump out of your skin when your phone goes off - you are definitely more nervous than you thought about him finding out you're drunk. As a result, it takes you significantly longer to reply to each of his messages, because you have to correct all of your typos and wonder “does this sound like something sober Rose would send?” before you send each message.

The next morning, you find your sober Rose impression rather unconvincing, but Dave doesn’t know sober Rose as well as you do. Thus, he doesn’t realize anything is up, or perhaps just assumes that it’s the stress getting to you. (You suppose it is, just indirectly)

The stress is killing you. You resolve not to do this again - the feeling of being drunk itself isn’t altogether unpleasant, but even inebriated, even in a world largely without consequences, you’re unable to loosen up enough to actually enjoy being tipsy, and you hate the taste of wine anyway.

By two weeks later, your feelings have changed substantially about your future. You’re still scared, but eventually you can accommodate almost anything into your idea of normal if it’s normal for you. You can’t, however, shake a boredom that has seeped into your core. Both you and Dave are working to figure out what you can, still trying to find a path forward. You both know Dave can time travel, and that’s useful to you, because if all else fails Dave can travel back and change shit, but you still haven’t completely given up hope yet.

The problem is that you’re often working at different times, and while sometimes you’re working hard, you often have long, boring, lonely hours alone. You can only write so much shitty wizard fanfiction that no one will ever read before you begin to hope for something, anything, to do; it’s easier to write when you have the belief that maybe someday you’ll feel comfortable sharing it, and it’s also easier to write when there is literally anything else to do.

It gets to the point where, having watched all the good movies and played all the good games in your house, you find yourself playing the shitty pinball game that comes with Windows XP. It’s at the point where you become vaguely not shit at the game that you decide that you have too much dignity to play shitty pinball games to the point where you’re good at them that you start alchemizing.

At first, you alchemize books with blank CD and DVD’s - sometimes, when you’re lucky, you’ll get a game or movie based on that book, and sometimes, it isn’t absolutely dreadful. Most of the time, it is, though, so you quickly work your way through your stock of possible good games and movies created this way. It takes you a week or so, which, you suppose, is one week closer to the end. That gives you time to realize you’re definitely doomed, and to start making plans with Dave to travel back in time. You decide to go as far as you can before you travel back, to maximize your potential impact. This leaves Dave with a lot to do, but mostly you’re just gathering information - after all, the sweet loot you acquire won’t go back.

At a week later, you decide to start making books from movies and games - this works OK, but more of the books suck in readaptation - it’s not as good a transfer, clearly. That holds you out for another five or so days (it hurts a lot that you read very fast, as well), and then you start making games from movies, which mostly produces crappy franchise games that you wish you’d never played, and then movies from games, which are universally terrible. That gets you through another week or so, meaning you manage to mostly entertain yourself for a good month by desperately trying to create new media.

You start combining various media (one movie with another), but that creates a lot of things that make progressively less sense and are progressively worse.

You are officially bored, and lonely, and while you’ve gotten better at creating mediocre media from effectively thin air, you also have a drive to do something meaningful that is unfulfillable in an empty, hopeless world where your actions don’t matter. You briefly consider killing yourself - it hardly matters if you live or die, after all, you’re going to cease to exist anyway, but you decide that that would probably be traumatizing to Dave, and make his job harder, and besides, you don’t actually want to die, you’re just miserable.

But you are miserable. Lonely, bored, hopeless, and filled with a constructive energy in a place with no potential for constructive action. All of them worsen each other - loneliness demands that something is done to help you ignore it, boredom is most easily assuaged by the knowledge that it will pass, hopelessness is only healed by having something worth doing, and feeling like you're getting nowhere doesn’t matter as much if you have company.

But you have no answer, so you spiral down, and down, and down.

And then, at that point, you really don’t care if Dave knows your drinking, because this is torture, and the possibility of being mildly judged by your friend seems less bad than torturing yourself for months at a time. You pour yourself a glass of wine that night. You take it much easier on the second glass of wine- you just produce nonsense media that the little bit of wine allows you to be inebriated enough to enjoy, and you let yourself drink at your own pace.

You do that a lot for the next month and a half. As you get closer to the point where there’s nothing for either you or Dave to do, you start drinking more heavily, because the things you make become more nonsensical, because you have slightly more of a tolerance, because you are more uncomfortable being sober with the implications of what will happen when Dave travels back in time (and the closer you get the harder it is to ignore), and because without a future, there really aren’t any consequences to fucking up your liver and developing a serious substance problem.

As a result, you are drunk most of the time, and not really fully sober much of ever. It’s around this time that Dave realizes you’re drinking, but he doesn’t confront you about it so much as he tells you to “lay off with the cagey crap” because “it’s fucking bullshit”, and because no one is going to judge you for trying to find solace in a world that is pretty much a hellscape. Dave is a good friend, and you’re really glad that you haven’t had to do this completely alone.

You make a point of being sober the last couple days, when it’s clear there’s not much left to do. It’s unpleasant, but you weren’t really drinking enough that you have to deal with withdrawal. You still feel at least a little undignified when you’re drunk, and you want to face oblivion with something resembling dignity. You muse that there’s something deeply human about trying to make something meaningful out of something as meaningless as dying in a doomed timeline.

You make only one slight miscalculation during the time you spend in that doomed timeline:

You aren’t completely consigned to oblivion. Some of your memories are picked up by the dream Rose of the alpha timeline, and that means that alpha Rose winds up with at least a little of your relationship to alcohol.

You are Rose Lalonde, and the meteor ride is boring. Sure, there’s always things to prepare for the future, but you can only work on one project for so long before you get bored, and while you’re not lonely or hopeless, even bored is somewhat dangerous.

So you pick up alchemy - both figuring out how to alchemize more with the machinery, and some of the mystical stuff from your old world. The two rarely intersect - the machinery is almost a computer programming thing, and the alchemy is almost always…

Mysticism? You’d say “bullshit”, but you’d hardly want to insult all the people who believed this before, who held it in an almost religious manner.

Nah, it’s bullshit. It’s fun bullshit, though. Bullshit or not, you pick up a few phrases, mostly things you don’t fully understand the meaning of, little bits of mysticism that you collect like all of the other things you collect in your mind.

What sticks with you is particularly the phrase “as above so below”.

More practically, you find an application for John’s trick for subtraction concepts, combined with the idea that two identical objects could have identical CAPTCHA codes. It’s not a surefire bet: codes also seem to represent cost, and while you wonder briefly if you could figure out what the system for cost is, but you can’t make any rhyme or rhythm of the relationship between code and cost. However, this often means that for cases where subtraction is very complicated (for most items there are a truly baffling number of possible outcomes after a subtraction) you can perform a second subtraction of two items that should result in the same component to massively decrease the number of possibilities. After all, in such a case shared possibilities are significantly more likely to be a correct answer, since the other outcomes are mostly a result of randomness rather than shared components. Still, it is possible to lose the correct answer if different versions of the object were understood to be the components.

This makes items that are common components relatively easy to alchemize. This is particularly valuable for you because your target is ethanol, and while it’s hard to positively alchemize it, it’s trivial to negatively alchemize it: Your saliva has yeast in it, so you can ferment practically any practically anything sweet if you put it in the right conditions, if in a deeply unsanitary condition. Then it’s just a matter of some relatively simple programming and you have a system that gives you only a few outputs that could be ethanol.

One of them is.

This gives you the ability to then mix ethanol with other objects in the alchemiter to produce various more drinkable substances (after all, in a near pure form, ethanol is incredibly unpleasant to drink). Mostly, the project was just for fun, and because it might be useful to have the ability to have at least something to clean, something you realize after a particularly nasty bout of food poisoning, but in part you thought that it might be cool to be able to throw a party or something, if it turns out trolls can safely drink alcohol.

Apple juice, your other project, as given to you by Dave, is harder, because it’s not obviously the addition of two things you have access to. It’s also hard to imagine what you could possibly add together to make apples. Simultaneously, apple juice, and apples, are not obviously subtractable from anything, either - you suppose you could do it if you had some kind of hard apple cider, but you don’t, so that’s not a viable strategy.

The project being “just for fun” and for cleaning supplies gets more complicated as you put two and two together and realize you are going to meet your mother again, if a younger version of her. You wonder if drinking more will help you understand her better - after all, that will probably be a pretty important part of her life, and while you know that’s not really a super rational thing to think, you really, really want to understand her.

It being for fun goes the rest of the way out the window goes out the window after you ask Kanaya on a date. The day of, you find yourself nervous in a slow, clawing way, very different from the nerves produced by battle or even certain death, but more like the second than the first. That, combined with boredom, puts you in a mindset much closer to the one from the dead timeline than anything you’ve experienced since, and that means you lean on the strategies you used there.

Which means you alchemize the results of your project, mix it one to one with water, and you drink that.

Your date goes better than you could possibly imagine. Sure, you’re late, but she takes that relatively well, and you mention that it you intended it as a date (well, not outright - it’s more something you do by accident). She seems thrilled, and you find yourself grateful that you were able to say what you meant, a feat you’re not sure you could have achieved sober.

In general, you find yourself doing what you mean more - you even kiss her, and she reciprocates! You ultimately fall down a staircase, of course, but that’s worth it for doing what you’ve meant to do for months.

That shapes your behavior going forward. You like the person you are when you are drunk better than the one you are when you are sober on some level. You feel a little stupider when you’re drunk, but you say what you mean, and you do what you mean. Plus, it just feels good . It makes the world easier to face, the narrow path to the future in front of you seems wider, and it seems easier to imagine being a likeable person.

The days you’re sober become rarer as you continue, the days you’re drunk become more common, and you get drunker on the days you’re drunk. It keeps taking more and more to get what you want, but you can deal with that. You also find that it’s harder to be sober - the things you dislike about being sober become worse as time passes.  

It is a nice night. You have a glass of tequila in your left hand, a cute girl sitting still further left of you, a vaguely interesting book in your right hand, and you haven’t considered the future in at least a day, and so you don’t see the reason it’s about to be a bad night coming.

“Rose.” Kanaya shakes her head, “You should stop.”

“Stop what? Reading? You ask, moving the glass towards your lips to take another swig.

Kanaya put her hand firmly on yours, preventing you from raising the glass the rest of the way to your lips. “Drinking.”

“Why?” You ask, “It’sh - it’s not like I’m hurting anyone.”

“You are hurting me, Rose.” She sighs, “You offered to spend the evening with me, and if you decide to become much more inebriated than you already are, you’ll become much less interesting to be around, and if you don’t stop drinking, you’ll pass out and then it won’t be me ‘spending an evening’ with you as much as me having the absolute pleasure of watching your stupor, and I am being sarcastic when I say ‘absolute pleasure.”

