Chapter Text
There is something about the night in this school, in this building so old and so familiar. It feels like every brick and every drop of mortar has absorbed the students powers, absorbed the laughs stolen under bed-sheets and the fears scribbled on scraps of paper to be shoved between cracks in the tiles and the floorboards, has taken on the identities of the hundreds of students that came before. With the night so still and so perfect, moon hanging like a secondary guardian to the white marble statues littered about the courtyards, gargoyles of cats and dogs and ancient men that were paid only in their loyalty to these anomalous children they had sired, it is easy to forget. To forget that you are meant to be a knight, a boy in armour standing tall and proud and ready to protect all those you love, all those you have grown to care for so deeply.
Jade’s fingers brush across the scars left by dead timelines, dancing across the pock-marks of bullet holes, and the raised white scratches of sword and knife and claw, the discoloured patches where broken ribs lay healed and aching, the smashed bones from hammer and fist. You have seen hate and pain and you have seen the damage that fear will bring, and as her nails scratch through the hair beneath your navel, a noise so loud in this cloaked silence above your head, you know that you do not fear.
There is a scar under your jaw, buried beneath the hinge and sometimes, when you forget to shave, you can’t see it at all because it is covered by that peach fuzz you grow and pretend is a beard, and you forget about it sometimes, because how often do you look under your jaw? Not often. Jade remembers it though; she knows that scar the best, because that is a scar you got for her, just her, the very first. She remembers it more clearly than you do, but even her memory is hazy, a long-passed dream of a time that got rewritten. You died for that scar, and she, lanky and yet still so small beneath your growth spurts and faked six-feet of height, fits perfectly against you to kiss that scar. If you could feel anything there, you might feel a rush of warmth from her lips, but all you feel now is the heat of her breath as she sighs, settles against you.
‘There are a lot of stars tonight,’ she tells you, and you remember the first night you found her staring up at those stars, looking so happy, so at peace.
You are above the clouds here, floating aimlessly across the skies whilst you train and hone and practice, and learn to blend in, to be these undercover heroes you used to read so much about under your ironic Hello Kitty blanket that you’d loved so much. She told you about herself that night, as you moved to lie beside her, between two pillars of white marble hounds, sitting so neatly, but carved with such sadness, such poise that you could almost feel anger coming from them, anger that increased as your fingers laced through the knots of Jade’s memories. She told you that she had come from an island in the middle of nowhere, an island so far out to sea that her grandfather, when applying to send her to this floating island of a boarding school, had to lie about her US citizenship. You think you made a joke about her being one of those immigrants you hear ruin everything, but then her hair’s a curtain around you, stars and galaxies and her eyes are suns of green fire, and she’s kissing you, and her nationality is the least of your concerns.
‘There are no clouds,’ you reply, and she huffs that laugh of hers, pokes your nose with a fingertip, and you tilt your head to pretend to bite at it.
‘I worry about the stars,’ is whispered in your ear after a moment, and you look up at her, frown a little. ‘I worry about what they’re doing.’
It is not often that Jade gets morose, gets to thinking about the nature of her existence, and you put her on her back, settle against her, ear against her heart and her leg hooked about your waist, a living, breathing body pillow made just for her. You don’t believe in Fate, but sometimes you think that perhaps it had a plan for you even so, and that plan involved you, Jade Harley and no clothes.
‘Chilling out, probably,’ you say, and her hand rests against your ear, fingers knotted into your hair. ‘They’re probably watching over us, like the guardians and shit.’
‘Yeah,’ she whispers, and her nails create crescent moons in your scalp. ‘Probably.’
You pull out of her embrace, leaning over her to watch and admire and look at the way the moon casts shadows across her face. She looks skeletal here, like this, cast into a relief that the photographer in you wants to capture, wants to preserve, but this Jade, with the galactic circle of her hair the same white as yours in this light, the white you always thought the Milky Way was, this Jade is yours, just yours. No one else is allowed to see her like this, and she thinks the way you have claimed her is adorable. Really, she’d whispered as she’d taken everything you could have possibly given her, burying her hands so deep and ripping out everything you had pretended to be, leaving you bare and open and hers, really it’s the other way around.
