Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

"This is my final fit, my final bellyache with no alarms and no surprises."

—Johana Śepart, Helmseer of the Normandy (later executed)

By the time Terezi has posted an urgent message addressed to Sollux—F3F3R1 1S D34D, 4PPL3B3RRY, 1 HOP3 YOUR B1G DUMB COMPUT3R BR41N H4S COM3 UP W1TH 4 PL4N H3R3—he is already beyond reach, beside himself with fragile anguish and a hideous, trembling terror. He is not answering to reason, he is hardly even listening to the outside world, and when he speaks it is with the jittery, schizophrenic fury of someone with their world turned inside out and back again, with everything he took for granted gone and one of the people who he'd held to be an immutable aspect of the world amputated from it without warning. And after so much cutting away, after his avenues of response to the tyranny of the world had been reduced to threading an impossible needle, after his compensation mechanisms had themselves been subjected to compensation mechanisms, it is one step too far for him to accept it all.

Rose tries to get through to him, somehow, to speak either in the language of his cybernetic thought or otherwise to be physically present for him, and she does both, with insistent messages at every hour and then, when those fail, to take her place at the lonely chair in the helmsblock normally reserved for technicians, watching over his small, shivering body all nerves, Rose, though he's all nerves too in a different way and when she considers it she can't help but utter a sharp, cold laugh. She looks at him again, really looks in the way few things merit, anymore. The first thing she notices is that he doesn't have his glasses, anymore, the two-tone abominations of style he had always worn in their earliest days together. There's a kind of tragic hilarity to that, too, the way when she looks at him and sees this shattered, reanimated corpse and she wonders how she could think that this could be a troll, that this ever could have been a troll, slim withered arms splayed out against the seat and the ribbon cables and the behemoth server with its hundred-thousand inputs and its hundred-million lights dazzling like stars against the ceiling and the shiny reflective floors.

Sometimes when she sits there in a kind of silent mourning—for all that Sollux may sit there and a humming machine and body burning with the heat of a new star so much that she knows he cannot be dead, cannot be gone, she still feels alone when she sits in the deep safety of the helmsblock—she looks down at herself, looking into the floor and seeing her faced mirrored back at her, and wonders when this became her, when it became all she could ever hope to become. There she is, lacquered against the dark metal, in all her glory, festooned beyond what is by now typical, beyond that which she could not imagine to be any other way, with her horns tall and thin and still murder-sharp like the rest of her, and the bear-trap teeth and the gills nested into her ribs, all these things terrifyingly pedestrian to her now in a way she cannot fathom them ever not being; and but so here she is decked in the trappings of a space alien military commander, royal violet blood and the rich indigo-blue sigil of admiralty embroidered into her uniform, and she thinks hard about the absurdity of it all, thinks back to the distant, fading images of her wigglerhood—childhood, for Christ's sake, a violent correction in her head that's painfully difficult to recall, after the fact—and there she is, with her soft hands and her hard mother and the petty inanities of a human existence. And when all that's said and done, when she's done with this terrifically macabre reminiscence about a time and a place that's not only passed but is impossible to return to in any meaningful sense, she's left with this bewildering morass of dark thought and the first one, the one most desperately clawing at her conscience, is this: how the hell is she supposed to convince Sollux that the revolution is not dead if even she cannot will herself to believe in it?

Because that's just it, isn't it? How could she believe anything other than that they are all fucked, that this is anything other than their own dead end? How can they go on now that the vertex around which their entire scheme had revolved has been turned into mealpulp by the state organ's need to keep power concentrated into the iron fist of its Empress? She thinks back to the brief scraps of her life in Sburb, a mere game which nevertheless turned everything she knew on its side, changed her in more ways than she can fathom (her body is the least of it now); she can spare another hollow laugh, now, when she recalls idly that Eridan Ampora was once its Prince of Hope, whose role was to destroy not only through his aspect—she can see easily enough how his appeals to keep his life would bring him to betray the Empire's only heiress—but of his aspect too, bringing the world crashing down on everyone around him. Now, hope lies shattered all around them, among the bodies of their dead friends.