You pause for a moment. You’re not sure how you feel about the idea that your drinking hurts Kanaya, and you’re definitely a little defensive about it. You consider, momentarily, telling her that if that’s how she feels, she can always leave, but you’re relatively certain that that would be  VERY BAD for your relationship.

“I’m fine, Kanayana… Kayana….Kanaya.” You realize belatedly that being unable to say your girlfriend’s (Matesprite’s? You haven’t really talked through which words you’ll use to describe your relationship, and you understand them to be mostly similar, but somewhat different. You should probably talk that through with her, actually - it might lead to differing expectations, but you’ve got a more pressing discussion (fight? You decide not to think too much about this question, to avoid going down the infinite parentheticals route) to have here) name is not great evidence that you are “fine”, but you have to make do with what you have.

“Are you? You do not appear ‘fine’. You appear seriously intoxicated, as you have appeared each of the last six times we have intentionally scheduled time for each other - which is all of them, by the way. All of the times. Also, almost every time I’ve seen you in any other context, you’ve been drunk as well - I believe I’ve seen you sober once in the past month. I am actually extremely worried about you, and it’d be really nice if I could get semi-sober Rose for once. For me?”

You have a hard time saying no to her.

You also have a hard time saying no to the glass in front of you.

She knows you well enough to know you’re conflicted. You know she knows that, and she knows you know she knows that. You’re basically completely aware of each other’s positions. That puts you at a disadvantage - you know that saying no now would upset her, if she knew you seriously considered it, but at the same time, you are relatively certain if you agree this time you’ll yield almost every time, and you’re not ready for that outcome, either.

Being drunk isn’t helping you here, either: you’re nowhere near wasted, but you’re drunk enough that she’s got you at the disadvantage there, too. You feel a little like you’re playing a game of chess here - one at which you are at a substantial advantage because you have the most agency in the game - like you got to move twice for every move Kanaya made- but a game of chess nonetheless.

You take a moment to consider, and then sigh.

“If I try to take it slow, will that make you less worried?”

She looks a little unhappy with this resolution, and that hurts more than a little, but ultimately agrees.

You resolve to only drink the rest of that glass that night - which will bring you to the equivalent of four or so shots. You’ll remain only this drunk as a result - which is, again, barely drunk at all.

You finish two glasses. You’re absolutely fucking smashed when it’s time to go to bed, but you’re actually proud of yourself, because for the first time in the last three times you’ve hung out you manage not to drink until you pass out.

You don’t think Kanaya appreciates this gesture - you’re having a much, much harder time reading her by the end of the night, but she seems concerned for you.

Scared, maybe.

Yeah, it’s definitely that, you decide as she kisses you on the forehead, and says goodnight.

After she leaves, you drink until you pass out. You don’t want to be conscious to think about the look of fear that crossed her face. You can’t deal with that right now - you’re nowhere near sober enough.

You are Kanaya Maryam. Your matesprit (Girlfriend? You regret not forming a common set of expectations with her, since if you had, you’d probably feel safe setting up an intervention, because you’d know what to expect in terms of cross-cultural romance.) has been drinking every time you’ve seen her for your entire month and a half relationship, and you are worried.

You, however, have no idea how to approach the situation. You don’t know how seriously Dave will take things, and you don’t know the cultural situation well enough to know if he will talk to Rose if you bring up the idea of an intervention. You know you can’t talk to Rose, and John is frustratingly kind of dead (Rose said he wasn’t REALLY dead at one point when she was sober, but you’re not wholly sure what she meant), and besides, you haven’t had any luck pestering Jade this whole time.

Terezi might serve. You really haven’t talked to her a lot, but the Seer of Mind might be able to tell you something you don’t already know about culture. After all, someone with mind powers could tell you about people’s responses, at least.

--grimAuxiliatrix [GA] began trolling gallowsCalibrator [GC]--

GA: Please Don’t Laugh
GA: I Need To Know Something About Humans
GA: And I Can’t Very Well Talk To The Humans About It
GC: 1 4M NOT 4 HUM4N.
GC: H3Y, YOU KNOW WHO 1S?
GC: ROS3.
GA: Obviously.
GA: But You Are A Seer Of Mind.
GA: Which Means You Will Serve In A Pinch.
GC: NOP3. 1M NOT G3TT1NG 1NVOLV3D.
GC: 1 4M NOT 1NTR3ST3D 1N PL4Y1NG T3L3PHON3 B3TW33N M4T3SPR1T3’S.
GC: 1F YOU CAN’T T4LK TO ROS3, T4LK TO D4VE.
GA: I Had Considered That But Dave Doesn’t Always Take These Kinds Of Things Seriously
GA: Rose Is Lying To Me And Will Continue To Lie To Me
GA: I Believe She Might Also Be Lying To Herself
GA: So Talking To Her Is Pointless.
GC: BL44444R.
GC: T3LL M3 WH4T YOU W4NT TO KNOW.
GC: 1’LL T3LL YOU 1F 1’LL H3LP.
GA: Two Questions.
GA: One: Do Humans Consider Alcohol A Substance Worthy Of Intervention.
GA: Two: What Traditions Do Humans Have For Interventions.
GA: I Want To Make Sure Rose Is Alright.
GA: But I Know That Sometimes My Attempts To Help Are Understood As Meddling.
GC: Yes.
GC: 4ND NOT TH4T D1FF3R3NT FROM OURS.
GA: I’m Glad You Could Figure That Out.
GA: Thanks.
GC: 1 4LR43DY KN3W.
GC: YOU C4N ONLY L1ST3N TO DAV3 R4P FOR SO LONG W1THOUT L34RN1NG SOM3TH1NG 4BOUT HUM4NS.
GC: FOR WH4T 1T’S WORTH:
GC: YOUR M3DDL1NG H3R3 1SN’T 4 B4D 1D34.
GC: 1’LL DO WH4T 1 C4N TO H3LP.
GA: That Means A Great Deal To Me.
GA: Thanks.

grimAuxiliatrix ceased trolling gallowsCalibrator [GC]

---

And like that, you have the beginnings of a plan.

Your are Rose Lalonde, and you have an awful fucking headache. You are also still slightly drunk from the night before, and by “slightly”, you mean “quite”. You are, however, relatively certain that you are less drunk than you were last night when Kanaya asked you to stop drinking.

You are reminded of the night before, and you almost consider grabbing your bottle(s) and drinking until you pass out again. You are hurting her. You are a terrible, awful, shitty girlfriend, and you can’t handle that, because you’re neither sober enough to make real decisions nor drunk enough to not care about outcomes… and besides, you know that sober you would make the same decision drunk you does.

There is something that stops you from grabbing your bottle and drinking away your humiliation in a way that might kill you if you could die in some way that has neither the honor of heroics nor the justice of the death of an evil doer. You pause on the last one - you feel a little bit you might be capable of a just death if you keep this up. You’re pretty sure that’s a fucked up thing to think, but you’re pretty sure you’re a fucked up person who doesn’t deserve people to not think fucked up things about her, at least a little bit.

The something that stops you is that you need to do some future seeing to make sure victory happens. You’re pretty sure you’re in the window you predicted last time where it would be necessary to search the future to ensure you didn’t make a mistake. You’ve built a system where you See every so often, by checking what the next key decision is and when you need to figure out the next one by, so you don’t have to remember every important decision between now and the end of the game. You look forward...

And you know instantly why you knew this would be an important time. There is an important decision that you will be asked to make. On one side, there is the possibility of victory, of a free world that is not destroyed by Lord English nor enslaved by someone else.

On the other side, you have a glass of meteor moonshine in your hand in three weeks.

You look at the event precipitating this, and know, with some degree of clarity, it is an intervention. You can’t see it perfectly clearly - there is another Seer involved, and while you might be the more powerful Seer by far normally, you are in no mental state to be able to outplay Terezi in a game of “I know this, so you’ll do that”. Either way, you know that there’s an intervention involved, and if you agree and work hard and stop drinking, you’ll win.

It’s probably good that you’re not Terezi’s equal right now in this game, because Terezi will be trying to save the worldline, and frankly, you’re pretty sure that you’d be trying to doom it. You’re still pretty sure you’ll beat Terezi, because it’s not that hard to say no.

It can’t be that much harder than telling your girlfriend “no” on the same question, after all.

Your name is Rose Lalonde, and today is the day you doom the world for a glass of alcohol. Well, you’re pretty sure you won’t do that, but you’re not sure you have it in you to do anything else. The problem with using your seer powers to determine how to solve a problem is that it requires you’re willing to pay the price first, and this leaves you in a uniquely shit position. To convince yourself you want to stop, you’d need to win that fight with yourself, and you’ve lost it before. So instead, you’re expecting a face off with Terezi.

You have a mug of wine in hand, and you’re only mildly buzzed when The Decision is to happen. Frankly, you’re holding the mug of wine as something between a shitty mindgame and an acknowledgement of the problem at hand - you’re not really drinking to get drunk. Dave and Karkat are sitting behind you, but they’re listening to music - you’re pretty sure they won’t play any part in this. At the very least, they don’t seem to be in on the fact that an intervention is about to happen.

You are expecting Kanaya, or maybe Terezi, since you know from the difficulty of figuring out exactly what is going to happen that there is another Seer involved in this, at least tangentially. You are thus surprised when Vriska walks in, and spikes your mug of wine to the ground. Dave and Karkat both jump - they definitely weren’t involved in this.

“This is pathetic.” Vriska says, and you scowl.

“It is not.” You reply, but you feel somewhat petulant.

“Dave, tell her this is pathetic.” Vriska gestures at your brother.

“Dave, tell her it’s fine.” You reply. Since you know it isn’t fine, you’re dimly aware that she is spectacularly bad at this.

Dave shrugs, he and Karkat are already getting up to leave, “‘Pathetic’ seems unnecessarily mean, but I wouldn’t call it ‘fine’ either.”]

Your scowl deepens, and you feel your cheeks flush with embarrassment and a hint of anger, but you run with the petulance, “See, it’s not pathetic!”

“It’s not fine, either.” She replies, and god this is the most childish conversation you’ve ever had.

You’re about to tell Vriska to take a long walk off a short pier, doomed timelines ahoy, fuck living, if you couldn’t make you stop drinking by hating yourself progressively more, Vriska isn’t going to either, when Kanaya walks in.

And makes things harder.

“Hi.” You say, sounding like an idiot, you’re sure.

“Hello, Rose.” She says.

Sometimes, you get clear images of the future when you don’t try to See. It happens around important decision points, or where the images are so vivid that you can’t avoid them. Her entrance triggers a cascade of them.

The first starts above an alien world.