Alpha, she calls you, a teasing nickname that somehow managed to find its way amongst your classmates. It sent Equius scurrying off to his workshop in such a mess that only Nepeta could pull him free, and Dirk just gives you this look, and oh you hate him, because you hate all family members that aren’t your Bro, and this poser that looks so much like him, this distant cousin from somewhere that isn’t Texas even though he has the accent and the mannerisms and the skewed Southern moral compass, he is an asshole. But whatever, you don’t care.
Her eyes are so pale tonight, a dying fire, and you brush your thumb across the broad arch of her cheek, looking so high and so sharp with the concave shadow of her cheek, but no, she’s just as round as ever, just as soft, and she smiles a little, sad.
‘Babe,’ you say, because you have never had command of your words around her, not since the day you met. ‘Talk to me.’
‘I’m scared,’ she whispers, and you blink at her.
‘Scared? You?’
‘Terrified,’ she smiles, and takes a breath.
You had been young when Bro died, barely even a teenager, and you had never had this conversation, the my-girlfriend-is-having-an-existential-crisis-what-do-I-do conversation. She knows that you are not nearly as prepared for life you pretend to be, you are not half as cool as you think you are, and she understands that you are not very good with comforting people, prone to rambling about something unrelated in a poor attempt to distract, to numb the pain of whatever ails them.
So you do the wise thing, and say nothing, instead leaning in to press foreheads and noses, and eventually lips, trying so hard to channel whatever peace this floating island has absorbed, to obtain whatever you can to pass it on to her, to cool off the supernovas screaming through her veins, the black holes forming in mind and heart and soul, draining the fires that you have loved for so long.
Jade is not supposed to be in your room, because your corridor is supposed to be boys only, because of some gender boundary bullshit, but everyone sneaks everyone else into their room so who even cares. John knows to give you space, knows that you need quite, private time with Jade, so he’s gone to stay somewhere, you don’t know, don’t much care, so long as he doesn’t go crawling into Karkat’s bed, because then he’ll either die or have nightmares and come screaming to you whilst you are in the middle of something and you really do not have time for that right now.
Your priority is, and has always been, Jade, and making sure that she is safe. She has had the best start of you all, has been practicing her powers since the day she was born, but everything else has proven difficult for her, the socialising and the living in a civilised, structured environment. She struggles, and you wonder, as she clutches at you, gasping your name, the litany of a prayer, and you wonder if she’s every prayed the rosary, because that’s what she sounds like right now, you wonder if she’s ever regretted it. She could have stayed on her island with her grandfather, and lived out her life there without ever worrying about other people.
The thought of your life without her, the thought of being here without getting to shove toy frogs down her dress and watching her beat Jake in wrestling matches, that hurts, and you bury your face in her neck so that you can pretend for a moment like it doesn’t.
After your brother’s death became a paradox, one of the few moments locked in time that you can never ever return to, Jade was the first person you went back in time to save. You would – and have, and will continue to – die a hundred times for her, and neither of you really remember it, a post-script in the notebook of your timelines, scribbled in the margin with a green pen, curlicues and smiley faces.
Everybody lives.
You think to yourself, as you lie there, panting into her neck and breathing in the smell of her sweat and day-old perfume and the shampoo clinging to the hair stuck to her skin, you think that it is a good thing neither of you clearly remember what happens.
The first time you saved her, she’d been stabbed in the gut, and it had pierced her stomach, just enough that it sliced clean through the lining and tore it open. You remember how she’d been stabbed, you remember what the wound was, because you shoved her out of the way at the last second to take that wound yourself.
(Rose tells you that Jade was banned from missions for several weeks following because she tore your past-self’s murderer to pieces. Quite literally to pieces, because Jade had been learning about materials, that had been her focus of study, and she knew how to dismantle the skin and muscle and bone of that lizard man. She knew, and she did it, and she revelled in the destruction of your murderer. Jade tells you that she doesn’t really remember it, she just remembers how angry she had been, how hurt that you had died.)
