Archive of Our Own ^beta

You'll always remember the first time you found one of the miracle snails, broke open that pale shell and that motherfucker was red on the inside. Beautiful, brilliant red, redder than the reddest blood, red as the dawn but with the burning hidden away. It ain't no coincidence; that color has always up and given you feels of surface calm and inner fire.

****

After the game, Karkat comes to live at your hive for a while. His lusus is all being understanding about it, and you know he wants to make sure you're doing alright on your own before you both have to leave. You don't tell him you're good, you don't tell him that it was all just the stress and the blasphemous aliens and the white motherfucker what wouldn't shut up at you even when you closed Trollian. You don't want to talk about any of that anymore, and this way you don't got to talk about Karkat leaving, either.

You manage to coax him out onto the beach surprisingly frequently, show him the miracles in it - the shells buried beneath the surface, the colors in the sand, all the little crawly beasties that live out there. It was like a boundary zone, you'd explained. The border between the sea and the land, one absolute and another, and here they mix and swirl and reality goes in and out with the tide. He'd snorted derisively at that, but he taught you the word liminal anyway.

There's nothing he motherfucking hates more than the feel of the sand up between his toes, but he helps you build sandhives anyway. Yours are all shored up and stable, you got the feel for the right mix of water and sand and the structural know-how what goes into a great-looking sandhive, but his always fall down from dryness or wetness or just plain overbalance, and dissolve back into the beach. He likes having something to do with his hands, though, and you've gotten him used to the way the beach takes back its own when you've had your fun. Even your best sandhives have been swallowed by the insatiable tide the next time you think to go looking for them.

When you're done for the night, and the morning's on the horizon, you trek back to the real hive, the one that's not going to wash into the sea. You always make a godawful motherfucking mess, tramping through the sand and spreading it everywhere, so he always walks ahead and somehow manages to make practically no mark at all what couldn't have been just the thrashing of the tide. Watching him walk all ginger-like is motherfucking hilarious sometimes, but you make up for getting your mirth on by helping him get that dreaded sand from all the places it up and gets itself. You curl up on the sofa and watch romcoms with him well into the morning before heading off to the sopor.

*

Come an evening, you're finishing breakfast and he's talking. He never gets to be eating much first thing in the evening, says his guts get to be all motherfucking touchy about that, and he can't take the silence without having to fill it with words what you already up and know.

"You're down to one and a half pies a day now," he says, leaning against the countertop. "You remember how to keep going from here, right? The portions are in the thermal hull, the schedule's on the thermal hull, you're still good with that, right? The transition period might be a little confusing, but all you've got to do is stick to the schedule." You nod and let his worrywords withdraw all like the surf around your ankles. He waves his hand in front of your face. "Gamzee? Are you listening to me?"

You swallow your last bite of food. "Of course, best friend. What's got your anxiety on so hard now?"

"You can do this on your own, right?" His hands got their grip on the counter kind of tight. "You got this covered without me?"

"You going somewhere, bro?" you ask.

"Just for a bit - a week, maybe. Or more? Not permanently, though, you know where to find me, and I'll come back before you have to leave. There are things I've got to do, you know how it is."

You nod. You know Karkat's been getting his revolution on, laying the wicked plans for turning the world you know upside down and remaking it again, but better. Maybe. You don't got the knowing of what he's doing specifically, but it's better that way - you don't know but that you might say the wrong thing to the wrong motherfucker before it's time, and then one evening you'll wake up to find that your moirail and the few of your friends who actually survived Sgrub have up and disappeared.

"Don't worry about me, bro," you tell him. "Shit got all kinds of motherfuckin easy when you showed me the right way to go about it. Not like I'm going to up and forget all of that bitchtits advice just because you're gone a few days."

He gives you one of his rare smiles and relaxes a bit. "Good," he says, and comes over to wrap his arms around you from behind, putting his chin on your shoulder so he can talk right at your hear ducts. "It'll be good practice for you. I won't be here forever, you know. If you ever go back after this-- what I mean is, you have to learn how to do this for yourself, Gamzee. Even when I'm gone for good."