You are facing off with some troll enemy. You’ve never met her before, but she carries a trident. Your head hurts slightly - maybe the very tail end of a hangover, or the very beginning of withdrawal. You miss something essential, and as a result, your enemy opens her mouth, and breathes forth pure light. It hits Kanaya, and it vaporizes her.

She is dead. She cannot be revived - she is vaporized, there is no body. It momentarily strikes you that you will never be able to tell her that you love her, but then the rage has consumed you, and John and the teenage version of your mother watch on helplessly as you rush in, full of rage and fury, and are easily dispatched with the troll’s trident. You are revived by someone you do not yet know, but you are in no place to fight. You are killed again.

In quick succession, you are accosted by another image.

You are in some field on some unknown planet. It’s not one of yours, so it must be from the new session. Your team is less well organized, and your enemies are more numerous. You are fighting some alternate version Jack Noir, with pool balls for eyes, trying to keep him off of Karkat, who is struggling.

You slip, and he hits your hard on the head with the crowbar. Your eyes track to Kanaya, who is fighting off the troll from the last vision, and who turns to see you. She looks horrified, her face contorted with fear you’ve seen before, but this time a thousand times worse. You can’t defend yourself as the crowbar comes down on you again and again and again and the pain is hardly worse than the face on Kanaya as she watches you. If there’s any consolation in this ending, each time the crowbar comes down the world makes that much less sense to you, and so neither the pain nor the expression of your girlfriend bother you nearly as much as they should, and the image of her opponent taking advantage of the opening in her defense created by her watching you die to vaporize her doesn’t make any sense to you.

At least, it doesn’t make sense until you are back in the real world. You want to vomit, but then you’re in another vision of the future.

You are on the meteor. Kanaya looks angry, and you feel angry.

“You promised!” She says.

“I kept my fucking promise!” You yell back, “I just made a mishtake!”

“Did you? It certainly didn’t seem like it!”

“If your idea of me breaking that promish is this, then I don’t think that promise was ever possible to keep. I know I fucked up! You don’t have to keep rubbing it in! Just… let me be!”

“That… might be the best outcome.” She says, her mouth forming a line, and the rest of her face setting in a grim resolve, “I’m sorry, Rose.”

“Shorry?” You’re confused.

“I’m letting you be.” She says, and you don’t understand for a moment and then… then you might.

“Wait, are you braking up with me?”

She looks sad as she nods, “Yes, Rose.”

And then you’re fighting the troll from before. This time, you don’t have the headache, instead, you’re smashed, and you slip covering Kanaya much faster. You watch her vaporize, this time screaming in pain, and you expect the rage again, but you just fall to your knees. It hurts so much that you’ll never make up with her, that you’ll never fix what you did wrong, and you’re crying.

This time, it’s not the trident that gets you, but a blast of the light, and you’re not revived at all, after all, you can’t revive what isn’t a corpse.

You actively try to fight off the next image, but you ultimately lose and then you’re back in the world of possible futures.

It’s the fight again, but this time after “let me be!”, she sighs.

“Rose… fine. You win. I won’t meddle. It’s your body anyway. Just… please try to remember that I like seeing sober Rose around sometimes.”

You’re drunk, and she catches sight of you, and winces.

You’re drunk, she’s sitting across a table from you, and she’s trying to keep the pain off of her face. She’s not doing a very good job of it. There’s a flower on the table, and candles everywhere, and you know this was supposed to be a date. You don’t think it’s an awfully good date, from the way she looks.

You’re eating a meal. Kanaya actively avoids sitting next to you. There’s a moment of guilt that crosses her face, but it’s like she can’t deal with you right now. A part of you can’t deal with you right now, either.

And then you’re on the field again, disorganized and fighting. This time, it’s her who takes the first hit, killed by first a trident to the back, and then the blast of the breath. You fall to your knees - any hope of her ever being proud of you again vaporizes there. Any hope of being a person worth being proud of and having her acknowledge it is gone. You have wanted nothing more since the fight, and you will never, ever, ever, ever have it.

The crowbar to the back of your head knocks you out cold. You wake - apparently, this time you’ve failed to die a heroic death. You get up, and fail to fight well, but you fight - you aren’t going to keep dying forever. You are easily overwhelmed, and then you’re vaporized, and you do not wake.

You can feel a tear developing in the corner of your eyes - the worst part is that for you, when you’re seeing futures, time is completely different than anyone else in the room, so they’ll have no sense of what’s going on. The light pulls you under again.

The fight plays out again. She agrees not to meddle, but she seems more put off by it.

Another vision. It’s just you getting smashed. You pass out. You wake up to the taste of vomit in your mouth, and the face you saw earlier whenever you’ve watched Kanaya watch you die. You also wake up on your side, which is funny - you always sleep on your back. Your back hurts like it’s been hit a few time, and there’s vomit on your bed.

“Rose. Talk to me. Talk to me!” Kanaya begs.

“Kanana.” You choke out, “What happened?”

“You… You passed out, and then I woke up to the sound of you choking, and I didn’t know what to do so it took me a moment to respond and so I thought you’d stop but you didn’t so I just turned you on your side and hit your back to try to dislodge whatever you were choking on because that works on trolls and I figured it was worth a try and you started breathing but I worried you were seriously injured and I’m so glad you’re talking, Rose.”

You have never once heard Kanaya scared enough that she started talking that fast. She’s normally so calm and collected.

It’s been a long day in the library, helping the mayor build, and the flask you brought with you is empty. You head back to your room to refill it, but when you get there, you can’t find any of your favorite tequila. In fact, you can’t find any of your drinks at all.

Shortly after, Kanaya knocks on your door. You know her knock by now, so you invite her in.

“Babe” and apparently, you’ve given up calling her Kanaya in this timeline, “I can’t find any of my stuff, babe.”

“Yes.” She says. She looks a little nervous, but she expunges the face in brief moments, schooling it to a calm neutral, “Yes. That is because I poured it all out. I have found and destroyed every drop of your soporific on this meteor, Rose. I watched you nearly die, and I won’t watch that again. It may be your body, but you are actually dying, and I feel no obligation to watch you kill yourself slowly, even if you will be revived.”

Suddenly, you’re up in her face. Anger has never been your primary problem before, not really, but now you’re MAD, madder than you’ve ever been. “I get to make my own choices, Papaya.” That’s the first time you’ve ever pronounced her name wrong on purpose, just to see her face twist in discomfort. You know she particularly dislikes Papaya, and you almost find yourself agreeing with her that you should be more sober, since you almost fail to mispronounce her name in the way you intend, “If I want to drink, I get to fucking drink. If you can’t handle that, you can leave.”

She takes a step back, but she’s still surprisingly calm, “I understand you’re upset. I  expected you would be. But… I do not regret my decision. I’m sorry, Rose. I know this is upsetting, but please-”

And you just can’t take it anymore. You shove her, knock her over on her back. Her head hits the ground with a sickening thud, after all, she’s not expecting it, and you’ve forgotten that the game has made you very, very strong.

She gets up - she looks like she’s in significant pain, but she’s tough, too.

But she is crying. Actually, genuinely crying.

“I have no caliginous interest in you, Rose.” She says, “And even in my culture, it’s considered very poor form to hurt your matesprit, even if you are-”

“I have no caliginous interest in you, either.” You spit, and begin to storm out. You’re already feeling super fucking guilty, but you don’t know what to do with this anger, so you don’t know how to back down.

“Then it’s through!” She shouts behind you.

There are tears in your eyes as you walk away.

You’re standing in a common area, alone. You know that everyone else is in the room next to you. You know what they’re meeting about. It’s you. You are the crisis of the hour. They think you’re a liability. They’re right. They think you’re dangerous. You can’t disagree. They think you’re a monster. You’d protest, but you wouldn’t believe yourself.

“She’s not worth it.” You hear Kanaya tell someone, through the closed door “You don’t have to fight her on my behalf.

“But-” You hear Karkat start to protest. Something happens, because he stops, and then mutters, “Sure, fine, yeah.”

You die on the field again. This time, you watch Kanaya die first. As the trident skewers her, and her jade blood covers her clothing, you are struck with a crushing guilt. You will never, ever be someone she can forgive. She was justifiably angry with you when she died, and she will never not be justifiably angry with you. She will never, ever, ever forgive what you’ve done.

The first tear falls, and then you wait for the light to pull you under again, totally resigned to whatever you have to watch.  Maybe Vriska is right. Maybe you are pathetic. Given what you’re capable of, according to the light, you’re an awful girlfriend, and you aren’t going to try to defend the girl who, just a few steps removed, hurts the person she loves the most.

But the light never comes. Instead, you are rooted here, knowing what you now know and cannot unknow. To be the person who dooms the timeline is not merely to be the person who dooms herself to the void. It is to be the person who forces her lover to watch her die and to be the person who watches her watch her die. Or it is to be the person who watches her lover die herself. It is possibly to be the person whose partner leaves her and then watches said partner try to pretend she doesn’t care that you hurting yourself. No matter what, it means dying full of such horrible regret that you never want to think about it again.

Moreover, much as you’d like to abjure the notion, you are not as different from the woman who hurts her girlfriend getting rid of the alcohol she nearly killed herself with as you would like to pretend. You were just prepared to kill everyone you loved so you could drink. You were prepared to make Kanaya watch you die so you could drink. You were just prepared to hurt her. Therefore, it is easy to imagine how, in a slightly different circumstance, the way you were ready to hurt her would be less a strange, theoretical violence that you only knew you were inflicting because you could literally see the future, and more a concrete violence. It’s not that you might become someone ready to hurt the person you love. It is that, on some level, you are already that person.

You are not really sure how to handle the idea that you are a monster, but you are relatively certain that you are a monster.

She sits down next to you, and you almost physically recoil, to keep danger away from her, before you remember that she doesn’t know what you’ve seen, and the act will come across as avoiding her. Still, you feel intensely unworthy to be anywhere near her, and you desperately want to run off.

You know that if you run off now, though, you’ll start drinking again, and you can now say with absolute clarity that that would be awful. You might not deserve her support, but you need it. The pause that stretches between the two of you feels like forever, but eventually, she breaks the silence.

“Rose, I’m… worried.” She begins. You listen - you know which way you want to go at this point, and given that, you want all the motivation you can get, “I’m so, so scared. I’m scared for you and frankly, I miss the person you were. I spent the last year of my life coming to adore a brilliant, clever woman, who could outwit anyone on any given day. She was the smartest woman I’ve ever met! And you… you’re wasting all the potential of being the smartest woman I’ve ever met, making soporific so you can’t think straight enough to be that brilliant, clever woman. I’m worried that if I don’t take action, that this will only get worse. That you only push more and more toward hiding the brilliant, clever, brave, incredible woman I treasure under more and more of that infernal intoxicant. I’m worried this will cause you serious injury, and I worry I’m losing you.  

