Chapter Text
Five thousand years before the start of their future, Jade does not look up at the sky.
She resents the pinpricks of light poking through the curtain of night. In another timeline, Jade knows she would have loved this, a reminder of the night sky on a island she once called home. Accompanied by dreams of cold nights spent together with friends stargazing and mapping new constellations.
Now, Jade knows space intimately; how it swallows you whole, never holding you steady, setting you adrift in a cold vacuum that smells like burnt steak. What scares Jade is not this knowledge, but that it no longer applies to her. Untethered is her new familiar and she hates it.
The ground is firm she reminds herself. Bodies are warm. Heartbeats, steady. False guarantees that tenuously ground her. Emptiness is the guilty precept that she runs from. She is so happy to be with her friends, she is so happy to be close, she never wants to let go.
They are visiting the ocean. It's one of their many outings these days. A respite from hours in the ectobiology lab and caring for babies and grubs.
Jade curls her toes and focuses on the feeling of beach pebbles against her feet as she walks along the shoreline. She picks up a flat rock, draws her arm back and skips it across the water. It skims the top, bounding far across the surface before disappearing beneath the waves.
Jade laughs, throwing up her hands in victory, 'A new record! At least on Earth C, I think?' She had had a lot of practice on her island.
'Did you do anything like on this Alternia, Karkat?'
'Rocks? Oh, Alternia had so fucking many rocks, Jade! What a shame I missed out on all these rocks! As a gentle reminder, I never left my hive unless I absolutely had to, on account of the nightly drone raids actively seeking eviscerate my existence.'
He is standing next to her, perpetually hunched over and buried in his wornout sweater, 'So, not to beat the hoofbeast's cadaver here, but idyllic seaside rock lobbing was not exactly at the top of my priority list.'
Jade snorts, bends down and picks up a smooth, gray piece of shale, 'No time like the present then!' She takes his hand and places it in his palm, lingering a second. He stills but doesn't pull away. She smiles at him, 'Let this idyllic rock lobe be the first of many pointless activities we indulge in.'
Karkat stares at it, gray on gray. His life has been cleaved into segments of inertia and violent upheaval. Hiding underneath his hive as drones hummed by, scared that he was too red, too warm. Hundreds of hours of spent in a game they were never destined to win. Then, a last ditch effort to turn everything around, saved by a timeline he never knew.
He draws his arm back and throws the stone as hard as he can. The shale expands, gaining mass and size in milliseconds. Karkat's eyes goes wide as it crashes down into the sea. He screams and in seconds he and Jade are soaked in the salty brine. She erupts in laughter, spluttering and coughing, struggling to get air back into her lungs.
It takes a moment for Karkat to process this, 'Jade, what the fuck was that?' He knows what happened but his thinkpan is refusing to accept that he screamed like a tiny wiggler in front of the hot girl dog god—or whatever she was now.
'Did you decide it was a good day for the basic principles of Earth C physics to take a nice, casual stroll away from very important job of keeping my very fragile sanity from throwing itself under that apparating boulder?'
'Oh my gosh, Karkat—I, sorry—your face looked so good and cute and then the scream.' Giggles keep escaping her lips, 'I'm a little manic tonight—just channeling all the fun I've kept bottled up forever.'
He sighs, 'If you do ignore the sound that may or may not have emanated my idiotic seed flap, then I may deign you worthy of forgiveness, Harley.'
‘Jade is fine, you know.’ There is a suggestion to her voice, ‘No reason to be so formal.’
Jade's brown skin reflects the cool hues of an alien moon, her clothes wet and clinging to her body. A blush creeps up his neck and Karkat curls in on himself more.
'But, wow, we really made it,' She says, a far off look on her face.
Karkat swallows, holding back a mess of confusion and desire. They have only been a here a few days, their civilization is not yet built and a whole uncertain future stretches out before them. He has had three years to build a relationship with someone and it's comfortable, warm (even if they say nothing of what it is) but here he is again. The lingering mess of Karkats past, the self-hatred, the desires, the regrets, the bad flirting.
(Jesus, he does not want to remember that).
Karkat looks around, the beach is empty, the others have gone back to start making dinner.
They are both shivering, so he shifts closer to her, not quite touching. Karkat never initiates, no, the thought of doing so leaves his survival instincts fried, his nerves in tatters and his breathing shallow.
But Jade is wrapped around him in seconds. She's taller than him and Karkat fits right against her chest. He feels her quiet laughter, 'You're really warm—I like it,' she says, so, so quietly. 'The consorts and carapaces give good hugs too but you're so real.'
'My realness attribute is maxed out. You're fucking welcome.' Her skin is cool and salty, then, a faint whiff of limes and a crackle on his tongue.
'I'm glad you're here.'
Her voice betrays the ache of a girl who was not designed for existing at the edge of sea, of space, of life itself, but did so anyways. The raw tenderness of a wound only beginning to heal. It makes his bloodpusher squelch in that particular way: when he is curled on the lumpy loungeplank next to Dave, the movie credits are rolling and he cannot figure out if the ending suggests a pale or flushed attraction. There is no straightfoward answer and he hates that.
'We need you here,' Karkat murmurs, pressed again her. He tentatively wraps his arms around her back.
'Do you?' She says, bitter. 'I might sleep through everything, only to be forced to be awake or back asleep again for moments of great cosmic relevance... or, worse, lore dumps.'
He laughs in spite of himself.
Not the game, he wants to say, us.
'Ugh, I was just supposed to leave this crap on the ship!' He can feel her anger, a distant crackling, like a lid popping off, it's contents spilling everywhere. A faint jolt of static runs down his lobe stem.
'Everything was explained away, like, oh, it will be fine—your friends are all dead because of a choice a version of your brother made, but don't worry about it! You'll meet up with new versions of them soon enough!' She grips him tighter and he winces, 'I should be used to this by now but it does not make me feel any less terrible—thanks, Callie, I BARK hate it!'
They both pause.
'Did you just—'
'Karkat, please!' Jade half barks, half yelps.
Shame blooms in his chest. He should go, he is fucking this up, ruining a potential friendship with a girl he knew for a few days years ago. How bold of him to assume he could get through a single romantic interaction without fucking it up.
Karkat looks up and Jade is about to cry.
He puts his self-loathing in reverse real fast. 'Ok, sh, no, no, no! Stop the waterworks! Or don't? Fuck, is leaking fluids from facial orifices is an important emotional outlet for humans?' He takes her hands and squeezes them, trying to calm her down.
'Look, I'm sorry about the barkbeast comment. I'm nervous for... reasons,' Karkat gestures to the general situation of them.
'And, listen: Paradox Space has been raking our asses over it's fiery coals since before we were hatched,' he says. 'You didn't deserve any of this, I fucked it up, I gave your universe cancer, I—' Why was blaming himself always the easiest way out?
Karkat reaches out to wipe away a few of her tears and she catches his gaze. It's the bright, green hue of a far off sun. Of a girl who is struggling to stay grounded. Jade leans in close to him, 'Stupid, it's not your fault, and even if it was—how would you even begin to make it up to me?' It is half joke, half suggestion.
'What do you want me to do?' Karkat says in earnest.