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It comes as a surprise, but most things in paradox space do. After the routine established in the meteor, anything that’s out of the ordinary is a surprise. Rose isn’t paying attention. It’s only when Terezi points out that the letter has her name on it that Rose gets up, closing her book and tucking it under her arm.
As far as everyone knows, the letter just popped up on the table, when no one was looking. Nobody remembers seeing the letter appear.
Everyone’s eyes are set on Rose as she walks over to pick it up. She turns it over in her hands. It’s a nice envelope, and the letter is heavier than expected. Probably good paper. She doesn’t wait to go back to her room and rip it open. Her fingers expertly open the envelope. Kanaya is reading over her shoulder.
“After the important information I wrote you in my previous letter, I’ve decided to keep things more lighthearted this time. Upon mentioning this to Dave, he made some quip about hell freezing over.
I know, I know. What a prick, right? Although, I can only assume he was much worse when he was thirteen. I can only give you my sincerest apologies. It must have been very hard for you. Must still be, hopefully.
I’ll admit that my vision isn’t nearly as powerful as I’ve claimed. I know not the whereabouts of your companions, nor even if all of you remain alive. All I have is approximate knowledge of things. While I’m sure other’s would kill for this power, sometimes I wonder if it would be better to be blissfully ignorant.
Well, that took a quick turn into outright depressing. Ignore my ramblings, had I the time to redo this, I would. Alas, time is of the essence.
I do hope you and your Dave are friends. For all I complain, I could not do without him. I’ve kept our blood relationship behind sealed lips so far, but I don’t think it would make a difference.
Unfortunately, this is another one of those letters where I simply don’t have the time for refinement. Remember the instructions I’ve given you on my previous letter. It is the one about your niche in paradox space. Do not forget this.
Best Regards
Rose Lalonde”
Rose and Kanaya slowly look over to Dave. He was the first to take his eyes off Rose once it was apparent she knew the letter was for her.
“You’re not nearly as funny as you think you are, Dave, but you certainly are as much of a prick as this says.” Rose rolls her eyes. Kanaya sighs and walks off to occupy herself with rereading an old favorite.
Dave looks up at Rose over his shades. “What the hell did I do to deserve a tongue lashing this time? C’mon, sis, I’ve been sitting here writing some sick rhymes all day.”
“Which means it’s especially suspicious that you didn’t see this appear.”
Dave quirks a brow, one caterpillar slowly raising above his shades. “Wait, you’re blaming me for writing that shit? Why the hell would I do that?”
She pushes the letter towards him. He does a quick read over then frowns up at her.
“This is your handwriting, but somehow the idea that your alternate wrote it is less plausible than I wanted to fuck with your mind, so I exactly copied your handwriting and sneaked this incredibly fancy papered letter onto the table.”
Rose visibly falters before crossing her arms over her chest. “I don’t know. As far as I know, you could be pretty good at mimicking handwriting. Don’t act like Sweet Bro and Hella Jeff is the pinacle of your artistic skill, because I know you too well.”
“If you know me so well,” he lifts his hand off the notebook he wrote in, showing off the smudges on his palm “how come you didn’t remember I’m left handed. The ink on that shit is fucking pristine.”
From the side, Terezi snorts in laughter. Rose’s cheeks go the slightest pink and she rips the letter off his hand. “Fine. Whatever.”
She turns to leave, before the raging hurricane inside shows itself.
“Y’know, you might wanna try learnin’ a thing or two from that letter.”
Rose slowly looks over her shoulder at Dave, brows drawing together. Dave’s shoulders go up and he returns his attention to his notebook.
By the time the next letter shows up, Rose has nearly forgotten everything about the incident. It’s been several months since they arrived at the meteor, and Rose has gotten used to her new room, her new house. She’s used to all her roommates, even the mysterious honks in the middle of the night.
The next letter appears in a ball of fire, doused with coffee due to Kanaya’s jumpy reflexes. For a moment, the oily film atop the beverage just makes the fire worse, but it soon falters out into nothing. Rose’s eyes raise to meet Kanaya’s, before she reaches out to gently take the letter into her hands. As expected, most of it is unreadable. Rose dusts off the ash.
