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When Jane was eleven years old, her mailbox exploded.
After that, she went to live with a succession of Crocker relatives, each more vague than the last. Gamzee, of course, went with her, usually in the guise of some patchy white and gray animal, most often a billy goat, but sometimes a ball python, sometimes a disheveled angora cat, and sometimes a messy bunny rabbit. One time, when an aunt had taken her on a beach vacation, he had turned into an eel and promptly screamed that he was drowning, DROWNING! It was the only time in her life Jane had ever rescued him, splashing into the shallows, forcing him to take his kid goat shape that he liked the best, and remain on her lap for the rest of the afternoon while she sat on the beach towel wishing she had a book, and thinking about sand in uncomfortable places.
She hated her daemon.
When she was young, she had tried to keep it a secret, thinking that it was bad and wrong to despise something this vehemently. She remembered waking up on her twelfth birthday, not worried that the mailbox would explode again, but filled with the gross realization that Gamzee was the worst thing in the world. He didn't even count as a person, and everyone kept telling her that he was part of her and they were wrong. Horribly, horribly wrong. They felt like two separate people, not one joined soul.
When as she grew up, she slowly began to stop worrying what people thought. Gamzee was shy, and as likely to ooze bonelessly into the ventilation system of a building, and trundle along without Jane's constant presence as he was to stay with her in company. He couldn't control much, but he did control who was allowed to see him. It meant that Jane had to do the awkward explanation of why she had no daemon so often that she started accidentally letting her apathy toward the lack of Gamzee's direct presence in the room show.
People began to whisper that she might be a witch. She doubted it. Jane Crocker was certain about a lot of things in her life. She was certain that she wasn't a witch, any more than her grandmother—the only relative still living with whom she hadn't lived—despite all the scurrilous rumors. Ooh! She wanted to give the rumor mongers a piece of her mind!
Gamzee, of course, didn't want to do anything, except for maybe sleep in sunbeams.
People who knew her had stopped making assumptions. She couldn't do much about the people who didn't know her and thought that she was a witch when Gamzee was not in evidence, or thought that her soul was ugly, crude, unreliable and messy when he was. Somewhere along the way the universe had gotten something ridiculously wrong. Maybe it was to make up for her prankster's gambit: the universe had pulled the worst prank of all on her. Maybe this was what she deserved for being so hateful. Gamzee might be exactly what he was at face value: a manifestation of everything ugly inside Jane, an ugliness with unfathomable depths, and a terrible taste in music.
The only problem with that theory was that Jane was pretty certain her depths were fathomed. Her taste in music might not be great, but she knew the dark crevasses and hidden valleys of her personal sea floor quite well, actually. To whit, she knew there was something deeply wrong with her because she disliked Gamzee so much, she knew she held onto grudges far too long, as well as being in possession of a temper that could raze a city to ash if unleashed under the grim control of one of those grudges, she knew she was skeptical beyond reason. Jane Crocker knew, in short, that she had failings, many of them, and she was generally aware of what they were. She was friends with a good many people who didn't know theirs, after all, so she should know all about what the unaware were like.
Di-Stri, good friend, and favorite new baking recipe experimental hamster, for example, could write books on all of the masks and layers and bridges he built across himself to keep from looking too closely at those deeps (which he stared into anyway because Dirk, while brilliant, was incredibly dumb). Ro Lal? Ro Lal was almost entirely an abyssal sink hole, and while she had a stable surface, she didn't see the need to go spelunking all that often, wonk wonk. Jake Oh-dear-diddly English probably had at least a sea cave, of which he was totally unaware, and Jane was done with it. She knew her friends, and above all, she knew herself.
It wasn't even that Gamzee contrived to be ungroomed within three seconds of a hour long session with bath, brush, hairdryer and towel. It wasn't just that he always looked underfed and malnourished. It wasn't just that he had at some point managed to acquire a host of injuries that spoke volumes about Jane that no one was rude enough to voice aloud. It was that he was uncertain.
Jane had been certain her entire life, exploding mailboxes or no. If there were questions, she found the answers. She was never one for secrets—and given how the few she had kept had nearly destroyed her teenaged years it was understandable—and certainly not for lies. Alright, Gamzee never lied to her, but boy did he evade like a motherfucker. And he was mysteriously one of the most foul mouthed sentient creatures it had been her misfortune to meet. Even the boys and the TA in her programming classes had been more capable of keeping their potty mouths in check. That TA had been particularly inventive, too.
