Chapter Text
Fire eats and crackles and spits at the stars.
Jake itches the sweat off his ankle. Little crumbs of dirt fall from his palm. Across from him, on the other side of a lit campfire, Grandma sits cross-legged and pokes dinner with a stick. Fish flesh simmers and separates from the ribs.
“Feeling hungry yet?”
Jake sniffs and rubs his forearm across his nose then mumbles, a bit darkly, “I wish.”
The fire coughs up a couple more sparks.
“It was really not that big a deal, ‘lil egg,” she says, flippant, casual.
The thing is, he is hungry. It smells better than frigging anything in this world: Grandma’s spice mix, always the same, dried from the garden and stowed in her harakeke basket for when they have meats to prepare. It’s such a different treat from fruits and veggies—Grandma is a prolific shooter, of course, so there is no shortage of meat necessarily, but it spoils quickly nonetheless.
But each time Jake looks at his catch, his first catch, he hears the sick snapping of its artery; the way it, slippery and silver, thrashed in his hands and Grandma shouted something at him and grabbed it rough and fast, fed-up, then with one hand held it down on a rock and with another reached in its gill and tore the artery leading to its brain. Blood spurted in short, coughing bursts, to land warm on the rock beside it and dribble like baby food down its cheek. It seized and its tail smacked.
“You did hit it, right?”
“I tried! I tried!” Jake squealed, bunching himself up. He really did, but the thing was strong, fighting for its life in his little hands; it was hard enough to try and hold it in both, but to keep it down with only one? And not to mention what Jake wouldn’t mention, here—he just couldn’t bring himself to strike its head. He tried but he was nervous and shaky and didn’t do it quite right, just made the fish hurt more.
The thing convulsed, again. Grandma heaved a sigh.
“Clean the blood out of this,” she said, and that was that.
That air of disappointment still hangs around her by the fire. Either way, clean kill or not, it’s tāmure for dinner.
The two make quick work of it and, later, basking under the stars, Jake huddles by Grandma’s side. Her wolfish hair, curly and thick like his, blankets down her back and rests in the dust. She wears rough fabrics, but they are familiar and solid as he leans into her warmth. She smells like Grandma. To smell like Grandma is to smell a lot like him — woodsy and a bit unwashed — but with the dryness of a teabag.
“Are you still upset about earlier?” she asks, picking a leaf out of his hair.
Jake shuffles his little feet and hikes his knees up. He would so badly like to say yes. “Mmm-mm-mm,” he hums to the noncommittal tune of ‘I don’t know’.
She huffs, exasperated, but presses her warm hands to his shoulders and brushes all the dust and twigs and frizz away.
“Jakey,” she sighs, “You want to go on adventures with me, right?”
“Yes!” He beams with enough enthusiasm that his forehead nearly knocks her chin.
“Well, you can’t. Not yet,” she replies, words forthright but tone soothing. “You can’t even kill a fish! Adventures are much, much scarier than that. On an island like this, you can’t afford to cower and hide.”
Jake whimpers and leans harder into her, her hair a cove to shield his little body. But I miss you, he’d like to say, like he’s said times before, at least until it had tired out its use.
“You need to be braver than this, my friend. And you can grow into a brave, strong boy, if only you put the effort in. Today didn’t go well. But there is no reason to mope and feel sorry for yourself.”
“I was trying to be brave.”
“And all you can do is try,” she murmurs. He feels her bony shoulder as she leans forward to remove the tāmure from the flames.
There are all these questions he would love to ask her — Do you still love me? Would you love me if I wasn’t brave, Grandma? Can you please tell me you will protect me, forever? Can you run your hand across my forehead and my hair, please? — but his mouth is too little to make them into words.
“I leave you at home with all these movies. I come back and tell you stories. Is that not enough? Do you watch the DVDs?”
“Mhm! Yes!”
He hears her smile, slow. “Good. And you like them?”
Alright, this time he jolts so hard he actually knocks her chin. “Boy, do I!”
Grandma snickers. “Who taught you to speak like that?”
And they continue to prattle on, just like that, but even until their sore walk all the way home, Jake can’t help but fantasize:
Maybe if he is good enough, if he is brave enough, they will go on adventures together, and Grandma will be so proud of him; he will hear what she was like as a little girl, and she will remark that even she could not have taken down that monster, could not have descended that cave.
This will never happen.
It would be simple to say that he does not know this yet, but it casts a wavering, fire-lit shadow against the back of his mind, even now.