But here, now, when she wonders if there's anything she can feel but empty, she looks back at Sollux, at the injustice in the world that would reduce him to this, to a dying shell of a body among a mind beyond what she can fathom, now. And it doesn't deflate her heart, this time, because she decides that she's had enough of feeling like she's had everything she's ever cared about stripped away from her, had enough of the false fulfillment of a lost crusade to bring anything constructive for this world. If the universe is to going to do its best to bring her down, then she is going to bring it down with her.

In Sollux, she sees the betrayal of a doomed cause, the feeling of loss resonating through his brittle bones and the shiny metal walls and the dimly-glowing wires and his vast consciousness dispersed among the ship in the cultured vats of brain and the dark, ominous fire of the electric coprocessors intersecting with him. In him she sees this forlorn potential set adrift, of a mind that could extend for miles and for eons but which hides here, alone, in the heart of the ship and does not emerge for anyone. This is the loss of hope, and this, Rose thinks to herself, is what she wishes to turn into a determined fury, into the anger of the damned that will strike fear into every single blood pusher in the Empire. Though they may fall, so too, will the Empress, and they will burn their path into the annals of history.

Rose whispers the thought into his ear, and slowly he comes alive again. Safety measures and extraneous features fall away, outside contact with the vessel is suspended, and piece by piece their final journey comes together. The calculations in his veins fill the room with a heady warmth, and their charted course is set in stone, where—in the end—they will meet the Empress, tearing her vessel apart as they too burn to ashes. And though Rose has faced death before with the spectre of terror at her back, this time, she thinks, she's okay with it.

With a deep, low rumble, the engines of the Lucriz prepare for departure.

Being a fugitive aboard an Alternian military vessel is a curious fate, Dave thinks, or maybe he might be thinking if he weren't spending most of his waking hours shitting his pants with fear and fleeing under the sporadic, shaky cover provided to him by Karkat and Aradia during their time off. What he's actually thinking is more along the lines that Aradia's probably thinking that, the way she sits there in that slightly creepy placid way and watches him sleep with a fascination like no way that's healthy, but something he tolerates nonetheless because she's the one who's been saving his skin repeatedly for the last equinox and a half, her and Karkat, too, both of them toting his sorry snoozing body from place to place while he dreams. It's a thankless job for them both, what with Dave barely managing time enough awake to utter more than a half-assed greeting or to do much more than move from one bulkhead to another, taking refuge in the little-serviced coprocessors or in the shadow of room-sized heating vents and purifiers and the engine's enormous catalysts, all of which does a number on his body—there's a reason they're unserviced, with the oppressive humidity and the aerosolized carcinogens keeping him safe from the prying eyes of the military but also tearing apart his body piece by piece—but it's the only way he can push on any further in these dark dreams that have turned more into his reality than anything else.

It's been weeks since he's done much more than sleep, spending his few waking hours in the miserable pyretic bowels of the Pompei, and it's now his time dreaming of the old Alternia, with its cool starry nights alive with sound and light and primal life, that seems more real to his mind than the brief flashes of vast bulwarks of electronics and wiring and piping, and with the way time turns now, a teeming morass of inconsistency that in his later days has turned again to be a comfort, the organized time he's spent so far acclimatizing himself to has again turned to dust, and now he's jumping back to front and front to back and he is in ancient history and he is ancient history, too, with the little alterations accumulating into who he is, more than just a prophet or a retrocognitive but a piece of the story, a cog in a machine, and despite the anguish and the exhaustion and the destruction all around that brought him to this place somehow he feels as if he's never been so much himself as he is in these dreams.

In the back of his memory, he holds this like a talisman: that he was once the Knight of Time, that these were once his stomping grounds, where he would replay over and over again and die so many times but keep trying, keep pushing, keep trying anyway to bring the past into alignment with the present. And here he is, flaming sword in hand, in this moment of finality of his own personal war, his own revolution every bit again a Knight, the guardian of a legacy and divine weapon to a cause far greater than himself, hero of Heat and the scalding shackles of the Signless that drove him down this path for the very first time, and of Clockwork, too, of the gears turning in his mind and those of the very universe he's inherited. In the past and the future and the rapidly-approaching future, where he was and is and will be and will have been, too, this is where he fuses himself with fate. It's the final dream, the point where everything that was and must be comes to a head in a single fateful capstone of time, and the responsibility falls to him now to complete the loop the way he always did, the way he knows best. His eyes close and he's transported—for the last time, he knows somehow—from the fevered jungle of steel and silicon of one Imperial hiveship to another.