‘Time’s weird,’ you whisper a while later, and she laughs, runs her hand through your sweaty hair to comb it off your face.
‘It is,’ she whispers back, and gets up to pull on her knickers and your hoodie, go out onto the balcony of your room.
For a few moments, you watch her back move as she stretches, just enjoying the view, but then you’re finding your boxers and going to joining her. On the fourth floor as you are, no one will see you, because you are the oldest students in the school now, all the new students are on the floors below, and you have seen literally everyone in your class in varying states of undress, you’re old enough to not care anymore. You all have a body, and you all have the same body parts.
Jade looks at the stars and you play with her hair, and at this altitude, you really shouldn’t be out here dressed like this, it’s cold for it, but you find yourself warm all the same, and there’s a dome or something above your heads, an invisible force-field keeping the air warm and dry and perfect for you all.
‘You’ve been off all day,’ you say, looking at her with her moonlight-grey skin, and her wild island-girl hair, eyes so blind and so bright. ‘Talking about the stars and shit.’
She sighs. ‘I’m scared,’ she admits, for the second time, and you frown. ‘Of the stars.’
‘Why?’ you ask, and turn your gaze to the stars above your heads, ‘they’re too far out, aren’t they? They can’t get to us, right?’
She nods, leans on the railing, back curved just right to push her hip against yours. Her hair tumbles over her shoulders, a brook of coal, a shattered solar system tumbling into the black hole of the night around you.
‘They’re too far out,’ she echoes, and she’s not looking at them anymore, instead looking out at the marble statues littering the courtyard. ‘They just watch us.’
‘Then why are you scared?’ you ask. ‘Nothing can hurt the stars.’
‘I could,’ she says, and turns to sit on the railing. You move to stand between her legs, hands on her hips to steady her as she wraps her arms around your neck. ‘I could pull them all from the sky. They’re just gas. Plasma. Whatever. The point is; I know what they’re made of. I could destroy them.’
‘But you won’t,’ you say, and kiss at her slumped collarbone. ‘You’re better than that.’
‘But I could. That’s too much power for one person to have. I could pull you apart, and rearrange you into something completely different.’
‘A potato,’ you offer, an attempt to make her laugh. It doesn’t work.
‘Dave,’ she sighs, and rests her chin on your head. ‘I could kill everyone I’ve ever known, I could tear down this school, this island.’
‘But you won’t,’ you repeat, and you hate that you don’t sound so sure.
‘I don’t want this power,’ she whispers, and you squeeze her tight. ‘It shouldn’t exist. People shouldn’t have this kind of ability, this amount of power.’
You sigh, and pull her head down to rest in your neck. ‘I trust you,’ you whisper in her ear, ‘you won’t use that power for bad shit.’
‘But what if,’ she whispers, tight and high. ‘What if something happens? What if someone manages to steal my powers? What if someone manages to manipulate me? What if Gamzee gets into my head? Or Vriska?’
Your fingers tighten in her hair, pull a few strands free. You won’t allow that, you promise her, no one will hurt her. Not a single person. You will kill them if they try it. You swear, whispering hot and quick in her ear, that you will never let her die again, you will never let anything bad happen to her, you won’t, you won’t, you won’t.
She starts sobbing when you fall silent, clutches at you and wails, and all you can do is hold her, because what else is there for you to do except hold her close and let her work it all out of her system, let her cry until she’s got nothing left.
It is not often that Jade Harley breaks, determined as she is to be a positive force for you all, but you know that it’s hard, that she struggles.
‘I’m scared too,’ you admit, when she’s quieted to sniffles. ‘I’m scared that one day I’ll lock your death like I did my Bro’s. I’m scared that I might lose you forever. Or John, or Rose, or anyone. What if I fuck up so badly trying to make things right that I lose you?’
She’s quiet, and you sigh against her neck, ruffling her hair. The night carries on around you, silent and still, with the walls of this old school, centuries in the making, absorbs your fears, her tears and the tense worry in your gut, and adds it to the reserves.