She wasn't even certain if he had actually settled yet. She was a young woman, and it hadn't been until her third year of college that Gamzee had settled into the supposedly all white (oddly, instead of leaving white cat hairs everywhere, he seemed to collect dirt and jam—by the bright blue sky did he have an affinity for all kinds of jam and he some how managed to get himself smeared with mint jelly after Jane had given all her breakfast sweets to Roxy in despair. There was no stopping Gamzee on a jam roll—until he was the same patchy gray white blotched mess he had always been) fluffy housecat that she knew today. Still, there was a niggling thought in the back on Jane's mind, hiding in the same place as the thought that she might really be a witch, that pointed out that Gamzee had never told her he had settled, and it would be exactly like him not to have settled at all but just be pretending for Jane's sake.
It had made people think Jane herself was not ready for adulthood and life. It had been embarrassing to be on constant trial, and told by everyone “you're so mature.” It had been really embarrassing when “for your age” had been tacked on even after she was twenty one. It had been embarrassing when people thought Jake Nine-Guns-Is-Never-Too-Many English was more mature than she had been just because Aranea had settled when he was, what, thirteen?
Now, though, she had basically, sort of, made peace with the fact that her daemon wasn't part of her, didn't represent her, and was generally looked down upon and ridiculed by all. Her cousin's daemon had tried to eat him once, and she hadn't even felt any pain. That was probably a good thing, as it had given her enough time to find a broom and give that tentacular monstrosity a few solid whacks, just in case G-cat couldn't slide his way out of trouble. Neither Meenah nor Jane ever spoke about the fact that—except for the dirt attraction—Gamzee seemed to have settled on the same form their grandmother's daemon had. Again, Jane suspected he hadn't really settled, but was laying low and keeping his shifting to dark, hidden corners.
He had really loved the billy goat form, and Jane never understood why he hadn't taken it, when he could have taken any form he pleased.
Jane looked over at Gamzee, puddled out in the dying afternoon sun on her bay window seat, completely ignorant of the snow outside. He was looking much cleaner than usual, in that, if John was here, John would probably assume that Gamzee was actually a ratty throw pillow. And then probably be brutally sliced to death. Gamzee was honestly the most timid, cowardly piece of soul in existence, but something about John set him off so badly that after one week, in which John's entire bedroom had been destroyed, and stolen property started appearing in it, Jane had been sent to other relatives.
It had been humiliating and unfair to John, who was the nicest person and the cleverest prankster of the age. Still, Jane had taken the fall on that one, claiming that she had written those horrible messages on the walls all about what a selfish ungrateful son John was. After all, she had still been operating under the belief that Gamzee was a piece of her (and she by extension was a piece of him). Now she wasn't sure what they were. Maybe she had never been born with a daemon at all, and Gamzee had just found that convenient and settled into the expected role on a whim. Capricious little puffball.
“Dirk is going to be here very soon you know,” she called out, waving an oven mitt.
Gamzee's triangular ear twitched like it might for a fly. Jane had a pretty good idea that his thought process was running something along the lines of “yesssss, another righteous warm motherfucking lap to get a snooze on.” Gamzee's ease around Dirk, and utter love of some of Dirk's frightening puppets had been one of the things that made Jane certain that 1. she could trust Di-Stri with her life, and 2. she would be a total noodle head to trust Di-Stri with anything else. Still, she should still warn her dopey cat, who might have forgotten the most important detail, “He will be bringing Nepeta, remember?”
This news just caused Gamzee to roll over into a spinal contortion that made Jane wince, and streeeeeetch out his pink little kitty paws. He didn't even open his eyes.
Jane went back to mixing the frosting for her new cupcakes. She wished she was better at timing. Dirk had the unfortunate habit of arriving right when you didn't expect him, and having cupcakes fresh from the oven and cool enough to ice, and then serve still warm was an art form.
“Sister be loving the motherfucking cream cheese. It's all up in the sky to her,” Gamzee commented unexpectedly.
“It's confectioner's sugar plus butter and cream for Dirk,” Jane was glad that the usual baking kibitzing had been put on hold until after the batter was in the oven. “You know I only do cream cheese frosting for red velvet, and we are beyond red velvet.”