I’m scared, Rose! I’m so scared. It's not just a selfish thing, although I know it is a little selfish, because I know that I want this because I want the woman I cherish with to be all those beautiful things I fell in love with her for, but I also think you deny yourself the chance to be the best version of you, and I think that’s not fair to you, either! You’re really easy to read when you’re drunk, and I can see that you generally aren’t enjoying this anymore. You always skulk around like you feel guilty, and whenever we’re together you look heartbroken every time you drink, like you know what you’re doing to me and you hate it. This is hurting you, Rose! I hate watching you suffer like this! I’m sure it was fun for you once, but surely even you have to admit that this isn’t fun any more!

I know things feel meaningless and hopeless out here. I really do, it feels that way to me, as well. It feels that way to all of us! But if we succeed than the world will need the best versions of us, not just the versions of us who become the worst parts of the societies we were brought up in and the people we were brought up around, I want you to stop drinking, but I don’t just want you to stop drinking for me. I want you to see what this is doing to you, Rose. I want you to see what this is doing to all the great, beautiful, amazing, fantastic things you could do in the world. I want you to decide that those things are worth stopping for.”

You pause for a moment.

“I… I don’t feeel like the kind of person who is capapable of great things, Kanayaa.” You realize you’re drunker than you thought - god, you feel vile for being drunk, feel vile for holding that mug earlier, feel vile for having picked it up, feel vile for all the shots you’ve taken over the day. Something translucent is fogging your vision, and you realize that those are tears. You’ve gone all the way from kinda-crying to really-actually-crying.

You sniff, “I’m so sorry, Kananaya. I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to, I’m sorry, I’ve been rotten and cruel to you, and I’m so shorry.”

“Rose…” Kanaya looks close to tears herself, but she’s clearly biting them back. You read something else out of her body language now, and you wonder how long you’ve been missing it. She’s angry at you. She takes a deep breath, “Rose. I’m not accepting your apology right now. Frankly, I don’t want your apology right now.”

“I don’t understand. You seeemed like you wanted me to be good and strong and stuff, but now you don’t want my apology? You say you don’t want me to want this for you - are you breaking up with me?” The idea stops you from crying for a moment out of shock, although you’re relatively certain that you’ll go back to crying in a way you find pathetic in short order.

“No.” She says, “No, not at all. I merely mean that, right now, your apology does nothing. I want you to focus on becoming sober and not on apologizing to me for not being that way. When the time comes, I will accept an apology from SOBER ROSE LALONDE, who is NOT AFFECTED BY SOPORIFICS when she apologizes, but until then, your apologies will ring a little hollow, since you are still doing the thing you are apologizing for, even if you are doing it passively.

I do want you to understand another thing. I am willing to give you a lot of room, but I will not tolerate this forever - I say that I am not breaking up with you, and I mean it, and I understand that what I am asking is very, very hard, and that you might not always do everything perfectly, but I can going to take care of myself, and in the case I feel that you are not trying, then I am going to take care of myself, and in such a case, I will not hesitate to break up with you.”

She offers you a hand up, “But I suppose this once, I will take care of you even though you’re drunk. Just promise me this: You’re going to try to remain sober from now on, and you understand that our relationship going forward is contingent on at least a meaningful effort on your part to remain sober.”

“Yes” You promise.

Hours in the future, well, half of one, you are Rose Lalonde, and you are half an hour closer to being the sober Rose who can give Kanaya the apology she deserves. Now that you’ve stopped crying, you’ve started planning.

“I’ve been drinking a lot the last several days-” you start, hesitantly. You are dimly aware that Kanaya might not know that alcohol has withdrawal symptoms and might be angry with you for not telling her that. She takes the pause as the end of the statement.

“I’ll say.” Kanaya agrees

You smile, “I… wasn’t quite finished. I’m going to say some things that are medicaliny relevant.” You continue speaking, somewhat slowly to try to sound more like sober you (even if you botch “medically”), because you really wish that sober you was the one who was involved in planning to create sober you. Unfortunately, wanting to be sober doesn’t automatically make you sober, which is something that has mattered a lot lately. “I assume you do not know them, and I suppose you have some right to be upset with me for claiming I was fine even though, in fact, it is entirely possible for me to die a proper heroic death here, although I forsee that that will not come to pass.”

“Back up. You’re not drinking more, so how could you going to die? Also, while I’m proud of you for trying to become sober, I’m not quite sure if the game understands such struggles as heroic, even hard struggles.” Kanaya says

You respond, “Alcohol withdrawal can be lethal in shome cases. Again, I forsee it will not be, but it’s probably worth mentioning that this ish dangerous, and I will need treatment, because I will feel vile this entire time. I would be immenshely appreciative if you would stay and take care of me for the next two to three days. I will need water, food, the ability to avoid bright lights and loud sounds, and someone to keep watch of me, both because I will need support, and because I do not trust myself not to drink when I am uncomfortable and the discomfort I’m experiencing is a constant reminder of the thing that will end my pain and also that I am trying to stop.

As for the question of heroics… I agree that I don’t know if facing this would be heroic. That seems like a question I’m not prepared to answer, especially because I’m not overly fond of Rose Ladonde - Lalonde right now.”

Kanaya sounds about ready to pipe in to say nice things about you, but you continue. “A girl dies trying to stop doing something that she knows that if she doesn’t put in a real effort to stop, everyone she loves and cherishes will die. She knows this because she can see the future. Particularly, she is spurred by knowing that her girlfriend will die, and that she will probably be left watching helplessly as she dies. Our God Tier, sitting waiting for judgement, cannot stand this outcome. So she knowingly risks her life - sure, it’s a low probability that she’ll die, but that’s always the case.

Is she heroic?”

Kanaya smiles, “I suppose she is. Is there anything you can do to stop that from happening? I’d like to get that apology from Sober Rose.”

“Well, it’ll take some time for the seizures to start if they do start, so you’ll get a hundred apologies from a Sober Rose either way, although I’m not sure that the Rose in the midst of withdrawal will be describable as ‘sober’ technically, since I suppose increased anxiety is mind altering…”

“I won’t know for some time? I’m definitely upset with you, Rose. I get to be worried for two days.”

“You don’t need to worry. I can see the future.”

“In the best future of everyone’s choices, you’re fine, and you can make your best choices. That doesn’t mean that a doomed timeline can’t happen where you die.”

You frown, “One more thing for sober Rose to apologize for?”

Kanaya shakes her head, “I’d honestly accept an apology from wasted Rose for this one.”

“Sorry I didn’t tell you. Sorry you get to be scared. Sorry I’m a terrible fucking girlfriend.”

“I’m not accepting apologies for the last one.”

“Wait, I am a terrible girlfriend?” You say. You’d meant the last one, but you’d assumed that Kanaya would disagree.

Kanaya sighs, “I’m not sure it would help to point out all the things you’ve done, but I’m not going to defend you either - I’m still upset with you. If you want my serious thoughts, though, I don’t think you’ve been a terrible girlfriend, but I can’t describe you as a terribly good one, either. I believe you can change that. I believe you can be a fantastic girlfriend! I think you are a person who has often been, and can be, a wonderful person, who brightens the lives of the people who care about her, which is why I’m agreeing, here, to support you through this.”

You frown at the implication that, recently, you have not been a wonderful person, and that you have not brightened the lives of the people around you.

Your are Kanaya Maryam, and your girlfriend (she called herself that, so you suppose you can roll with that for the time being) might actually die. She’s relatively certain she won’t, but she’s always optimistic about the future while she’s drunk, and she’s currently pretty drunk.

You have to give her credit- it’s the least drunk you’ve seen her in quite some time. She’s still fucking wasted, though.

“Future siight” she slurs, “Leads me to belieeve that I will get pretty sick. I’m not going to look super closely, because there’s not a lot of sense in putting myself through that twice, because I think I’ve done enough looking at awful futures for a day. That means we’ll have to go off what I know.”

“And what do you know?”

Rose visibly brightens, “Quite a lot! Amateur pscyolo-pschycolo…. Psy-cho-lo-gy” she pointed pronounces each syllable to get the word out, “helped a lot with that, although I suppose having an addict I was worried about for a mother helps, too. I expect 8 hours until I start getting sick, and a whole day before I get reaaally sick.”

“Define ‘sick’ and ‘really sick’ for me.” You say. You’re almost afraid to hear the answer.

“Between 8 hours and a day out, I’ll start feeling reaally sick. I might vomit. I might expruria- expepria… ex-per-ie-nce mood swings, depression, anxiety, and tremors. A day or two out, if I’m unlucky, it could get a lot worse - confusion, more intense mood swings, hyperventilation or slight fever, proper irritability - like I’m geuninly sick” She doesn’t even pause to correct herself this this time, “althoough, I guess with a much lower fever and brain shit in it’s place. Gimme two days, and it’s possible for some really nasty stuff to happen - a proper fever, hallucinations, seizures, the kind of shit that’s actually really, honestly dangerous. I don’t think that’ll happen, though. If it does, get me help. If I start convulsing, or hallucinating, I dunno, fucking… get somebody. Ideally, I’d do this in a controlled setting, but we don’t have a controlled setting, and I might guenu- genuil- gen-u-in-ely be the closest person to a medical professional here, and I have literally no experience with medicine. If I knew more about it, I’d still probably fail to alchemetise it, so it’s irrelevant either way. ”

You laugh bitterly - she’s right.

“Could we pull you off it more slowly?”

“Future sight says ‘Rose can’t control herself, you fail repeatedly to ween her off the drink, give up, everybody dies.’” Rose replies.

“What if I, say, tied you up”

Rose laughs, “Kinky, Kanaya.”

You blush, “Would you let me finish? I was going to say ‘and administered regular doses that way?’”

“Given the choice,” Rose laughs, “I’d rather suffer through this than deal with being unable to move.”

You roll your eyes, “Fine, we can keep you from drinking by destroying all your alcohol and then preventing you from alchemizing more, except for a bottle which I kept control of and gave you a weaning dose.”

Rose shrugs, “Fails - you give in to my whining on day 6 and don’t reduce my dose. By day 12, you’ve given up altogether. Remember, Kanaya, there is only one timeline that isn’t doomed at any given time.”

You sigh. She is, as far as you can tell, correct. You wish that the strange version of John who had managed to change the Alpha timeline had also told Rose that starting drinking again was a really, really bad idea, but he, apparently, hadn’t thought of that as mission critical, “Yeah, yeah. Let’s do this.”

The first couple hours tick by relatively quickly - Rose is still drunk, but she’s less drunk than you’re used to, so your conversation is more like the scintillating ones you loved before you got together. You have missed those.