The fire, in that moment, still thrummed with life, and seared the backs of his eyelids as they closed to fuzzy darkness…
alone, still, in the warmed, untamed air, and the sparse night birdsong.
This is one memory of the menagerie that Jake sees before Dave restarts time again.
It is not warm.
It is not cold.
It feels like swimming through a humid bath of temperature, static against the hairs of his arm. It feels like having the air kicked out of you; something is stuck in the throat and will not go down.
Jake’s still sat by firelight, blazing into his eyes and the
dribbles of sweat trail down his itchy skin, heaving and exerted and bitten up by mosquitoes out in the wilds,
and he’s looking at the way Grandma's ivies cluster down the wall like a many-limbed creature and he’s got his little grubby hands on a dusty DVD,
Dirk is next to him, he can still feel the sting of Dirk’s knuckles against
gonna leave a bruise
his hands on the keyboard, fingers just a bit too big for the keys and
prison bars, candy sprinkles,
Dirk's bro — Hollywood star — guns blazing —
he's putting his hands up and
Jake’s aorta is congested, and
A cavernous stomach, plummeting pressure, opens up beneath.
DAVE: yo
DAVE, SNAPPING: hey
Jake opens his eyes. A mint-cold ripple opens over him as he does so, a wash over his skin, wiggling in the back of his throat.
Void hollows out beneath him. All the others look around, blinking, regaining their bearings.
DAVE: ok cool
The tendons of Jake’s fingers tighten — once, twice, he grasps into the nothing with his hands. Reaches up and adjusts his glasses which, yep, are still there.
He can swallow, finally, and take a deep breath in. His cheeks bubble up as he surveys those around him:
Jane is sweeping the crowd in a similar manner, head bobbing about not unlike a bird, with fingers wrung at her front; Roxy is slack-jawed at the door’s imprint behind the gaggle of teens, a soft glow against black; Dirk has two fingers pressed to the meat of his wrist; and Jade is opposite of Jake, index to her lip, cast away in some wild train of thought, he presumes.
JANE, WORRIED: Did something go wrong?
DAVE: i dont know
DAVE: we won and are all still kickin so
DAVE: guess not
Dirk appears to have affirmed himself still alive. He reassembles himself, sharp elbows jutting out and arms crossed against his chest.
Jake feels his body as inhabited far more than usual: the weightiness of his limbs, condensation on his palms, and the strain of his eyes as he stares into the surrounding black abyss, anywhere and everywhere besides Dirk.
The four Betas—Dave, John, Rose, and Jade, if memory serves—stand side by side, but their gaggle slowly dissolves. Rose whips her head about with such fervor that it sends her body turning in the negligible gravity.
Whatever she is looking for, she finds.
ROSE: Kanaya?
Two trolls, fascinating creatures, for the record, drift in, a smaller one slung under the taller’s arm. This “Kanaya” lifts a weary smile and waves. Rose approaches and, meanwhile,
John follows Rose and, with wide gestures, begins yammering about something to the trolls; to which eyebags form and they shake their heads, slow.
Dave has not-so-subtly drifted toward Dirk. They don’t talk; Dave, though, has assumed that same stoic arms-crossed position.
Ultimately, the only one left is Jade. Jake wishes that he could disappear into this darkness like one would vanish behind a curtain. He is small and exposed and perspiring and generally looking seasick on the whole, so now is not the best time for proper-first-introductions, he’s sure.
JOHN: augh! are you kidding?!
He’s reaching out to grip at the door’s outline, but his hands flounder around it, as though trying to touch a shadow. Rose, mildly bemused, Roxy, and the trolls hover nearby and watch idly.
ROSE, MOURNFULLY: I suppose we can’t have our cake and eat it, too.
JOHN: what does that even mean??
JOHN: rose that is a lame bullshit idiom if i have ever heard it!
For whatever reason, her remark has incensed him beyond his otherwise mild frustration. He’s grabbing more and more fervently at the shadow of the door.
If Jake were any more lucid or self-accepting at the moment, he would gladly offer his two cents in John’s defense. He never understood the phrase, either. Roxy jumps in before he can really process the thought.
ROXY: mom u got anything in the seer lighty department?
ROSE: I haven’t even tried yet.
JOHN: what! why?!
ROSE: In the same way I am sure all of you have some inherent ‘sense’ of your aspect, I know there is no point in trying.
JOHN: that is stupid and you know it.
ROSE: You don’t understand.
ROSE: There *is* no Light here.
JOHN, POUTING: if terezi were here, she’d know what to do.
Dave, still glued to Dirk’s side, floats a smidgen closer.