“-hence, we are in the deepest of shits. I’m not sure how much more time we have left. It has been hectic. I believe I have miscalculated how long until our demise. For now, all I have to numb the pain is the alcohol, and the knowledge that things might still go right somewhere in paradox space.
Sometimes I find myself wondering why I didn’t write more happy endings.
Of course, that’s unimportant to you. I wish I could say I had something new to tell you, but the closer I get to the day where I die, the more my vision fades and falters.
I’m sorry.
Rose”
There is a deep stinging in Rose’s heart and she can neither explain why, nor bring it up to Kanaya. After minutes of silence, the troll slowly reaches over to set her hand on Rose’s shoulder. Rose’s eyes meet hers again and she opens her mouth to speak. Nothing comes out. Rose shakes her head. Kanaya moves to retreat her hand, but Rose sets hers atop it. She smiles and shakes her head again.
“I’m alright. I was just surprised to see another letter.”
“What does it say?”
The smile fades off Rose’s face. “Nothing much.”
Rose is alone in her room when the third letter shows up. She’s half asleep, dozing with her head propped up on her palm in front of her notebook. The room is dark except for a candle, shining down on her writing. The long dry lavender ink doesn’t glisten.
When she opens her eyes, her attention caught by a far away honk, there is a pristine letter in front of her. Rose sets her pen down, eyes widening. She does a quick look over of the room, then takes the letter in her hands and opens it up.
“It has been brought to my attention that my previous letter is both overly dramatic and lacking in any useful information. David has insisted I give you some interesting tidbits from the far away, and also alternate, future. I insisted that it wasn’t quite the future and that all time and dimensions were occurring at the same time. Dave promptly started fake sleeping.
I hope your Dave isn’t as obnoxious as this one.
Anyway.
No, you’re not going to get any taller after you hit 15. A shame, I know. But you will fill out rather nicely, if I can say so myself.
I have written an award-winning, thought-provoking, critically-acclaimed, money-printing book series. So, yes, you do have it in you, but it will take you many words to get there. Don’t let yourself fall into procrastinating just because you know you’re talented. Write, and never stop doing so.
Except for eating and such. Please do remember to eat. And socialize.
I’m going way off track here, but I’m scrawling this in a limousine on my way to Dave’s stupid premiere. If you think he’s insufferable now, just be glad he’s not famous.
Well, shit, I’ve arrived. I’ll just cut this one short.
Best Regards
Rose Lalonde”
Rose stares at the letter for a long time, processing the information within. By now, she’s sure this really is some alternate of hers, but she’s not so sure about the content. It all seems so random, following no logical pattern.
Perhaps something went awry in shipment.
Maybe she’s not just getting the letters in the proper order.
Rose makes sure she’s extra nice to Dave the following day. Months go by before the next letter.
Rose wakes up with a hangover and a girlfriend. Matesprit. Whatever. She also wakes up with a letter on her face, which promptly goes flying across the room when she shoots straight up into sitting. It takes her a moment to remember the turn of events surrounding the letters. She tentatively gets up and walks over to gently grab the letter, feeling like she’s about to flop over from sheer nausea.
Rose hesitates once more before opening the letter.
“I am currently sitting in a meeting with my publicist, dealing with a tabloid scandal involving me, and some B-list actor that you probably will not know from your dimension, hence I will refrain from namedropping him. The only reason he’s famous is due to Dave’s ridiculous flicks. I spent exactly 15 minutes putting up with him at one of Dave’s premier galas, so apparently I’m about to marry him.
Surely you see the problem with this situation.
I would never stoop so low as to willing cavort with someone who willingly worked with Dave.
Also, I don’t do men.
Regardless of my situation, I thought this would be a good time to drop a bit more lore on you. After all, I’m just sitting here nodding politely as if I’m listening to anything this third rate politician is telling me.