"You won't," you say, but you know he's telling truths. He may not tell you much, but you know what's coming anyway, and it's a hard knot of terror in your gut, the knowledge that this will all up and end. You shy away from the thought and focus on the last bits of your breakfast, on the feel of his arms around you and the security that comes from a list in blocky capitals on the fridge, and the constant cycle of the tide outside your door. It doesn't matter if your sandhives fall down, because the sea comes and washes them all away again, a blank slate and a new canvas every day, every day forever.

"I will," he says, but it's not a promise or a threat, just a statement of a fact for the record, a weary acceptance. "You have to be ready when they come for you, Gamzee. You have to be sober, and sane, and functional. Without me. You can do that, right?"

"Of course I can," you say. It's not a matter of not being motherfucking able.

"I hope you're right."

When he leaves, he doesn't have to tell you he'll be back again, because you can see it all in the way he looks back at you, and in the reluctance of his stride. At the doorway, something crunches under his feet, but he keeps on going and takes no notice; you look to the ground and see pale bits of broken shell and that red, red, red smear.

***

It's not the same making sandhives by yourself. It's too quiet with no motherfucker bitching and complaining about every goddamn thing but staying with you anyway, and it's lonely like it hasn't been since it was just you doing this to pass the time while you waited for that white motherfucker what never showed up. Even if it weren't still fun anyway, you'd do it, though - it's all part of the Schedule, every movement essential to maintaining the wicked rhythm, and you can't be skipping beats just because things are a little different now.

You do kind of miss having someone to get his argue on about the lack of structural reasons for the "pointless fucking highblood fripperies", though.

On the second day the sand is different, rougher on your fingers and scratchy under your nails, like you've gone and developed a seventh sense just for up and feeling where all the sand's got to. It doesn't recede before the tide like it ought to either, and you can see a lump where yesterday's sandhive was, a silent reminder of the passage of time, that somewhere there's a clock ticking what can't be stopped. It scratches at the edges of your vision like the sand scratches at your hands.

You've forgotten what's being the right mix of sand and water on the third day, lost that perfect liminality of the land and the sea; the walls of your new construction don't hold together like they should, the towers crumble and the decorations never stick. Your forget has got that eternally ticking time-clock figured out, though, because it's gone and infected your previous attempts, and the two ruins of sandhives past are ugly holes and broken clumps of sand marring that perfect pale slate that was your motherfucking miracle of a beach.

Those bitchtits brilliant red snails have all stopped invading your hive, too, stopped winding up swept up into corners and under furniture. They were kind of a nuisance, when you noticed, but you miss them for reasons you can't quite put your finger on.

It's hard to go back out to the beach on the fourth day, with all the graves of dead sandhives rising up to block out the miracles. You know there's only three, but they've up and multiplied during the day and you don't care to count them now. They're all staring, the past looking back at you from the innerds of that perpetual clock, tick tock, tick tock, getting its judge on as time accumulates on your shoulders and the weight of it slows your fingers on the sand. You think maybe if you make this sandhive smaller, it'll be a less imposing headstone later, but you know well that's not how this all up and works.

You don't get a chance to be bothered by what's all happening to you beach on the fifth day, because you get up and distracted by a motherfucking door.

It's just like all the other doors in your hive, except that it wasn't up and there before. It's slanted down just a bit, and up where there's the higher ground and the firmer soil of the slope behind your hive. Best motherfucking place to put a basement, you've got the knowing of that somehow. You look at that door, and wonder why it's there and what it's got behind it, and somehow the stars get their hurry on, and then it's dawn. You didn't get any motherfucking chance to build your sandhive, or get to anything else that was on that bitchtits allcaps Schedule stuck on the front of your fridge. When the time-clock speeds up, a motherfucker has to speed up with it; you missed it today, but you'll get your pacing on tomorrow.

But the clock slows down again, way down, and when you wake up it's still the middle of the day. You're outside, too, out the back side of your hive and sheltered by an awning, but fuck if you can't still feel the sunlight what you can't see getting its claws in under your skin. The door is right there, and it's real, so real you can see the splinters and imperfections and warps in the wood, the shadow of the handle in the too-bright light. There's nothing hazy or indistinct at all, no intermediate mix of soft shades, just that bright bright red light (not the right red, not without the pale shell) and the black-dark shadow, separated by a line so straight and sharp it might as well not be there at all.