Your plan is that she’ll get some sleep before things get bad - you figure that a healthy Rose is likely to be a happier Rose, and that sleeping well will help fulfill that goal, especially since neither of you are sure she’s actually slept rather than passing out more than twice in the last week. It takes a couple hours of talking, you holding her the whole time, before she calms enough that she falls asleep. If she’s this nervous just facing the problem, you don’t know if you’ll be able to watch her experience all the things she’s talked about.

You know it’s going to hurt her worse. You know you will take care of her, no matter how much it hurts you. Still, while there’s someone there to take care of her, there’s really no one there to take care of you.

You sleep incredibly fitfully, getting only a few hours of sleep total.

You are Rose Lalonde, and the headache you have is awful. You suppose the headache isn’t any worse than the ones you’re used to, at least. For a moment, you resolve to numb it by drinking, but you realize that there is someone draped over you, and you’re reasonably sure she (because you know, obviously, that it’s Kanaya draped over you) is asleep.

For a moment, this just prevents you from stirring, but eventually it reminds you what happened last night, and you realize that you’re definitely not going to be drinking to cure this hangover. Decide? It feels more like another decision than a realization - it’s a much easier decision than the one you made last night, but it still feels like a decision. A realization would feel more like there was no other choice, and you could go for three (although it’d probably turn into seven by the time you were done, you admit) shots of some shitty fruit flavored vodka right now, so you’re definitely still making a choice.

You’re not sure if you want to wake Kanaya - you both have a long day ahead of you, and you're relatively certain the hangover won’t be the worst part. Still, your head hurts like fuck, you probably should be drinking water to try to help with that, plus, you should be drinking water in general - it might make the whole process slightly less uncomfortable. Plus, if you do start throwing up, it’s way more comfortable to throw up water than to throw up nothing.

Of course, at this point you wouldn’t throw up nothing, anyway. You are, however, already queasy, and that’s not a fun feeling. As you wake up more, you realize that you’re probably going to have to throw up.

Which answers your conundrum. You’ll simply have to wake Kanaya.

“Kanaya, babe.” You whisper. She doesn’t stir.

“Kanaya.” Your louder this time, and she stirs slightly, “Kanaya, I need to get up.”

“Nnn. I don’t want to.”

“Please, Kanaya, I don’t want to throw up here.”

“Fine.” She moves to get out of your way, and gets up to follow you when you move to leave.

You run to the nearest toilet on the meteor, and expel the contents of your stomach into it. It’s unpleasant, and it’s particularly unpleasant sober. At least when you aren’t sober, it feels a little less real, but now it’s immediate, disgusting, and more than a little painful - especially since the whole experience is worsened by the hangover, and every movement brings a new bloom of pain to your head. Your girlfriend is watching you helplessly. She steps toward you, and then she’s holding your hair back, which is nice - one less thing to worry about, although your hair wasn’t long enough that it was much of a worry before.

Eventually, you’re mostly retching. Your throat hurts, and you can feel tears forming in your eyes. That drags on a while, but even that stops, and you don’t spend long before you’re curled up on the floor, Kanaya running a hand through your hair and filling you a glass of water.

She hands it to you, and you use it to rinse out your mouth - you still have the faint taste of the vomit in your mouth, which still tastes ever so slightly of wine. You could really use a drink. No, you resolve. You could really use a future, and those two things are mutually exclusive.

If you could have both, you would. But then, you’re almost glad you can’t have both - while Kanaya may have convinced you to stop drinking, you’re starting to realize you have good reason to do it for yourself. You’re much worse at the things you care about while you’re drunk, and while you care less about being bad at things when you’re not sober, now that you’re sober and thinking about it, it’s somewhat embarrassing.

Of course, you could always drink to not be embarrassed about it. But you like the idea of not giving people embarrassingly badly knitted things, and maybe even enjoying confusing Dave with utter bullshit about the things you’ve learned, instead of doing it completely accidentally when trying to explain solid (well, “solid”, it’s still mostly bullshit) alchemic concepts.

Kanaya is playing gently with your hair now, and you lean into her lap. You look up at her, and she’s smiling comfortingly. You smile uncomfortably back. She turns off the lights in the bathroom, and your headache becomes almost manageable.

“I’d kiss you, but-” She begins.

“Nah, my mouth is nasty right now.” You laugh.

Minutes in the future (but a reasonable number)

You are Kanaya Maryam, and you’re really not sure what to do at this point.

Your girlfriend has started shaking, just a little bit. She’s told you that she’s “just nervous” and that this “isn’t involuntary”, but that really doesn’t help a lot. Frankly, you’d almost rather it be involuntary - fear is probably more unpleasant than tremors.

Rose laughs nervously. You put a hand on her shoulder, and ask “is- is this OK? Is it a good thing? Is this appropriate in human relationships? It’s maybe a little pale, but-”

Rose snickers in a way that implies amusement more than fear, “It’s perfectly appropriate where I’m from… also, I’m pretty sure I’m the one who’s supposed to be nervous.”

“Yes, but we never really had a chance to talk about ‘appropriate cross-cultural modes of relating’, given that it was never the right time for such a conversation, so I’m a little nervous now when it matters.”

Rose cringes, “Yeah, I’m really sorry about that.”

You frown, “That was not a dig, Rose, it was just an explanation.”

She doesn’t look much happier, “Yeah, but it doesn’t make the fact that it was ‘never the right time’ any less my fault.”

“I did tell you I’m taking apologies only from Sober Rose on things relating to your drinking, although I’m not sure I’ll accept that apology anyway, since it’s partly my fault.”

“That’s fair.” Rose shrugs.

It’s a couple hours later when Rose starts looking ill. She’s been looking more glum and anxious as afternoon progresses, but ill is new since this morning. After a while, she runs out of the room and pukes what she’s managed to get down since she threw up earlier, which is not much, honestly, except for a reasonable amount of water. When you pull her hair back, she slumps, and when she stops retching, she starts babbling. For a moment, you think that something very untoward involving beings from the furthest ring has happened to her again, but then you make out the words.

“God, Kanaya I’m so sorry I’m so fucking sorry I’m so pathetic and worthless and I’m sure you hate me and frankly that’s understandable I hate me too I’m so sorry this is fucking pathetic fuck I hate me so much why are you still here surely you’ve already chosen to break up with me I’m such a pathetic sack of shit god just let me drink myself to death me being alive isn’t worth shit I’m so worthless and fuck I can’t die because then everyone else dies but I’m worthless anyway because I’ll fuck something up no matter what because I always fucking do I can’t protect my ability to make reasoned decisions it’s just oh look I’m a fucking horrorterror’s pawn and now I’m a goddamn alcoholic somebody make this girl wrap herself up in a god damn burrito of blankets or some shit so she can’t do anything so at least she’ll actually be protecting her agency not to do anything not that she does anything worthwhile when she has agency all she does is just find more ways of squandering it oh look I really want to drink again glug glug glug now I’m a stupid fucking drunky mess” it’s a constant stream, and she’s sunk into the floor enough that she’s holding her own knees. She’s crying.

You really don’t even know how to begin.The worst part is that you could imagine having said a few of those words when you were most upset. Not the ones about her being worthless (in fact, part of the reason what she does pisses you off is because you think she is worth so much) but the ones about how she constantly squanders agency. You can’t blame her for being a pawn of the horrorterrors (although you can blame her for not listening to you about it!) but you can blame her for her decision to start drinking, and she… she’s so smart! Why can’t she see what you see? Why doesn’t she treat herself as if her goals are worth more than her momentary whims? It doesn’t matter. You’re here to comfort, you can sit in judgement later.

You offer a hand to her. She flinches away at first, but then realizes that it’s an offer, and merely refuses, “you don’t have to pity me Kanaya I know I’m worthless” and you’re kind of tuning her out at this point because you can’t really understand her, but you leave your hand there.

“I don’t think you’re worthless.” You think that’s probably the closest thing to what she needs to hear, and it’s true, too.

“Well, whatever I’ve done to trick you into believing that, I’m sorry.”

“Your writing probably saved my life - in so far as anything means anything out here, at least. Without your knowledge, I do believe my team would have failed.”

“And I literally exist because of that. Kinda can’t fail when success is predestined.”

She’s taken your hand now, and you’re just holding her hand tightly - you’re not sure words are worth much at this point. You really need to talk about this because you’re perfectly OK with this, but this has definitely moved from obviously-flushed-space to what is kind of bordering between flushed and pale,and if that’s not cool, you need to sort that out as soon as this isn’t a crisis, get some boundaries and/or lack of boundaries about this established.

Either way, you’re trying to be comforting, make comforting noises, but it’s only sort of helping. She’s still crying, although at least now she’s not saying really cruel things about the woman you love (is love too strong a word? It’s only been a couple months), but you’re pretty sure she’s still thinking them.

The place she’s curled up looks pretty uncomfortable.

“Hey, do you want to get back to bed, or go sit at a desk or something? If you need a hand up or something I’m more than happy to help.”

“Not particularly.” She says, “I think a bathroom floor is a particularly fitting place to hate yourself more than you’ve ever hated anyone in your life.”\

You don’t tell her that this is kind of silly. That would be mean. You do think it pretty loudly, though. You also don’t tell her that she sounds like Karkat. She did just steal his favorite line about hating himself more than anyone, though.

“Can we please go somewhere that isn’t a bathroom? I understand the decision aesthetically, but it looks quite uncomfortable.” You say.

“That’s part of the appeal.”

“Rose, self-punishment can wait until you’re just embarrassed about your behavior and not when you’ve told me to expect depression and anxiety as symptoms of your soporific wearing off.” You’re not sure if it’s levity or frustration that comes across more - you’re aiming for the first one, but honestly this room smells bad and it kind of hurts you to watch Rose punish herself. Plus, you can’t leave because she asked you to make sure she was watched and she wanted you there as much as possible.

“I assure you, I have perfectly good reasons for wanting to punish myself.” She grumbles. You help her up.

You’re glad that she’s not babbling anymore, that was somewhat terrifying, but you hope that her self-hatred is caused by the substances and not by her behavior.

She continues to dry heave intermittently, but there’s not much more vomiting. You keep the room darker and quieter than you’re used to, but you can deal with that. The anxiety is hard, though.

You just can’t help her. You want to comfort her, to make her feel safe and protected and the problem is that you can’t protect her from the things in her head. Only she can do that, and this is frankly the cost she’s paying for protecting her from the things in her head that would spell her downfall instead of just her discomfort.

You’re proud of her.

It’s hard to get enough water into her - vomiting occasionally means she’s losing water, and also that it’s kind of hard for her to keep much down. You’re believe that it’s long enough between bouts of vomiting that she’s not actually losing much water, but you don’t have a particularly compelling basis for that belief, since you know nothing about the human body and not really that much about the troll body. Still, she doesn’t seem to be getting any more dehydrated.