He turns his eyes to take in the view of Bulkhead 46, and he knows he's in the right place: this is the Annihilator-class capital ship Lucriz.

He can hardly wrap his mind around the meaning of the image, though, before he's ripped away to another time, an overwhelming reminiscence and retreading of all the places and the times that he has ever been or will be, a kind of dark whirlwind that rips him apart and puts him back together, that sends a line drive down his heart and cuts it clean in two, just a single stutter-step in the middle creating a sign he's only ever seen once but which he's always known, and as the record twists back to the beginning all over again, this one last rewind rattling through his skull with a great shrieking scratch, he faces everything that's brought him to where he is, and he understands it all, carries the heavy weight of knowledge of an eternity of thoughts, events, and destinies.

More than once, he stood among the titans of an ancient cause. There was the Empress regnant, first: the glimmering gold of a gaudy ancient crown sitting upon her horns young, yet, and the immaterial words whispered into her ear that would send her down the path of a conquerer from the outset, but there was barely time to utter the words from the safety of a shadow before the image shifted again, then, the light from the surface and the watery shimmer permeating everything resolving into nothing, then: the dry, rancorous heat of a fire leaping from a brazier into the twilit sky, and the two standing astride a bridge—symbolic, there, with an older, wiser Empress and a lanky clown with a club making peace, or a deal with the devil or with each other because they're really both the devils, Dave said, to each, in that quiet dark language only they could understand—then: the blood of a nation smeared against the cavernous walls of their final hollow resting place, and Dave there, too, leading the shattered remnants back into the fray to meet their end, once and for all, into the morning star of the Mirthful, then: the martyr and his mother, his disciple and devoted friend, his staunch defender and soothsayer, all standing together but it is only then that Dave spoke to them, brought the language of injustice and disjunction to their hearts, only then that they turned their words from each other to the world beyond, and thus began their movement and their long, slow deaths, then: his brother, his ancestor, his shadow self bringing those lost words once again, and his friends' other halves there to hear the words of prophecy, too, when they strained their ears to the wind they swore they could hear a revolution in the breeze but it was just Dave, it had always been, then: a final stand, a long-horned warrior and his partner, veteran now of the two great uprisings, and he spoke to them just the same though they would fall as they had to, then: the Empress once again, timeless, ageless, an institution installed upon her chair like she would never leave it, and his hands as whisper-quiet as his voice as he snatched the tiara from her head, and just as he assured that everything would fall into line as it had to, it is only now that he is here, on the halls of Bulkhead 46 of the hiveship Lucriz of the Imperial Fleet and when he places his hand on the twisted electric pulse of the nerves and the wires of the processor and his mind turns to gears and the gears shift on and forward and forward and he is a lightningrod in the darkness and a fire in the frost and the story is his to command, and this is where it starts and ends.

There's an access shaft in the corner, and Dave swims from Bulkhead 46 to Bulkhead 26 to Bulkhead 12 to Access Shaft 249 to Ventilation Unit 15 to Mechanical Main Artery to Elevator 2 to the First Ring Station, the grand central and the heart of the Lucriz and time is moving strangely, now, everyone all around him seemingly locked in a state of paralyzed confusion from the deceleration from many times the speed of light to their final sublight impact—this Dave knows, though he doesn't know how or why or when the knowledge came to reside within him—and already he can feel the terrible trembling of a ship pushed well beyond the murky fringes of its capabilities, the blaring alarms of debris tearing into its sides from all angles and the X-ray waves falling hopelessly behind the developing fusion zone at the blunt nose of the vessel, and the certainty of death hanging in the air. Everything about Dave is purpose, every step that he takes through the chaos and the rattling path heavy with deliberation and meaning, and even as the throngs of panicked soldiers and mechanics assemble riotously in the ring's main square, Dave continues straight through them, a one-man parade on a single-minded mission into a future that is his to ensure. And so he goes, tearing his path into the Lucriz, swinging his sword (mended at last) until he finds the gilded arcade to the Helmsman's sanctum.

