Chapter Text
Your name is Kanaya Maryam.
You meet Rose Lalonde when you're six sweeps old, and it's the first time you ever feel truly ambivalent. Hair color is rare enough among trolls that you find the thin golden strands on her head noteworthy in a purely scientific sense, but it just makes her look plain and washed out when combined with her pale skin and hornless skull. Her eyes stand out as the one saving grace on an otherwise completely forgettable alien creature; lavender occupies a space on the seadweller end of the hemospectrum normally reserved for trolls found only in poorly written fantasy fiction. The way Rose talks drives you up the wall, and you find yourself needing to pause her timeline after every other sentence in order to analyze whether she's being sincere or leading you down some verbal labyrinth of equal parts friendship and bemused contempt. On the other hand, Rose has an appreciation for fashion rarely found among trolls, and the fact that her fashion sense is actually something approaching good is a quality you were starting to believe was wholly unique to you. Extended conversation with the human reveals that in addition to infuriating, she is also quite possibly a genius even by troll standards, and an incredibly charming and witty genius at that. Even further conversation suggests that she is completely impossible to reason with, that she's clearly dangerous, and that she might be kind of crazy. You're harboring red feelings for her within a couple hours.
It's later that day when you first see Rose in person. Your heart lurches into a series of vaguely thump-like convulsions when you realize she's safe, and it's only then that you notice your heart hasn't been functioning since you woke up and began nigh-uncontrollably sucking the blood out of corpses and unsuspecting friends. She asks you to stay, and your mouth is already acquiescing to a vague promise before you've properly given it thought. You hope dearly that you didn't just damn yourself to eternal darkness over a crush. You sneak a peek up her skirt when she flies above you, and berate yourself for it over the next couple hours. You never once regret having gone with her.
It's a week before you feed from Rose the first time. She asks you to do it. She's curious about your bloodlust and this excites you. You ignore the protests of Karkat, who curses you up and down for risking an allergic reaction to alien blood. You sink your upper fangs into Rose's throat in the privacy of her self-appointed respiteblock. You keep your lower fangs in your mouth, afraid to puncture the critical human blood vessels she claims reside within her neck. You have no negative reaction to her blood, and you knew you wouldn't; the new, predatory part of your mind insisted that Rose was food from the moment you were close enough to smell her. You wonder if this sense of smell feels anything like Terezi's, but you don't imagine you could use it to have a conversation over Trollian. You have trouble ending the moment, and drink too much blood. Rose falls unconscious as a result, and you stay with her until she wakes up so you can properly apologize.
It's two human years before she asks you to go out with her. You do not understand it to be a date until she's apologizing to you for missing it, and it does not last very long once she finally attends. She drinks a human soporific to calm her nerves, which you take little note of beyond the fact that she can't seem to keep her balance. Your first kiss tastes foul and is awkward and fumbling and passionate in the dark of the careening asteroid. She falls down a flight of stairs afterwards and cracks her skull. The next day you ask her if she wants to be your matesprit and she asks for the first of her many lessons by inquiring into any potential differences between a matesprit and a human girlfriend. She seems embarrassed by her own ignorance, but she's not nearly as embarrassed as she is enthusiastic. You say there isn't a difference as far as you're aware. She says yes, then, and you kiss again. It's your second kiss and it's much better than the first. You tell her she was your first kiss, and she regrets that she cannot say the same to you. She says her first kiss was with some human boy from when she was very young. She doesn't remember his name; only that he had curly red hair. You think that's sad. You say it doesn't count if she doesn't remember it, and then you spend the night reading terrible books together.
You're seven sweeps old when you make love for the first time. She has just turned sixteen human years and you presumptuously gift yourself to her in addition to a ridiculously lavish dress. You draw what little advice you can from your books and videos of human females mating and it goes disastrously. She drinks to excess for the one hundred and fifth time since she began, which she claims once again is to calm her nerves. She won't stop giggling at everything you do, and you find it discouraging and unromantic. You bite her in an attempt to force some passion into the moment. You do this without warning, thinking it will be romantic, and she hits you in surprise. She needs to be bandaged when you recoil from the strike and accidentally tear out a non-vital piece of her neck. You will never be quite this embarrassed again. She forgives you. You try again in a few days while she is sober and it goes much smoother. You tell her you love her. She does not return the gesture until three days later. She is drunk at the time, but you tell yourself she only drank to loosen up enough to tell you the truth. This will prove to be correct, eventually.
You're eight sweeps old when you officially move in with Rose, into the human dwelling lifted by Jade from the Land of Light and Rain in order to move it to the surface of your new world. You had already been living there for some time, but when the other trolls begin building homes of their own you decide to opt out. Rose jokes that she's disappointed she won't get to see the type of house you would design, so you design one anyways as a hobby. It's not really the same as designing a dress, but the sense of decor you acquired from your sweeps in the desert helps you draw up plans for a lovely human-style house. You begin building it a little at a time whenever the mood strikes you, generally when your garden feels uncooperative. You have no intention of ever living there. You never do.
It's very nearly your tenth wriggling day when Rose asks you to marry her. She believes it is your wriggling day, but she is off slightly on the conversion of troll-to-human time measurements. You know what she is asking of you, having seen enough movies and had enough discussions to know what marriage is. You say that you didn't think it was her kind of thing. She says she didn't either, but found herself on one knee and thought it seemed like as good a time as any. She seems nervous and you realize you haven't answered her. You say yes. She tries to cry tears of joy but can't bring herself to lose control enough for it. You say it's okay, but secretly worry about her emotional state; humans are not meant to endure the traumas Rose has dealt with. You tell her how proud you are that she did not attempt to drink before doing something that made her nervous. She proposes in jest again a few weeks later when it actually is your wriggling day, and you turn her down just to mess with her. She burns your toast in retaliation.