DAVE: dude you know how terezi is more than like anyone else really
KANAYA: Ah Hem
DAVE: ok except for her troll comrades but thats not here or there
DAVE: shes just like that
DAVE: i think shed be like a caged rat if she realized she was stuck in here
DAVE: that wouldnt be very fun for her
DAVE: or us tbh
DAVE: shes got her own shit to sort out in the session and i say let her sort it
KANAYA: It Is Hard To Admit But Dave Has The Right Instinct I Believe
KANAYA: Even If You Were Able To Go Back John She Would Not Listen
KANAYA: When She Comes Back It Will Be With Vriska
Jane looks around, frantic, and propels herself toward Rose.
JANE: I am terribly sorry to interrupt but, Rose, what do you mean by there “being no light”?
JANE: Aside from the obvious interpretation, of course!
Rose looks mildly perturbed, now. She swallows.
ROSE: Aside from the obvious void consuming us all right now,
ROSE: I am essentially saying there is no Light for me to see. No fortuitous outcomes, what with there being a crucial lack of causes.
JANE: Well, what does that make us then?
ROSE: The first in an entirely new universe, which has no pre-existing cache of relative concepts or knowledge.
ROSE: Are you familiar with the idea of the unmoved mover; the uncaused cause?
JANE: I just… Ugh, I’m sorry, I can’t really quite wrap my head around this right now!
ROSE: Do you remember anything from before you were born?
ROSE: Avoiding the obvious contingency that “birth” be anywhere in this discussion, where we are right now is analogous.
ROSE: Nothing to fill the space, no knowledge to be gathered, no concepts.
ROSE: The blank slate in the truest sense of the word.
DIRK, LIKE HE IS DYING: Rawls should be rolling in his grave right about now.
When Dirk pipes up, it’s hard to hear — only half-words croaked out like he is learning how to use his vocal cords for the first time. And it’s to make a fucking philosophy or maybe My Little Pony reference, for all Jake knows. Classic.
ROSE: Would that not imply he’s rolling with anger?
ROSE: Also, that is Aristotle, re: unmoved mover. Not Rawls.
Dirk waves her off. Too tired, can’t talk; he hangs limp like a high-strung puppet. Dave leans in a bit toward his shoulder, listens to something, and nods.
DAVE: we got an incoming message from the striderian mind telekinesis signal and dirk wants to let you know hes aware youre being purposefully obtuse here
ROSE: Mind telekinesis?
ROSE: Don’t you mean telepathy?
DAVE: you never cut us a break huh
ROSE: No.
ROSE: And, for the record, it is nice to meet you, Dirk.
He nods once. His head lolls forward as though a hairstring away from snapping off completely.
JADE: not to be a party pooper but…
JADE: do we know what is next?
ROXY: we get a rockin new planet n universe or am i missin something
ROXY: cuz shit sure as shit looks missing
Jade sends a meaningful glance at Jake, which he withers away from, as one would flinch in the face of bright sunlight.
JADE: jake?
Oh, bejeezus. Everyone’s eyes are on him, now, clad in the stupid little boy’s shorts that leave none to the imagination.
JAKE, THE DULLARD: Erm.
JAKE, BLITHERING IDIOT: I dont.
JAKE: ..
JAKE, JUMPING FUCKING JEHOSAPHAT, HELP ME: ..Knooow?
ROXY: wait so
ROXY: does anybody even know what we are sposta be doing here
ROXY: like are we totally alone or??
JADE: no no this is fine this is okay!
JADE: i still have earth c!
With a flourish of her wide hands, Jade produces a pocket-sided planet. It is a speck of water and wind. In other words: completely inhospitable.
JANE: That…
JANE: …is Earth?
Jane chews on her bottom lip and springs a worried hand up to her chin. Something slithers down Jake’s throat and spine just then, so he turns to look anywhere but her.
JADE: yes!
JADE: but we should be fine right?
JADE: we have powers of time and life and blood and breath at our disposal
JADE: among others
ROXY: hell yea dave do ur timey thing!!
DAVE: are you joking
DAVE: no
DAVE: i would wither away into dust dude
JADE: wait what?
DAVE: that is billions of years of shit man i dont think i can do that
JANE: What?!
Jake feels his stomach, like a balloon, slowly climb up and overtake the available space in his throat.
JOHN: ummm but you are the GOD of TIME? hello?
DAVE: yeah but its like impossible
DAVE: itd probably be a heroic as shit death too
JOHN: i have seen what god tier powers do, what's a little planet??