The world as it stands is on the verge of being overtaken by Betty Crocker. Dave and I are leading the resistance from the shadows, but soon enough we will have to take our place in the battlefield. I know we will survive that.
I also know we won’t survive the confrontation with Crocker herself. It is a funny thing, to be faced with your imminent demise, knowing how many months you have left. I wish I could say that I had so much to live for, but I’ve always known it would end this way, so I didn’t bother making plans for the future.
My books series is about to wrap up. It has always been about subverting Crocker’s regime, but the last volume is far more overt about it. With the way the political climate is, I’m sure I will have to go on the run due to inciting anarchism.
This, I do not mind. Few things could make me happier than the final few last “fuck you”s I could send towards Crocker.
We still have a few months. I will try to wrap up these letters, but I’m unsure of what else I could tell you.
Best Regards
Rose Lalonde
PS: Dave has pointed out that it wasn’t entirely nice to drop something like my orientation in the first couple of paragraphs, as you might not have figured that out yourself yet.
Deepest apologies, I suppose.”
Rose is unsure if she should laugh, but she does so anyway. Then, she takes another drink. Hair of the dog, right?
It only takes a few days for the next letter to show up, tucked in gently between a bottle of white wine and Rose’s notebook. Rose doesn’t know how it got there without toppling the bottle, but she’s not about to argue with paradox space.
“Rose
Read carefully, for this is the last letter I’ll send you. Though, I have no way of knowing what order you will get them, if you will get them at all.
But that’s not important right now. Things have gone to shit fast. Faster than any of us can keep up with. I mentioned in my first letter that sending these letters was akin to flinging a light into the darkness with the hope that it would reach someone. It was never my intention to save myself.
My final moments have come and I unable to stop my selfish urges.
Do not falter in your quest. Do not let yourself be lead astray by the whispers. Do not let weakness overtake you. Do not do as I did.
And, if a dying woman can have one final wish, please, take care of Roxy.
Good luck.”
Rose’s stomach tightens into a knot. She stares at the words on the page for hours.
Is that it? The last letter she will ever get from her alternate self? Or, perhaps, she is still due to get something else, owing to the lack of chronological order of the already received deliveries.
Lead astray by the whispers? Check, and check long, long ago.
Falter in her quest? What quest? Rose had been far too interested in breaking the game to pay any attention to some quest.
Weakness?
Rose grabs the bottle and takes a sip, throwing the letter into the trash. Balls of crumpled up paper, filled with words in purple, break its fall.
It wasn’t as if Rose could do anything to change her fate anyway.
It is a month to the third anniversary of their arrival at the meteor. Rose sits around, nursing a bottle of vodka and reading some of her old writing. She’s not even surprised when she finds another letter, between the pages of the long closed book. If there is one thing in life that Rose wishes she knew, it was how these letters were sent. She sets down the bottle, the book lays open on her lap. Her fingers are clumsy as she opens it. The letter comes out ripped, but not enough to be unreadable.
“My dearest youngest alternate.
I will go on with the assumption that you were not expecting a message from me. As you might have been able to figure out, I am your older self from an alternate dimension.
I have been gifted with the uncanny ability to see through the layers of time and space. I’m sure you are familiar with this power, if only in a smaller scale. Soon, with practice, I’m sure you can get on my level.
I would love to continue laying praise on you, or even reassure you that everything will be alright. Alas, that would make me a liar.
Things are going to fucking suck.
I cannot see deep into your timeline, but I can tell things will go astray. I don’t know what either of us can do to prevent it, or if we can even change the timeline at all. But it is no use to live if we do not try.
These letters will be like flinging a light into the darkness in the hope that we can see the path ahead. I don’t know if you will be able to get them on time, but I’m not letting that stop me. For now, I must go.
Best Regards
Rose Lalonde.”
There is just enough vodka in her for Rose to let herself cry.
The next time a letter shows up, they already know they’re close to landing in the new session. It comes through on fire, when Rose is alone with nothing but her thoughts.
Rose lets it burn.