“Nah man. Don't be down on the cream cheese. It gets a fucker feelin' smooth and tired and full and loved. Just like an absolute hug, and the twinkle of merry tears. Full on with the friend care in the pumpbuiscut. You shouldn't waste any of that feeling what you've got for 'em all by shoving it away deep inside your chest. Should show it every day all up in the cream cheese. You know they be worrying sometimes, what with the new year all coming on in those piles of sparklers and stars.”
When Dirk arrived there was cream cheese frosting on Jane's cupcakes.
They laughed and ate as Nepeta chased Gamzee all over the kitchen and finally cornered him on top of the oven hood, doing the little spider step two dance. Some things never changed, even when ten years ago it had been a lioness tearing all over a sunny park after a bunny rabbit and then a small white and gray kid, who would occasionally go up to strangers and bleat pitifully for succor—thus telling the huntress exactly where he was.
That was when Roxy dropped in, her scarf still too long despite being wrapped up nearly to her ears, and Calliope hidden in her pocket, causing Gamzee to lash the tail Nepeta was playfully tugging, drop to the floor, and butt his head all over Calliope's four-eyed furry black face as soon as the small kitten began to pad daintily towards Jane's sugar bowl. Roxy's eyes lit up at the sight of the cupcakes, and even more after tasting the frosting. Jane remembered the earlier argument about cream cheese and wondered yet again, how Gamzee got a hold of half of the information he imparted.
“Can't stay too long, Batterqueen,” Roxy blew out her cheeks theatrically. “I'mma doin' some science tonight.”
“Seriously?” Dirk waved a cupcake under her nose. “Why look, it's the last chance train all aboard good food station. Don't you want your ticket punched to sugary high heaven?”
Roxy made a grab, but it vanished from Dirk's grasp, and Jane saw him sticking it into the pocket that had been holding Calliope, the frosting top poking high enough not to touch any fabric. Ooh, he had been learning, and it would be against her prankster code to warn Roxy, who was flipping through her phone quickly. “You're defs terrible and the worst, Mr. Strider, but tonight I got me a meeting of witches and wizzards, and we gotta probe the veils of the unknowns. I only stopped by to ask if anyone had seen Jake's most recent video of the blue crystal caverns of how-the-hell-hasn't-the-dude-died-yet?”
“I've been baking all afternoon.”
“Me neither. He didn't try to wrestle with a shark in this one, did he?”
“Nah, just some sweet rappelling that makes me wish I'd ditched the science gig and gone full adventurer instead.”
“Oh but the secrets of space-time,” Dirk protested genially, angling Roxy's phone to give Jane a full view of a spectacular cavern going past at high speed. She noticed that the sound was off, and suspected that was probably a good thing.
“Not space time,” Roxy said over Dirk's shoulder. “Soul time. New theories on daemons and some jazzy experiment stuff Jade's got planned with her freaky Bec-dog. We are going to be getting all theological. Perf and unsanctioned dubious experiments of nature. I mean, perf and unsanctioned experiments of a dubious nature. Obvs. Yech. I'm never gonna get control over this weird thing we all call communication, huh?”
Dirk and Jane shared a glance. They both tried not to talk about the nature of their daemons too much. Jane half suspected Dirk knew all of her fears surrounding Gamzee, and Dirk's relationship with Nepeta was, like the rest of him, private.
“Anyway, same time tomorrow? Let's make a vid showing Jakey on what he's missin' globe trotting like he does.”
“You mean, like, cupcakes?” Dirk said non-plused.
Roxy's nod was firm. “All the cupcakes! And the good cheer and friendly faces. Right, Janey?” Kissing her on the head Roxy scooped up her tiny daemon and departed in a swirl of scarf.
“I'd better head out, too, or I'll freeze on the way back,” Dirk said, when only one cupcake was left on the plate.
“Sure thing. Good job on the pocket plant. You're learning, young grasshopper.”
“As ever, magical prankster sensei.”
As Dirk walked to the hat stand for his own coat and scarf, Jane put the last bowl in the dish drainer, and looked out into the dark of her front yard, with its single spindly tree, only visible thanks to the snow papered to the trunk by stray gusts of wind.
Her father had made her a tire swing hanging from a tree branch in a different yard of a different house very long ago. She remembered the little red flag lifted high in the air, because it was her birthday, and birthday girls got presents, some of which arrived in the mail.