That night, you sleep and Dave watches her - she’s told you that she may need to be reminded what she’s doing. She does - she wakes up confused and Dave has to talk her out of getting a drink. He does have the advantage that he’s told her that telling her to look into the future and then decide will make her make the right decision. Overall, it feels like you’re pieces in some hilarious one sided game she’s playing against herself, where the version of her who wants to get drunk is ultimately not trying very hard, and the version of her that is trying to stay sober is playing like her life depends on it.

You suppose that it’s not just her life that depends on this game.

Still, you adjust your previous thought - you’re not proud of her. You’re exceptionally proud of her, and you’d fight anyone who tells you that she’s not worthy of being proud of.

The next day is disconcerting. She’s more shaky and confused, and as such, she’s scared in ways she wasn’t before.

“Dave should travel back in time, call this off.” She says at one point.

“Why?” You ask. She hasn’t gotten much worse over the past hour, and you’re getting ever closer to the time that she said things would start getting better in.

“Well, it’s been, what, eight hours since I stopped drinking, and here I am, shaking, confused, slightly nauseous, my skin feels fucking weird, there’s almost no light in here and it’s too bright and my voice is too loud.” She said, “I’m pretty sure I’m going to die.”

You shake your head, “Rose”

“Kanaya, I know that I won’t get to drink either way, I understand that everyone will die but everyone will die anyway. this is important. We’re in a doomed timeline and- ”

“Rose, it’s been almost almost forty hours.”

Rose looks at you, “Oh.”

“Yeah.”

That’s the worst you see her. The nausea mostly passes, and you start being able to continuously get water and food into her, even if she has a limited appetite. Day three rolls around, and she’s not confused anymore, and seems only slightly more nervous than usual. She’s shaking, slightly.

On the fourth day, she’s mostly back to normal, minus some minor shaking and unsteadiness. You watch her less closely, do your own thing, although the group keeps a pretty consistent eye on the alchemiter. Rose doesn’t synthesize anything other than some food and some yarn.

You are Rose Lalonde, you have been sober for FIVE DAYS, and you have an apology to make. You knock on her door. It opens.

“Yes, Rose?” She says warmly.

“Hi, Kanaya.” You say, “Can I sit down? I’m still a little bit shaky, but I want to get this said, because I’ve practically memorized what I want to say.”

She nods.

The feeling is more awkward now. You have to get this right. You sit down on her bed, and she stands in front of you.

“Kanaya, I understand that I have a lot to apologize for: I have made an absolute ass of myself for the past few months. I have effectively blown you off every time we have spent time together, I have been ‘only a shadow of the woman you care about’, I have lied and said I was fine when I was definitely not fine, I have scared the shit out of you, and I just put you through days of watching me suffer because I refused to solve a problem before it got out of my control. I understand that, and I’m sorrier than I’ve ever been for anything. I hope you can forgive me, but I understand if you can’t.”

You haven’t looked into the future. You don’t know if this works. It’s not that you’re not curious, it’s that if you did, and it didn’t, you’d have chosen the perfect words, and you’d have thus denied Kanaya a truthful apology.

But you know almost immediately after you say it was the answer will be, because she’s smiling, and she takes your hand, and she squeezes it, and you know that there wasn’t a more correct thing you could have said.

She pulls you up, pulls you to her, and lets go of your hand, throwing her arms around you. You throw your arms around her as well, reading this as an invitation.

“Accepting the previous conditions about an honest attempt to remain sober going forward, I can forgive you easily.” She smiles.

Your name is Rose Lalonde, and it’s been 32 days since you last drank. Moreover, you didn’t even think about drinking all yesterday. You’re not sure you’re even an alcoholic - it was relatively easy to quit, after all. You were sick, but that’s a physical thing, not a psychological thing. And if you’re not an alcoholic, you could probably drink reasonably.

So you alchemize up some vodka, and some ginger-ale. The bottle of vodka feels familiar in your hand, which makes sense-  it is the same bottle of vodka you’ve alchemized tens of times. That is actually a kind of a weird thought, especially with how much you drank in the two months you seriously drank for. You are not going to think about that.

What you do instead is pour a splash of vodka into your drink. Then a second. Then, on a whim, a third. Probably a couple shots in total, although you aren’t really keeping track - you don’t plan on drinking any more than that, and that isn’t a whole lot, so you aren’t really concerned about keeping track of exactly how drunk you are.

The drink tastes only faintly of alcohol - but then the taste is in your mouth, and that’s nice. It’s a feeling you’ve missed, and you finish the drink somewhat faster than you mean to. You almost manage to stop drinking there, but then the whole thing was nice. Less worries about the future - less fear of the flashes of horrible endings if you messed up.

It isn’t as fun as it used to be, since being around other people is pretty much straight out, but if you can drink reasonably on your own, you’ll probably be able to convince other people that it is safe, and that seeing yourself not drinking in the future could have just meant you weren’t always drinking.

But...more couldn’t really hurt. Just a shot. For the feeling of it.

So you take a shot. It burns in ways both painful and familiar - it’s not that it doesn’t hurt, but that the burn in your sinuses is like water that you’ve been missing, like food when you're starving.

It’s also a source of a little tiny bit of shame, because you didn’t meant to do that, because that wasn't part of the plan, but mostly it’s just nice. This moves you from tipsy to drunk, with your tolerance destroyed as it is. This means that “one more shot” invites “two more shots”, because another one won’t make things much worse. The feeling was pretty cool, and not feeling like the world is going to end because of some stupid decision you make is nice. But two comes with the knowledge that you’re four shots in, and that feels more like problem drinking territory than two shots, and that means that two invites three, because there’s not that much difference between two and three, either.

But there is.

Because at three, the shame is heavier than the enjoyment is light. Because now, this isn’t “like” problem drinking, this is just a problem. You’re just a few shots in, and while you’re less scared of the future than you should be, the last two haven’t hit you yet, so you’re aware that you’re a relapsing alcoholic, a girl who, for a brief moment, thought the rules didn’t apply to her, and isn’t that how it always is?

Aren’t you always the girl who thinks the rules don’t apply to her?  

And that thought invites four and five, because if you’re a relapsing alcoholic, if you are a  girl to whom the rules apply, then you might as well do what a relapsing alcoholic does - drink.

And then you feel shot four, and you’re smashed, and you take one swig from the bottle for good measure, and want to start crying, because it’s been 32 days and you made it so far and you fucked it up. You pick up the treasonous bottle, feel it’s familiar weight in your hands, slightly less than half full, and you smash it against the ground, the rage at yourself and the drink easily overpowering your good sense.

Unfortunately for you, real bottles don’t break like the ones you broke to enter the medium; shards of glass fly in every direction, mostly away and behind you, and clatter to the ground. A few, however, graze your leg, drawing blood. It doesn’t look too bad, but it’s still blood. The liquid inside pours out onto the floor, and your whole room now smells of vodka, and you hate it so much, you hate it you hate it you hate it you hate it.

This wasn’t worth it.

The drink used to be liquid optimism, but it just isn’t anymore. You know too well what you’re doing to yourself, and the shame is almost as sticky as the bliss was, because the shame doesn’t have the depth that it would have if you were three shots in, and you’ll be ashamed when you’re sober again, but it also means that you don’t think everything will be fine.

And that means you’re thinking of the future. You get the worst flash of possible futures again, the one where you push her and she falls with that sick thunk , the one where she holds Karkat back with just a “she’s not worth it.”

She’s right. You’re not.

You lie down in your bed, curl up, and cry.

It’s an hour or two later that you check your laptop.

Kanaya has messaged you. So has Dave. You respond to Kanaya first.

GA: Hello Rose
GA: How Are You Doing?
GA: I Was Wondering If You’d Like To Have Dinner With Me Tonight
TT: I am fine.

You are focused quite hard on not making any errors.

TT: I was away from keyboard knitting
TT: I have already eaten.
TT: Would you like to eat together tomorrow afternoon instead?
TT: I do love talking to you.
TT: Plus, I was going to spend the evening with Dave.
TT: Sorry.

The entire series of messages twists like a knife in your gut, because you HATE lying to Kanaya. You just said you want better for the people you care about, but you’re scared of what she’ll say when she learns the truth, and as far as anyone knows, you’re 32 days sober, and you’re a little driven by pride - you don’t want anyone to know you fucked up.The last lie, that you planned on spending the night with Dave, is a little risky, but you’re pretty sure it’ll be fine.

GA: Oh.
GA: Well I look Forward To Seeing You Tomorrow Then!

Yeah, that feels awful. You tab over to the chat with Dave, hoping to change the subject.

TG: yo
TG: you alright?
TG: rose?
TG: damn it fine i can wait
TG: seems like all anyone’s good for around here anyway
TG: waiting for my crying sister while i wait for us all to arrive in the new session
TG: like
TG: yo dawg
TG: i heard you like to wait
TG: so i put a wait time in your wait time
TG: so you can wait while you wait
TG: yeah that meme isn’t even ironically funny again yet
TG: but seriously this is god awful game design
TG: three year fucking loading screens
TG: gamebro rated this game way too high
TG: i give this game 0 out of 5 hats
TG: just for the loading screens
TG: that’s not even considering the dead dave’s i’ve seen
TG: or any of the other stupid shit
TG: can i give a game negative hats?
TG: fuck yeah i can give a game negative hats
TG: i produce this magazine/pesterlog hybrid
TG: and i rate this game negative 2 out of 5 hats
TG: because it sucks
TG: it’d be like
TG: negative five out of five hats
TG: if it weren’t for these sweet pajamas
TG: and the fact that i’m immortal now
TG: apparently a game making you immortal is only worth three hats
TG: honestly i think i underrated that significantly
TG: yeah it’s 0 out of 5 hats
TG: negative 5.5 hats for everything but the pajamas and the immortality
TG: .5 hats for the pajamas
TG: and then five hats for the immortality

As happens often when you’re away from keyboard for five seconds, Dave has filled your pesterlog with so much bullshit that you have to scroll up to reach the top of it. You smile halfheartedly. On one hand, Dave is pretty funny. On the other hand, you’re pretty sure you’re feeling the worst you’ve ever felt.

TT: You heard me crying?

That’s not the worst sober Rose imitation you’ve ever done - you’re pretty sure it took you forever to type, but the good news is that nobody has been paying attention to you typing in real time yet.

TG: “TG: waiting for my crying sister”
TG: so yeah
TG: what’s wrong?

You pause a moment.

TT: Dave.
TT: Say you did something that you regret.
TT: Say you regretted that something a lot.
TT: How would you tell Karkat?
TG: dunno
TG: i’m not dating him
TG: so it wouldn’t be the same as you and kanaya anyhow
TG: i assume you’re asking about telling kanaya
TT: Dave.
TT: I have literaly walked in on you and Karkat making out.