DAVE: are you even listening
DAVE: billions of years thats what
JOHN: we could be trapped here forever though!
ROSE: If you take a moment to think and relax, we might get somewhere.
Jake says his first few real words.
JAKE: Itll be fine were all still alive anyway right?
And yet? And yet.
With a grimace, he looks around again — nobody looking at him, which is as much a relief as it is an anchor at the ankles.
There is nothing—he has nothing. He swallows his stomach back down, looking at his friends.
ROXY: yea!
ROXY: theres no way the game would be designed w/o an ending in mind??
JANE: Oh, God, what if that’s exactly the point?
JANE: Call me a worrywart, but the whole game was developing and learning how to use our powers…
JANE: Now, we’re left to our own devices.
JANE: Oh, gee, I don’t think I’m…
Jane looks like she’s about to upchuck.
JANE: I don’t think I’m cut out for this right now!!
ROXY: aw janey noo :(
JOHN: what, so we’re still not good enough to do anything about it?
JOHN: pff. that’s stupid.
Do not imply Jade is incapable, hisses the blood in Jake, but he knows that if he were to say it, it’d turn to sludge and go completely ignored.
Dirk has positioned himself in front of Dave now—Jake knows it when he sees it, that protective stance.
DIRK, SOUNDING JUST A TAD MORE HUMAN: So, what then? Are we just meant to wait even longer?
DIRK: There must be something you are all missing.
ROSE: Nothing to miss if nothing exists.
ROSE: Unfortunately, I do think Jane has a point.
JADE: guys guys do not get off the rails here!
JADE: we have earth and that itself is important
How did it end up like this?
He can barely see through his glasses.
He doesn’t know when he starts crying but it’s like, you know, you know when people are looking at you, tears gushing hot and thick down your face, stupid vulnerable, and worse yet, others pointedly ignoring you. It's not -- it's not that you're sad. Well, yes, you're sad. You miss it. The island tears at your guts and grandma is right there but you miss her so bad. You want to go home, be inside a room again;
JANE: Goodness, Jade, I don’t think I’m equipped to make new life just yet!
JADE: you dont need to!
JADE: we still have the matriorb after all
DIRK, STIFF, FINAL: I don’t know about you guys, but I am not going to wait around any more for this game.
you're mad, mad that after all that, you still can't get off easy, none of you, and especially not you, used up and cast aside, even though you know that's all bullshittery, you JUST had a conversation with Dirk and Jane before you went through that door, but it all felt so pitiful, a kind of thing that drenches the strings in your heart and calcifies;
DIRK: I’m fuckin’ beat, despite having been unceremoniously revived, so I have no clue how someone who did any substantial work is even standing. Namely, Roxy, among others.
DIRK: We have to sort this shit out now, before we’re too exhausted to even think.
JOHN: i am just fine actually!
JOHN: quit trying to freak everyone out, dude. we won, we should be happy, right?
but god, you're gushingly happy, too, that this is all over, and you might get some goddamn sleep, and everyone is proud of each other and you've got Jade at your side (except she doesn’t know who you really are yet), and at least for now there are bigger problems and nothing is in shambles, you can't help but feel this happiness touch you only through the immense quiet that is here.
ROSE: John.
DAVE: can you guys stop talking over each other for a second jesus
DAVE: i think we got a more pressing problem?
You open your eyes, bleary, and see some great light. you want to go home. It shines through your tears like headlights on rainy streets in movies and stars and sunlight off metal.
But there's still some way to continue! Isn’t there?
Why are these people giving up immediately? After all this??? It's an affront to everything you've done, and quite frankly, something you didn't ask for whatsoever. THEY didn't die in a fiery explosion, they didn't get their flesh, obedient, cheerful, silent, and scantily clad, served to them on a platter, they didn't have a botched session full of waiting and longing, would it KILL them to just BELIEVE for a second that they can afford one more thought of patience? Because there IS something else out there! There is! There really is! They saw it with their own eyes the genesis frog!
We all just got done fighting the most tremendously large fight in our whole lives. Why immediately just start that over again? just believe for a second that MAYBE
this was all
WORTH
SOMETHING!!!
In other words,
Jake just wants to get back to normal.
…
Three faces stare at him. Smiling. White guys. Creased eyes. Weekend at Bernie’s.
Sleep sits on Jake’s eyes, the covers heavy, fleece, far too warm, and ultimately kicked off in his sleep.
He does not know this, but it is 4pm, at least on the relative scale by which he and his companions would deem it. He feels appropriately exhausted, like his innards have been replaced with sloshing jelly.