From the air vent between the first floor and the second floor, Gamzee yeowled. A scrabbling of paws against aluminum, their claws fully out echoed and re-echoed until he was oozing out of the air vent above the refrigerator, yellow eyes open and wide. Jane turned from the window, hastily wiping away tears.
It was like the sudden swish and crash of the breakers at the beach long ago, when he was screaming inside her head that he was drowning DROWNING! while she had been floating out in the water thinking foolish thoughts about what might happen if she flipped over and just breathed in. It was like those dreams where she had screamed and yelled at John for still having his father alive and for not treating him with any of the respect and love that he should have. It was like that day over fifteen years ago when Gamzee had charged Jane, slamming into her, all horns and muscle, before the explosion did. She remembered how numb she had been despite a charging mountain goat headbutting her into the house, and pulling one of the kitchen chairs he liked to eat under the door handle.
Dirk was trying to say something, but Gamzee was growling a sound that didn't sound anything like a small white cat growl, even as he hopped up around Jane's shoulders and curled there, butting his small head under her chin. Memories of conversations and unspoken moments when Jane was curled up tight with only her daemon for a companion in the realm of the dead that had sealed around her rocketed past.
“Jane.”
“Jane!”
Things focused out of the heaving mass on the smell of frying onion, and Roxy's voice saying very calmly. “I'm right here. I'm right here. C'mon. Listen to me Janey. I'm right here, and you're here, and we're all here. Dirk even had the bright idea of calling Jake, and Jakers is setting up his webcam as we speak. Might have done everyone a whole dollop of miracle whip better if he had called Jake after he called me, but you know Dirkininny. Gotta panic first when people are going off his script. Oh Jesus, your eyes are focused. Um. Totes didn't mean that last bit. Jane, you know we're all here, right?”
In her lap all of the bits and pieces of herself that she shoved away stared up at her hopefully, as though trying to convince her to buy the bowl of—“Was it you or Dirk who tried to feed my daemon a whole tin of anchovies by putting it in my lap while I was in the middle of a panic attack?” Jane asked suspiciously.
Dirk, who was making something on the stove that must involve frying onions—and given his extremely limited cooking abilities Jane hoped he was making scrambled eggs for their dinner and nothing more advanced than that—raised a cautious hand. “No offense, Jane, but your daemon kinda flips his shit to the stars and back when pressed to the wall. It was an attempt at a peace offering so I could get you seated before you fell.”
His hand was full on band-aided. Jane even recognized some of her Crocker Corp red ones. She glared down at Gamzee. “You know better.”
Gamzee had the temerity to mew.
“I hope Nepeta bit you.” Jane looked guiltily towards Roxy. “Weren't you going to do science?”
“I can totes do science right here, right now,” Roxy grinned, producing a set of wands from her sleeve that were probably chopsticks. “Science of sleeping bag arrangement! You know we haven't done the sleep over thing since you moved in?”
“I was 24 when I moved in, and I haven't had a slumber party since I was 16. Remember the fiasco of Jane's 16th birthday party that we're never speaking of again?”
“Well then it's high time we watched terrible movies courtesy of Jake English streaming whatever shit he's got from the other side of the world, and eat bad food courtesy of Dirk Strider's take out box upbringing, and then play mad wizard cards, courtesy of of Ro Lal's in motion plans for science!”
“Dude, you make up the rules to wizard poker every time we play,” Dirk complained.
“I do not! Wizard Poker is legit awesome shit.”
Jane looked down at Gamzee, wishing the tight feeling across her lungs would go away. How many years since the last panic attack? She wanted them gone, and out of her system for good. But, she checked that the cover of the argument was still going strong, and then petted Gamzee with one finger up the center of his forehead and down his spine just as he liked, “You can't keep protecting me from all those thoughts and feelings forever. If that is what you are doing for me. If that's what I'm doing for me.”
Gamzee purred and curled up like he was going to sleep—with half of his head in the bowl of anchovy oil. Of course. He could evade direct questioning with the best of motherfuckers. Jane Crocker sighed. Part of her, the same part of her that loved baking, that could appreciate pranks just as easily as pulling them, and was afraid of sudden noises, was a bit of a mess, on the outside, at least. But, he was also right in that a new year was coming and change could always come around again.