Of course, you rush to correct yourself, because you’re pretty embarrassed by the mistake, which only makes things worse.

TT: *literraly
TT: fuck that’s not rihgt either
TT: *right *literally
TG: oh
TG: you’re drunk
TG: wow yeah you did fuck up
TT: are you changign the subject from the fact that you are dating Karkat?
TG: you being drunk is a way bigger deal than me dating karkat imo
TG: so you’re changing the subject, not me
TG: also
TG: you *did* ask for my advice
TG: so we could argue about whether or not karkat and i are dating
TG: which i would still argue we’re not
TG: or i can give you advice about how i’d tell karkat
TT: yaeh fine
TT: What should I do?
TG: if i was in a position like yours
TG: i would go apologize to karkat
TG: i wouldn’t beat around the bush about it
TG: like i was a fucking weedwacker and the bush was some invasive species
TT: I maybe kinda already lied to her.
TT: just a little?
TG: alright
TG: well
TG: that was really fucking dumb
TG: but it doesn’t change what you should do
TG: which is go tell her the truth *now*
TG: and apologize
TT: it’s not that simpe!
TT: *simple
TT: what if she’s angry with me?
TT: What if she brakes up with me?
TG: yep dumbest smart person i know
TG: she’ll be madder if she finds out you lied to her
TG: which she will
TG: because she’s not an idiot
TT: She’s definitely not an idiot.
TG: right
TG: you want to hide this from her for the rest of your life?
TG: you want to have to keep a secret like that?
TG: you think you can?
TG: she’ll find out
TG: you get to choose how she finds out
TT: …
TT: fine.
TT: She deserves to know anyway.
TG: yep
TG: go tell her
TT: Can’t I sit here and lament how much she deserved to not be lied to instead?
TG: no
TG: go tell her
TT: Fine.

And you cease pestering him.

He’s right. Kanaya deserves to know.

You spend a moment reflecting on the thing that had you curled up earlier, the awful vision you recalled. Kanaya might have been right that the girl in your vision wasn’t worth it, but  s he doesn’t exist yet. And even if you are a drunk, stupid, unremarkable girl, one who does things even one of your best friends / your brother won’t tolerate, you’re fundamentally unwilling to create that outcome. You might be willing to risk your friend’s lives for a shot, but you aren’t willing to watch that nightmare come to life.

You know without looking what the right answer is. You know without looking that honesty will save you - maybe even the world. You’re not sure if it can save your relationship. You’re also not sure you have the courage for this, though. Kanaya has supported you consistently, and you feel like an absolute traitor.

You are at the door to where Kanaya sleeps, where you expect to find her. You knock on the door, and you hear “One moment!”

But one moment passes, and there she is at the door. She’s beautiful, and she sees you and looks worried, “Rose, are you alright?”

And you’re crying - she’s worried about you. You don’t deserve this, you’re some drunk moron and you do everything bad your mother ever did, abandoning the people you care about to drink. You are at best unremarkable, and Kanaya... she is beautiful and brilliant and so incredibly patient, “No, Kanana. Kayana.” You grit your teeth, “Ka-na-ya.”

You expect the anger in the frown that crosses her face, and it’s there. She is mad, maybe as mad at you as she has ever been. You don’t expect the fear, like the vision where she saves you from drowning in your own vomit.

“I see. I take it you did not have plans with Dave.” She manages to clear the horrified look from her face enough to grimace at you.

“Yeah.” You say, looking at your feet. You can’t look at her. You know you should. You feel like a coward, looking away after you deliver what you’re sure is the worst part.

A pause stretches between you.

You break the silence, “I’m shorry.”

“For what?” She asks, and yeah, she’s fucking mad now, “For drinking? For lying? I mean, I’m glad you are here now telling me the truth, but you promised me that you’d try to stay sober, and… I don’t know if you’ve kept that promise, Rose.”

And then the silence stretches again. You hate the silence. You steal a glimpse at her, and her eyes of full of jade tears, and you hate yourself.

“It wash stupid. I juust. I got arrogogant. I thought I could do anything. I thought, ‘I could manage one drink shafely.’” You laugh bitterly, “Just one, like normal people! Sevenish drinks later…”

“So you’re sorry for being drunk. Well, that’s nice , at least.”

“I’m sorry for lying, too!”

“Rose, you promised me!”

“I kept my fucking promise!” You yell back, “I just made a mishtake!”

“Did you?” Her voice turns acidic, “It certainly doesn’t seem like it!”

You start to shoot back that she has completely misconstrued your promise, that it was just one mistake. You get as far as “if” before this all feels a little familiar, and then the horror sticks the rest of your sentence in your throat.

Your face falls. You know how that goes. You’ve seen it far too many times. If that pushes you across the point of no return, you’ll take a different path. “I reallly did try. I tried so hard. I undersand if you don’t trust me, I did just lie to you. I wash ashamed. I shouldn’t have lied about it, though.”

“Yes, lying was probably the worst decision you could have made. It would have been easy to forgive if I could have assumed you were being honest now, but because you lied before...”

“Kan.” She grimaces at the shortening, but you aren’t going to fuck up her name again, “Babe. I’m sorry I threw all I worked for away. I’m sorry I lied. I’m sorry I fucked everything up. I’m shorry about all of that. But I’m here, now, telling the truth. I hope that you can figure out how to forgive me.”

“We can talk about his later. Right now, I am furious. You…” she pauses a moment, “you should go.”

You turn to walk away, and she sighs deeply, and continues, “I am furious, Rose. But I don’t want you to feel like this is definitely over, there’s just no way for me to handle this right now, not when you’re this drunk and I’m this mad.”

With most of the alcohol in your system, you can’t sleep. About an hour after trying to go to bed, you give up. All you’re doing here is alternatingly crying and staring up at the ceiling, and you’re starting to feel pretty much cried out. You feel a little queasy from the guilt, and possibly also from the drink. You want to think of anything else, to find some way to distract yourself from it, but you don’t really feel like you deserve anyone’s support, and you’re pretty sure you can’t go to Kanaya for support, anyway.

Since you’ve given up on sleeping, you drag yourself out of bed. You walk over to the bathroom you threw up in before, and fill yourself a glass of water. You know you’ll have a hangover tomorrow, but you can probably make it better by drinking water now, and if you’re going to be forced awake by feeling like shit, you’re might as well try to minimize that hangover.

You catch sight of yourself in the mirror and something about that, the image of you slouching drunkenly, reminds you of your mother, just a little bit. You’d thought about meeting the girl who is a younger version of your mother already, but you’re not thinking about her. You’re thinking about the woman who raised you.

Was this how she felt? Did she hate herself with every shot? Did she know what she was doing to you? Did she know you thought less of her for her habit?

You hate every part of that thought. You hate the idea of your mother suffering, the idea of her being unable to stop. You never fully trusted her, but you still loved her. You hate the idea that she felt like you feel now. You hate the idea that she carried the guilt of the fact that she was not a great a great parent when she was drunk, and hate more the idea that she still did that to you anyway. You hate the idea that you had judged her, and she had known, and here you are.

Here you are, a relapsed addict. You thought you were so much better than her, when you weren’t sure that you were a great burden on someone who could have been great if not for you. You thought you were so much better, and yet you are no different.

“As above, so below” pops into your head uninvited. You know you’re misusing it, it’s a statement about the nature of the world, not a statement about the relationship between people, but it still feelings fitting. You suppose as a literal god, you could also be the “above” in that statement - you are the same as other humans that existed before, the “below”. That feels really conceited when you think about it, but you’re mostly drunkenly playing with concepts now.

Sadly, the drunkenly playing with concepts only gets you that far, and that’s not far enough that you’re not drawn back moments later to thinking about your mother. The idea that she knew what she was doing shakes you to your core. It’s the first time you consider that the wizard statues might have been a desperate attempt to make some connection with you or possibly even to express a shared interest rather than just an attempt to mock you. Maybe she was terrible at mothering but was trying.

If she knew, how dare she not stop drinking? You were absolutely dependant on her! You were her child! How did she think that buying you a bunch of shitty w’s would make years of her being effectively unavailable better? How could she not notice that you were feeling mocked and not supported?

That’s unforgivable!

But…

But you didn’t notice your habit was hurting those around you. You failed to remain sober even when you knew that you were (are?) risking a universe and it’s freedom and it’s very existence might rely on your sobriety. You never chose to have the fate of a universe rest on your actions, but she never chose to have a kid, either.

You’re not sure what she did was forgivable, but you really don’t like the idea that it’s unforgivable, because that implicates you in something unforgivable.

If all that is true, then you should try to forgive her. She is dead, there is nothing to be gained by holding everything she did against her- it just means hating yourself more. You also resolve that, while you don’t plan on telling anyone about this, you don’t want to be like her. Unrelated to the questions of what it means for the world, you want better for the people you care about, and you want better for yourself.

Moreover, if you’re going to be the maker of a universe, a creator of all to a world of people, you want to be a better example to those who idolize you, or even alternatingly idolize and vilify you, than your mother was for you. You want to be an example of recovery, and not make those who follow after you think that this was cool or worth doing in an attempt to connect with you.

That provides what feels like a little bit of a resolution. You feel awful still, but you don’t think you’ll feel much better than this. You pull yourself one more glass of water, and then head back to bed.

You toss and turn for what feels like another hour, but eventually you fall asleep.

The next morning is characterized by a bad headache you hope to never feel again. You don’t wind up throwing up, although you do feel a little queasy. Kanaya messages you, and you respond on your headband-computer.

GA: Rose, Are You Sober?
GA: I Am Ready To Talk
TT: I believe I am sober.
TT: I am quite uncomfortable, though.
TT: However, hungover or not, I’d much rather have this conversation than wait any longer.
TT: I am extremely nervous, and would like to at least begin resolving this.
GA: I Am Also Quite Nervous
GA: I Will Be Over In A Minute.

When she arrives, she looks almost as miserable as you feel.

“Are you alright?” You ask, before remembering that you’re fighting.

She shrugs, “No.”

You frown. You’re tempted to say that you aren’t alright either, but there’s a difference between why you’re not alright and why she’s not alright, or rather a similarity. They’re both your fault.

“That was obvious and I should have known it.” You acknowledge

“That is correct.” She says, but there sounds like a hint of amusement in there, and that gives you some hope.

“Are you going to break up with me?” You ask, refusing to tiptoe around the issue, “While it would suck for me if you did, I understand.”

She shrugs again, “It depends. I want you to honestly tell me why you decided to tell me the truth.”

You nod.

