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Rose smiles like she knows she is being watched, or perhaps like she has a secret of her own. She unclasps the buckles on her violin case with practiced movements, and rests the violin on her lap carefully so that she can resin the bow. She tightens it, (she never forgets to loosen it after playing) and sits in perfect orchestral posture on the confines of the worn couch.
She crosses her ankles because she is a lady, and if she knew where to direct it, she would raise an eyebrow to the camera as she does so. See, mother? She pauses, two beats, two bobs of a baton and raises the bow to the strings. The strings bursts into flame where the bow touches them and the wood quickly catches as well, but Rose doesn’t appear to be concerned by this. She finishes her ironically cheery tune with a flourish, and perhaps that was the abridged version and perhaps some of those notes could have been cleaner, before she sets the violin down.
Some of the fire has spread to her dress. She sighs and pats it out. If one was watching closely, they may have noticed the slight hesitation before her hand touched the burning fabric, but Rose is already moving again, casually going to the sink to get a glass of water as if nothing is amiss. When the tap spills out spiders instead of water, Rose drinks them anyway, sighing contently as her thirst is quenched and smiling with laconic grace.
‘She doesn’t falter,’ Kanaya says to her supervisor, hundreds of miles above Rose in orbit around the bizarre blue planet that is one of the first New Alternia is extending a hand of friendship to. Friendship sure is a beautiful thing.
Kanaya is tired, she’s been doing this for hours, days, really. She can be excused if the divergences are a little on the nose, now. When she started, she did subtler things, like scrambling all the writing in the library to incomprehensible gibberish.
Rose had spent several hours reading as if nothing was wrong. Hours.
The only moment when she had given pause at all had been almost a day earlier, when Rose was in the kitchen, pouring herself a pot of tea. Kanaya had exploded an entire cabinet, just to see if she would flinch.
Rose had ducked her face down, presumably for protection, but made no other movement. Then she had looked at the cabinet with a suddenly confused face, the first sign of genuine emotion that Kanaya thought she had witnessed. Kanaya hadn’t even checked what had been in it, but didn’t see what the big deal was. It was full of various bottles of alcohol and that was not an uncommon feature in this house.
Rose had gone to the fridge, to the magnetic letters that were affixed there, still spelling out the word “shrew” from an earlier idle fiddle as she had gone about her business. (And it had to be idle. There was no way that she could be directing the word “shrew” at Kanaya. She had no way of knowing who or what was making these things happen. Right?) She flicked the letters together with tidy clacks. The words had spelled my mother always taught me that it was the height of foolishness to waste perfectly good booze” since then.
What an unnecessary sentence. Why would she do that?
‘I thought humans were scared of spiders,’ Sollux says, still hovering unpleasantly over Kanaya’s shoulder. Just the idea of supervision rankles her. (Rose could have pointed out the irony in that statement, but Kanaya didn’t acknowledge it.)
‘Apparently not this one. I can’t get a reaction.’
Sollux sighs. He doesn’t leave.
Kanaya drums her fingers lightly across the keyboard without typing anything. Maybe Sollux will take the hint and go away.
They both watch as Rose goes back into the lounge and turns on the television. Almost out of habit, Kanaya types out a command, and instead of a mundane human soap opera, the television shows an image of a clown sitting alone on the beach.
Rose watches with an expression of polite interest.
‘May I?’ Sollux says.
Kanaya hands him the keyboard.
He types faster than her, but she won’t let him see that this bothers her.
On his command, the clown stands up and climbs out of the television, sits on the couch with Rose.
‘May I offer you some tea?’ Rose says politely.
It’s the first Kanaya has heard her speak.
The clown screams at her in response.
‘A simple “no” would have sufficed,’ Rose says.
Sollux looks baffled. Kanaya feels a twinge of pride that at least Rose didn’t just fold for him. That would have been very annoying.
‘She reminds me of you,’ he says as Rose offers the clown control of the remote.
Kanaya sits up a little straighter and makes an offended huffing noise.
‘No, seriously,’ Sollux says. ‘What would work on you?’
‘I am not a human,’ Kanaya says. ‘I would not need to go through this pathetic rigmarole just to accept that there are things in the universe that I do not understand. I would accept the existence of aliens with grace.’
‘Go introduce yourself, then,’ he says snarkily.
Well, he leaves her no alternative.