The hallway is filled with a curious, muted peace. Even as the deceleration grows more and more drastic, twisting the gravity of the room so much Dave can barely stand, it's soundproofed from everything outside; just the deep, rumbling buzz of transistors remains, and in brief glances forward, beyond the open doors to the block he can see his goal: beside Sollux, slumped over in his throne of silicon and switches and lights and brilliant yellow arteries, is Rose, lacquered in the black and violet finery of an admiral, braced against the helm with her eyes shut, preparing for the end.

Step by step, moment by moment. He's almost there, and as his last steps bring him into the cavernous room a tremendous shuddering roar rocks the ship, turning the gravity on its side and hurling Dave and Rose against a wall. The immense weight and the pressure of the deceleration force them together, and though Rose looks at him with a roil of bewilderment that he could even be here, trillions of miles from where he should be, she doesn't say anything before her face resolves into a smile.

Fancy meeting you here.
thought you and smartass foureyes could use a chaperone to save you from the end times
And Wormhole Metadave comes to save the day.
So much for the revolution, though, huh?
ok while wormhole metadave is a fucking kickass title and im totally using it from now on
we kinda got hornswoggled there
see the way i figure it there was never going to be a revolution that was mostly just the horrorterrors pulling one over on us a fucking gain because obviously we hadnt had enough of their bullshit
at least not in the way we figured it you know with us sending a big old army of lowbloods at the empresses army of lowbloods and having them beat the shit out of each other
that was a lame idea anyway though
so this ships headed towards the battleship condescension right
You heard the timer. "Impact in thirty seconds."
anyway as cool as your badass last stand here sounds youre kinda needed somewhere else

With a single motion—despite the intense force of gravity, he still makes it look casual—Dave pulls out the stolen crown, holding it out to Rose so she can see the tyrian gem and the Peixes insignia emblazoning the centre. She reaches to grasp it one hand, creating a bridge between the two of them.

what do you say rose
How, exactly, are you—
great lets get started
alley oop

Just as the vessel disintegrates around them, just as everything falls away piece by piece and turns from the gold of the helmsblock and the pilot's blood into the vivid red of the Battleship Condescension, the bright bright red of a lost race, the scorching red of divine and purifying flame, they are transported from the final whispers of a dream into the waking world.

It is a coronation unlike any other in the history of the Empire. Deep in the inhospitable mechanical caverns of the hiveship Pompei, it is hot and uncomfortable, and without the gentle rotation of a gravity ring, they all float in the middle of the room somewhat gracelessly, for what they know is a historic occasion without equal. Despite herself, Rose smiles, a certain part of her tickled by the absurd humour of it all, as she prepares for the blessing of her friends to ascend to the most powerful post in the known universe.

To her left is a prophet, a girl who could inflect her words to reach the ears of ghosts, of angels and demons both, and bring their thoughts to light. To her right is a mutant, heir to a cause that has risen and fallen and risen again on the fates of its believers, a leader who abdicates his power today to one he can trust to wield it. And before her, golden diadem in hand, is her brother, her comrade in a fight that started with the end of everything they thought to be true, and has ended now, for the first time since they ever came here, perhaps, with a growing whisper of hope that their old world can begin again, piece by piece, with the ancient remains of their memory building the foundations once again, but also her moirail, steadfast at her side in the travails of a world never their own until now.

And if that's the way it has to be, Rose thinks as she takes the crown and places it upon her head, then so be it: this is her too now, not just Rose Lalonde, the girl of thorns, the cool-eyed Seer who would walk into the endless, brambled void of aliens at the eternal expanse beyond the impossible fringes of space and leave alive, not just the human girl who remembers the distant call of long-lost stories and history, but Rozaya Leldon now, too, the heiress to a legacy, Empress of Alternia, Second of her Symbolhight, Princess-elect of the Imperial Popular Vanguard, Despotess of Eutjjal and whatever other countless titles might lie in store for her. This is her, this has always been her, and though she's never felt ready before now to take the mantle of the leader, she knows this now: leadership runs in her blood, both the red and the violet, and as they run together in her heart they meld into a royal fuchsia, the colour of the gem on the crown, the colour of the fallen regent, too. This is her. This has always been her.

She slides the microphone nested neatly in the golden crown down to her lips, and makes her first proclamation:

People of the Empire, this is your Empress speaking.