“A few reasons, and I’ll start with the most incriminating first. I spoke to Dave, and he told me that there was almost no way you wouldn’t find out eventually. The second was that I had horrible flashes of the future the day I chose to get sober the first time, and a couple of them played through my head again and… I don’t want to be that person. That is a terrible, terrible person, and even if I am an alcoholic” You note mentally that that might be the first time you’ve explicitly said that much of yourself when you weren’t panicking - you’d generally preferred to use euphemisms about ‘having a drinking problem’. Then, having noted that, you continue, “who apparently is capable of mishandling that fact catastrophically, that doesn’t make me a monster. But… I saw myself hit you, Kanaya. I saw that, and I… I can’t unsee it. I can’t unhear you saying that I’m not worth it. I know what I’m capable of, and I refuse to be that person. Lastly.... I’ll admit that Dave had to remind me, but you deserve not to be lied to. You deserve to have a partner who tells you the truth. I fucked up, and I know that an apology isn’t what will make this right, but… I hope it’s a start.”

Kanaya frowns, “It is a start. I think I can live with what happened with those reasons, and I think you’re being honest, so I suppose I’m not breaking up with you… but I am delivering an ultimatum, here and now: I am not willing to accept being lied about this in future. I understand that remaining sober is hard for you, and that you may not always succeed perfectly, but I will not accept being lied to about it going forward.”

You nod. You’re not sure what to say.

She smiles.

You are Kanaya, and you are really not sure how to proceed from here. You and Rose have spent the couple hours since the conversation figuring out where you stand, and you’re still not really sure. She knows she hurt you, and that you’re doing your best to forgive her, but on some level, what she has done isn’t a thing that is fixed by forgiveness.

You have long known that Rose is capable of hiding the truth - you have known that since you first actually spoke to her (“actually” because the first time you spoke to “her”, it was really John on the other end). You suspected she was capable of embellishment since before you met her.

But this is something different.

“Rose.” Now it’s your turn to step out of time in your dance around the point, and drive the conversation through the middle. Well, the not-conversation. It was just an awkward pause before you spoke, “Can we talk about what happened?”

“I suppose, although I don’t know what more there is to say .” She doesn’t sound defensive, just confused, and more than a little sad. “Words can’t undo what happened.”

“That’s true, but there is more to say. I hope that possibly, in saying what I feel, that I can create some space for us to at least work through some of this, and… I don’t know. The last couple hours have been constantly awkward, and maybe if we talk this through, we can at least get past that.” You aren’t terribly certain, but the hope is worth it.

“Alright.” She sounds incredibly uncertain, “Then… can I ask you something? Something I’m a little afraid might upset you?”

You pause.

“Yes.” That takes trust you’re really not sure you’re ready to provide her, but you really, really want this to work. The last month, excluding last night, has been wonderful - if she’s not worth trusting, it’s better to find out sooner anyway.

“I understand some of why you are upset, but I feel like I’m missing something here. I get the being upset about the lying, but I came forward of my own behalf, so it’s not like that shows a real danger of me being able to keep secrets from you. I could understand being pretty upset about the relapse, since I am also relatively nonplussed about that, but you have said repeatedly that that is not why you are upset. Please, explain what is going on.”

“It’s... it’s not about being able to keep secrets long term, Rose. I am wired to trust only scarcely, and to quickly learn not to trust. Where I’m from, misguided trust can easily be a death sentence, if not for you than for possibly hundreds of innocent people. Terezi trusted Vriska, and she killed whole hordes of innocents. We all sort of trusted Eridan, and I paid for that with my life, as did Feferi - I’m only here because I had another backup life I didn’t know about. I trusted you absolutely, Rose. I would have believed if you if you told me anything . You lied to me.” There is jade obstructing the world now, “You lied and now I can’t trust you absolutely. You lied and… And that throws everything into question! How can I know you’ll keep your promises? How can I trust you?”

Rose looks shocked, “I didn’t understand. I’m terribly sorry. I’m also, as always, sorry that life was so dangerous for you before.”

That pulls at your heart - you want desperately to let her comfort you, but that takes trust that you’re still working to rebuild, trust that she has shattered, and so you grimace. “It was rough. I can’t imagine that trust worked that differently in your world, you certainly knew that you’d fucked up when you lied.”

“It was and it wasn’t. I certainly had reason to believe you would be hurt and trust me less for the lie, but a lie like that wouldn’t have been reasonably interpretable as a reason to believe I was dangerous to you where I’m from. Don’t get me wrong, lying to your lover is… wrong. What I did was wrong, even from my context. But there was a distinction. Certainly, a lie on the scale I told would been eventually forgettable if it was forgivable.”

You grimace, and she continues, “I really am sorry. We should have talked about this, but I never even knew it was a thing we needed to talk about. I hope you can find trust for me again, but I suppose if you can’t I understand.”

You sigh, “I am willing to try to trust you again if you are willing to promise that you will never, ever, ever lie to me again about anything that isn’t a wriggling day present.”

“Of course.” She promises.

You believe her.

You are Rose Lalonde, and you are at your home of many years - a hair over four, you suppose, since you about halfway to being twenty three. It took everyone about a couple years after the end of the game to get things together enough to start living in individual dwellings instead of living in the surviving dwellings from the game. None of those were particularly desirable to live in, but the first couple years afterwards were almost as rough as the game years. You were still children, and you were unprepared for the fact that after all the years of stress and fear, none of you were really healthy people in the slightest, and years of childhood isolation (or terror, in the trolls’ case) didn’t make things any better.

As of today, you are three years sober. Tonight, you and Kanaya are having Roxy and Calliope over to celebrate (much to everyone’s disappointment, Jane couldn’t make it because she’s extremely busy with company-related-work). You and Kanaya have spent much of the afternoon and evening together as a result, something that doesn’t happen as much as you’d like recently, because she has to oversee new mother grubs, and you are still writing histories, not game histories as much as old Earth histories, so neither of you has the kinds of weeks long stretches of nothing you had on the meteor.

You miss spending that much time with her, but you don’t miss the boredom, and you don’t miss the fear. You’re glad to have regular things to do, things that are highly unlikely to lead to your death, even if it means that you don’t have as much time to spend around her, or really any of your friends.

She’s in the kitchen right now, finishing up work on some decently fancy Alternain dish - you’ve never been able to pronounce the name, largely due to the lack of capacity in your vocal cords. Thinking about it, you are reminded that the foods of Alternia and Old Earth will pass away unless they are passed on, and that they are at real risk of not being passed on. You were never much of a cook, but you figure you should probably spend some time compiling cookbooks or something - you won’t die for a very long time, hopefully, but you will probably still die eventually.

Either way, you have finished your part of dinner. It’s not as fancy as what Kanaya is cooking, so it took much less time, but that’s fine, because it’s left you able to let people in whenever they arrive, and they should arrive relatively soon. You called that “listening for the door” when you were talking to Kanaya earlier, and she pointed out that in the place you’ve chosen to live, you can hear the door from anywhere, but for you, living somewhere small and getting out a lot is nice, and it provides the opposite of everything you hated about the house you grew up in.

Earlier, you finished cooking earlier , which meant you were free to be extra hands for Kanaya, as well, and occasionally to wax poetic about how beautiful she is - you do it mostly to see her blush jade, which she still does at times, even all these years along. You smile now at the thought.

There’s a knock at the door, and you get out of your chair to answer it.

Later that night, after you’ve eaten and cleaned up, you and Roxy wind up in conversation in the hallway outside your bedroom. Kanaya is talking to Calliope about something, so it’s just the two of you for the moment.

“Three years ago, I was pretty certain I’d never make it past a year, honestly.” You admit.

“Yeah, that was a really bad time.” Roxy agrees

“That might have been the last real Major Crisis we’ve had, though.” You say, “I mean, between the players.”

“I think Jane and Calliope independently having crises about their sexualities and ability to experience redrom at the same time might count. Especially since they had those crises about the same person, and each other.” Roxy points out.

“I don’t think ‘normal late teens/early 20s bullshit’ counts as a Major Crisis, but I wasn’t a part of that one.”

“It was a goddamn thirteen car pileup that I got caught in the middle of, but maybe the fact that it felt like a Major Crisis is a good sign.”

You shrug, “I certainly think so. Life was so unpleasant for all of us when we got here, and it was unpleasant all the time, and now I feel like it’s good more often than not, not rarely great, and almost always at least so-so. The fact that things that have only good outcomes feel like major crises is probably great news.”

She laughs, “I kinda wish it didn’t work that way. It’d be nice if struggling made me not think that small things mattered so much, but it's like my ‘care about bad shit’ threshold moves to fit what level of bad shit I have to deal with on a given day.”

“It would certainly be nice if it worked that way, but… I think it does give some perspective, so it partly does work that way. Part of what makes me not drink on the worst days is the knowledge of how much worse it can be. It’s just that part of the reason that matters is because things were so much worse - I don’t know if I’d have started drinking until years later if things hadn’t been such shit for so long, and I’m not sure I would have had nearly as bad a drinking problem if I’d first started drinking later.”

“You know what? I don’t think it matters all that much. What matters is that you’re happier now, and that you worked hard for it. I’m proud of you.” She beams.

You smile.

Later that night, it’s just you and Kanaya, like it is most nights.

It still feels special, though. That’s something you really like about Kanaya, that being around her can feel precious even when you’ve spend every night with her for the last month. Of course, you suppose this all might feel a little less special if you had more free time in general, but then you’d probably just have done more together to make tonight feel significant.

She’s wonderfully supportive, so much so that you’re not sure that anyone could possibly be good enough for her, but that no longer feels like a negative commentary on yourself; rather, it feels like another reason to be in awe of her.

“I hope that tonight was wonderful.” She says a little bashfully, “I am certain it wasn’t exceptional, but I want you to feel this is an enormous deal, because I know it was not easy.”

You kiss her, gentle and sweet, and then, “I loved it. It was wonderful, and honestly what I needed. Besides, it’s not that big a deal - it’s just a result of doing what I should.”

“Just because it’s something you should be doing does not mean it's something that is not hard and worth being proud of.” She says.

You’re not sure what to say to that. She’s right, you suppose, but it’s almost embarrassing to admit that.

“I just wish I’d been able to give you the level of stability and support I can now when you needed it most.” You say, “Like you did for me.”

She shrugs, “I’m glad you gave me what you did. It meant a lot to me, and I forgive you for not being able to give more.”

You smile, “Kanaya. I know I say this a lot, but I want you to know that I mean it with all my heart. I love you.”

You say the word “love” with all the emphasis you can muster. You try to infuse it with all the poetry and beauty you can manage, try to pour a lifetime of wordsmithing into that one word. Even then, it barely begins to express the shallowest aspect of your feelings, but you are incapable of doing better. All the same, she smiles, like you’ve given her the most wonderful gift in the world, and she flushes slightly.

“I love you, too, Rose.”