When Jake goes to sit up, a mouthful of stomach swells up his throat. He’s got a hand on his temple just as he would with a nasty headache, but it’s not quite that; it’s more the feeling of cotton-brain he is most familiar with after a dehydrated day in the jungle sun.
With no open windows, the room’s smell stays dry; vines and lichen hang limp from the rounded ceiling. Blue freckled skin, bright pops of appealing color, dashing men, Lara Croft — the menagerie of colors sear his eyes. Maybe he will get a headache.
The strange, splintered wood is damp and cool as Jake goes to stand. Only then does he truly realize the state of his room: entirely typical, aside from the dead lighting.
Some semblance of his 13-year-old self dwells here more than he ever could in the moment. Posters still peel from every corner of the wall, and on the farthest the same patch is still sun-bleached; there’s still triple locks on the door, and firearms under the bed.
The porthole windows have been painted a stark black or, rather, do their job in reflecting perfectly what is outside of them — nothing but void.
Something terrible stirs in Jake’s stomach.
He just stands there and stares. Grinding his teeth like chalk.
Elsewhere, a planet stands like a stone hung against the universe.
It comes with all the continents, all the oceans, none of the trees or the plants or the people or the bugs.
But Jake does not see this yet. Jake only sees the empty universe.
He tucks his lips together in not quite a frown, but more the look of the other guy in the elevator, only unspoken bemusement and shallow acknowledgement, like "hey, getta load of this.".
In other words, certainly not an expression befitting of Jake’s current situation. It’s more of an ‘aw shucks’ kind of gesture.
Then he puffs his cheeks up and blows out a steady stream of air, and he hopes that on it out will ride the last couple of days. Or, the last couple of hours, for all he knows.
Jake begins to pace the room. Rummages through the roots of his hair. As expected, this is quite the hairy predicament, but God he’d get terribly seasick at even the sight of his last conversation with Roxy, or God forbid Dirk, or even Jane, because all of that was before he knew what was going to happen with her, something he cannot right name and makes his skin feel exposedly bare.
So, instead, he turns to who he would not say he knows best.
He swears to God a vein in his cranium spasms just as he goes to check his skulltop.
== golgothasTerror [GT] began pestering gardenGnostic! [GG} ==
GT: Jade! I hope this is finding you well and i hope you are still asleep actually because you of all people need a rest terribly right about now.
GT: I am a bit bothered actually. Any other day i get up bright and early but unfortunately it has really come to bite me in the behind.
GT: Oh fuck it all maybe i will just go to bed again.
GT: When you get the chance i would like to check in though?
GT: About our circumstances.
GG: jake!!!
GG: wow you really can be silly sometimes
GG: i have been dying to talk with you but i was right! you HAVE been snoozing!
GG: it makes sense i guess
GT: And for what reason?
GT: I dont want to steal any of my chums fire here besides it would befit me to be more honest hereon out jade so i will come right out and say it i really did not do much of anything.
GG: jaaaaaaake
GT: *Quirks a brow*?
GG: jaaaake
GG: if this is a prank it is a really strange one
GT: Sadly tis not.
GG: wow
GG: i guess you really are just like that!
GG: i always assumed your gramps counterpart was just eccentric :P
GG: i am not having this argument with you though
GG: you know what i think this will be much easier! hold on
gardenGnostic is now an idle chum!
Until he realizes it’s a stupid fucking idea.
GT: ?
GT: Jade?
GT: Oh let me try that again.
GT: Jaaaaade?
GT: Urgh sorry if i came on too strong i think that is just to be expected at this point.
Jake sinks back into bed and kicks his legs. At this point, self-loathing no longer lingers in the body — it’s more an automatic response, a terms and conditions, or otherwise a choking hazard label on the box.
GT: You know what i really am not in a presentable sort of mood or form right now so how about a rain check?
GT: We can get together sometime soon maybe instead.
That is the much better option; in his sleep-fueled haze of confusion, Jake had forgotten altogether the wreck he has made of himself. The thought of Jade meeting him proper, talking not to him but to the boy he was in the letters, makes him feel a bit queasy.
He feels more like a stain on the carpet than any sort of boisterous adventurer. And he was so excited—hopefully not Jade too—but considering his stroke of luck, Jade is just as if not more excited than he, and what will he do more than he does best?
Let her down.
He turns off the skulltop, makes sure nothing comes through, then proceeds to flop unceremoniously on his back.
As his eyes flutter into a warm, brown darkness, the static carries recollections of the fireside buoyant on his thoughts.