Kanaya closes her eyes and concentrates, allows her body to cease existing and then reform on Earth. She appears on the front door step. She is not so rude as to enter her home uninvited. Though, she supposes, that is what she is doing by being on Earth at all.
She presses the doorbell.
‘Friend of yours?’ she hears Rose ask.
Is she speaking to the clown? How preposterous. Kanaya should have gotten rid of the creature before she came. No helping it now.
Rose answers the door.
‘Good evening,’ Kanaya says.
‘Good evening,’ Rose replies, her mouth twitching in a small smile.
‘May I come in?’
‘Oh, am I being allowed a choice?’ Rose says, her eyes widening in clearly false surprise.
‘As much as the constructs of human manners allow you to have,’ Kanaya says.
‘Perhaps I wasn’t raised well enough to be so confined by said constructs.’
‘I think we both know that isn’t true.’
Rose smiles and holds the door open so Kanaya can step through. She leads the way back to the lounge.
‘I wasn’t raised well, for the record,’ she says. ‘But you are correct in the assumption that this has not resulted in an absence of manners. If anything, the opposite may be true. My mother did value a polite child.’
‘Why are you telling me this?’ Kanaya asks.
‘Well, I never pass up an opportunity to criticise my upbringing. And I have to assume that she is watching.’
Kanaya is not quite sure what Rose means by that.
‘I’m afraid I do not know either of your names and so cannot make introductions,’ Rose says, turning so that she is facing both Kanaya and the clown.
‘Sollux, will you remove the clown?’ Kanaya says.
The clown honks a horn in response and does not leave. Kanaya glares at it.
‘My name is Kanaya,’ she says.
‘Charmed, I’m sure. I’m Rose, but I have to assume you already knew that. You are in my home, after all.’
‘I did know that, yes.’
‘Would you like some tea?’
Kanaya allows Rose to serve tea, not through any particular want, but rather so they don’t get caught up in another conversation about manners.
‘So, Kanaya. What is it you are doing here?’
‘I am an alien, this is first contact.’
Rose takes a dainty sip of tea.
‘Alright,’ she says.
‘You are doing the human sarcasm thing, aren’t you?’
‘Well, either you are an alien or you are not. Believing you costs me nothing and I am not the kind of fool who, when my child complains of a monster under the bed, is so convinced in my status in the universe that I do not take the threat seriously and fall ass-backwards into a horror movie.’
Kanaya stares at Rose for a moment and then brings her teacup up to her mouth so that she has something to do with her hands. She recoils from the spiders inside it.
‘Sollux, could you please cancel the reality deviations?’ Kanaya says. Nothing changes.
Rose raises an eyebrow and takes another, more exaggerated, mouthful of tea.
‘Are you representative of the human race, do you think?’ Kanaya asks.
‘I’m afraid I’m probably an outlier. I can refer you to a perfectly ordinary specimen if you would prefer? Or a different sort of outlier. I happen to think the mad ones are more interesting.’
Well, this has been a complete waste of time. Kanaya traces the rim of her teacup moodily. She doesn’t know how she’s going to explain all this to their glorious leader. It may have been a terrible plan, but Kanaya has never known a plan to have come from her superiors to be good. That doesn’t seem particularly relevant to the issue of carrying out her orders.
‘What now?’ Rose asks, after a rather long pause.
‘I need a strong drink and my recuperacoon,’ Kanaya sighs. ‘We won’t mess with you anymore. Probably.’
‘I am overcome with gratitude and relief,’ Rose says dryly. ‘You know, I make a rather exceptional dirty martini and you didn’t explode all my gin earlier.’
Kanaya looks at Rose with confusion. Her black lips are pulled up in what appears to be a flirtatious smile. Is this some kind of trick? Are humans really so quick to accept first contact that they would transition straight to propositioning their alien guests?
‘I should go back to my ship,’ Kanaya says.
Rose smiles wider.
‘Should is one of my favourite words. Let’s talk about what else you should do while I make you a drink. Perhaps we’ll even discuss what you should not do.’
Rose stands and holds out her hand to help Kanaya up as well. She takes it. Maybe Karkat will believe her when she says she was only humouring the human for the glory of New Alternia’s peaceful mission.
Rose’s hand is soft and warm in hers. Look at that, she already has more data. She’s such a good scientist, Karkat has no idea. Rose starts to lead her into the kitchen and Kanaya finds her gaze dropping a few inches to the left of their joined hands where Rose’s rather spectacular sit-globes are providing ample distraction.
One drink can’t hurt.