You want to open it; it's the whole reason doors even got to being there, after all, and you know somehow that it's not locked. For some reason, you think of that vent opening up, back on the meteor, your green kitty sister coming at you with claws bared, full of the righteous rage of the newly diamondbroken, come to give you what you right fucking deserved. Now you come to wondering again: did she get her hesitate on, when she opened that door what she surely knew was keeping her from her own unrighteous murdering? Door. Vent. Whatever that word up and was.

You look at the door. It looks back at you.

Can't let that motherfucker win its staring contest, so you keep on looking at it, but it never up and looks away, never loses that terrible brightness, the starkness, the realness. All the while you feel the realness of the day getting its creep on up under the awning, drying and stretching your skin fit to make you a shell of your own; sun-red instead of the pale, colors all up and inside out, not how you were meaning it to be.

Eventually you got to leave it; your skin hurts and your eyes hurt and water. Trolls ain't up and meant to be out this time of day; Karkat said that once, you remember, like he thought maybe you didn't already got your know on. Karkat says a lot of things what you already know, only sometimes you guess you could use some reminding.

Karkat. Maybe it's time to bring him back to the hive. You didn't do everything on his bitchtits Schedule, but it's not like you're like to get it done tomorrow, either. You go back inside, into the cool darkness full of mixtures of shifting shadows and indistinct forms, and on the sixth day you bring Karkat back.

*

On the seventh day, the sandhives are gone again. You don't bother making anothr one, though; it's the last day now, and it'd just sit there on the beach for motherfuckin ever, no one left to tell it it can up and disappear if it wants to, rejoin the sand when its time is done, slip on back over that line between being a Thing and not being a Thing. You're just standing on the slate-smooth beach with Karkat, waiting for your future to finally come to meet you.

"You're fucking hopeless," he tells you, and you know he's got his serious on because of how tight he's holding onto you. "I literally couldn't even leave you alone for a single grubfucking week, how the hell did your life become such a tragic shitheap that you can't even go a week without running away from sandhives and having staring contests with doors? You're never going to survive the life you've got coming, are you?" He's shaking a little, and holding you so tight it motherfucking hurts a bit.

"I'll make my motherfuckin way," you assure him. "There's always another bitchtits miracle coming, right?"

He doesn't up and bother addressing that one, but it's ok, you've pretty well got the knowing of what he'd say. "I've got to leave now, you remember that, right? I've got to leave and you'll probably never see me again. You won't forget, will you? If you could just, you know, maybe visualize me telling you off somewhere in your busted pan when you do crazy dangerous shit or decide to go sunbathing..."

"I can up and try to do that, best palebro," you say. "You'll be at remembering me too, right?"

He's got his head tucked against your shoulder, but you can feel his sad smile anyway. "That's not the problem, dunderfuck."

"You sure you can't be all coming with me?" you ask. It's a dumb question; you already know why he can't.

"Gamzee," he says, exasperated. He breaks away from the hug and stoops to pick up a piece of broken shell colored palest milk. The wicked sharp edge cuts through the skin of his finger hidden from your view, and then he grabs your hand. The blood is warm slickness between your fingers, but you don't need to up and see it to know what beautiful miracle color it is. "You know why. People like me don't exist. Not for you, not for who you'll have to be."

Something up in the sky is getting bigger and bigger and beginning to resolve into a small ship. It's that bitchtits future you always knew was waiting for you, coming down in a miracle ship to take you off to a place where you won't be just a kid anymore. To a place where you won't have Karkat.

"It's time for me to be gone," says Karkat, and then he is.

You watch the ship come in closer, getting its glide on down through the clouds and the atmosphere. You wonder if there's a line up there somewhere where the sky turns black and you can see all the motherfucking space stars, a place where all that bitchtits atmosphere just ends, sudden and jarring. Maybe you just get in the ship and then everything's space-colored; you'll only ever see space from the inside of a ship, so who really knows? Maybe if you focus real hard on that motherfucker you can just up and forget the loss that comes with it. No, you can't. You motherfucking promised.

It's smaller than you were all expecting, to be honest, but it still makes a motherfucking big disturbance on your beach when it lands. The main door shimmies itself open, and out comes a blueblood and a tall woman who's Indigo, like you. You smile up at your caste-mate as she looks at your face critically. You know she probably thinks you look a right fucking mess, like most people do, but it don't matter now - you know she's here for you, and she won't leave empty-handed.

The blueblood is looking around your beach, but then he turns and says something to the highblood, quiet-like, too low for you to hear. She nods absently and then turns around and beckons, and two lowbloods scurry out of the ship and head over to your hive. They're probably off to get all your stuff bundled up, neat and tidy. You don't fear for Karkat; he ain't there no more, and they won't find him where he's got to.

She says something else to him, and then they approach you across the sand. Somewhere in there it seems like they step across an invisible line and become more real, more immediate than anything else has ever been. The future is here, and everything else is going to be left behind in clouds of sand and hazy memories. You feel a little woozy.

She smiles at you, all formal and no teeth. "Hello, Gamzee," she says. "What's that you have in your hand?"

You hadn't even up and realized you were still clenching your fist. You open it, but it's all right: in your palm is just the shattered remains of one of the miracle-red snails, its bright juices mixing with your own indigo from where the broken shell bit into your finger.

The highblood looks faintly disgusted. She turns to the blueblood again, this time with just a curt nod. He steps forward and locks on the handcuffs.

****

The yellow-blooded detectiviscerator surveys the basement one last time. Pretty cut-and-dry, really (not that he wouldn't get off scott free because of his caste, but that's for the legislacerators to deal with). The blueblood had been killed somewhere else, probably by strangulation, and his body had been stuffed in the unused thermal hull, for god knows what purpose. The green girl had come by later and wrenched the door off while the Indigo was in there and he did her in with the clubs. The boss had said he had a nice set of scars on his face matching her claw device, and records said she was the blueblood's moirail. No surprises here - just a lot of cliché drama. Kids these days. This case didn't merit her abilities by a long shot, but it'd be good practice for that green kid.

Green. Heh. There was a funny joke in there, about greenbloods and young and helpless green plants, and how when they grew up they turned yellow and red. Got to tell him that one some day! No time like the present for fucking around with her trainee, especially since it's only really a matter of time until he gets promoted above her by virtue of blood caste.

The aforementioned greenblood clears his throat from the doorway. "I got the contents of the husktop," he says. "There are some... really weird chatlogs."

"Real ones?"

He shakes his head. "More like someone's bizarre fantasy of a world-destroying video game played in the real world."

Oh, that kind of weird. "Not real surprising," the yellowblood says. "Sopor does weird shit to you when you start eating it. Probably has a whole different world up in his head by now. Someone really ought to do something about this kind of thing, especially when there's all these kids with absentee lusi. First time this has happened to anyone on the upside of the spectrum that I've heard, so maybe they'll actually take notice this time." Then she remembers something else. "There anything in there about that moirail he keeps talking evasively about?"

"Yeah", he says. "I think he's supposed to have red blood. Not rust, you know, bright red, like the sun, or all these damn snails that are everywhere, I guess, a mutant." He pauses uncertainly. "You don't supposed he might be real, do you?"

"Nah. That's every kid's special fairy empress story right there - troll on the spectrum between tyrian and rust, higher than everyone, lower than everyone, and specialer than everyone. Lots of sopor addicts dream up moirails for themselves, too. Helps them cope maybe, who knows." She gives the room another once-over before closing the file and giving her subordinate a big toothy grin. "Want to go off and find some goddamn coffee while we're planetside? It's been ages since I was last here, I want to see what the kids who aren't eating their 'coons are like these days." When he hesitates and needlessly shuffles his own files around, she adds, "It's not fraternization if everyone pays for their own drink!"

"Uh, sure." He gives her a wary smile.

They step over the threshold and shut the door behind them. Job done once the report is submitted; someone else will have to deal with the mess later. That's what she likes about this job: nothing about it that's not black and white. What happened happened, and what didn't didn't, no in-betweens about it at all.